David Frum recently suggested that Israel and the Palestinians can have “peace without the process,” based on the separation barrier becoming a de facto international border without the creation of an independent Palestinian state:
The Israelis keep what they have, the West Bank Palestinians commit to keep order on their side of the fence, Hamas remains an international pariah, foreign aid continues to flow to the West Bank so long as good behaviour continues. No process, no treaty, just quiet and development.

“It’s not a great deal for the Palestinians, obviously,” Frum allows, “But the alternative to a signed peace does not have to be fighting.” But, of course, it’s a fantastic deal for the Israelis. Indeed, it’s an Israeli wet dream. I think obviously Frum is completely wrong that the alternative to a signed agreement doesn’t have to be fighting, and history demonstrates that in the absence of not only an agreement, but even the hope of an agreement, fighting is exactly what you’re going to get. If he can’t figure that out by now, he’s got no business commenting on Israeli-Palestinian matters.

Presumably Frum’s delusion arises from the present relative order that has been created by the Palestinian Authority in the areas under its control in the West Bank. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that this is not based on “quiet and development,” as he puts it, alone but rather quiet and development in the context of state and institution building and other measures designed to peacefully but steadily and purposively advance towards independence and an end to the occupation. None of it can be sustainable in the context of any lack of real prospects for an end to the occupation. What Frum is hoping for is that Palestinians will calmly and quietly accept unilaterally dictated new de facto borders designed to Israel’s liking (the West Bank security barrier), without independence or an end to the occupation. It’s an informal way of achieving the “nuclear option” I was describing in a recent posting, and while it might not create a full-blown crisis with Egypt and Jordan the way de jure annexation would, it’s certainly not a situation that PA can sustain.

The Palestinian leadership has bet everything on a negotiated peace agreement with Israel, and doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on that. They have nothing left, ultimately, other than that and in spite of all the accusations they’re not in the business of attempting to establish a quasi-autonomous bantustan within the context of an ongoing Israeli occupation or a de facto greater Israeli state. If this dream dies in the way Frum is describing, they will never survive and it will be extremely difficult to prevent an Islamist takeover of the Palestinian political scene in the West Bank as well as Gaza. Frum’s indefensibly sanguine attitude about the local and regional, and possibly even global, impact of this development only further demonstrates his profound lack of understanding of the entire problem and its implications.

But putting the practical concerns aside, let’s look at what Frum is really suggesting. And, let’s bear in mind, he is a neocon who prides himself on being interested in “democracy” and “human rights.” What’s missing from his argument, beside the fact that it couldn’t possibly be sustained politically, is the fact that his proposal will still leave millions of Palestinians as noncitizens in a world of citizens of states. This is the anomaly that both Frum and most other supporters of Israel simply refuse to get through their heads. It is not sustainable or in any way acceptable to have millions of people, most of whom are not refugees but who are living in their own homes on their own land and in their own country, to be stateless noncitizens, outside the global whale. He’s asking Palestinians to be satisfied with being the only group of millions of non-citizen, non-refugee persons in the entire world, without self-determination, without effective recourse to the government that really controls their territory in the end (it would still for all intents and purposes and as a legal matter be Israel in his formulation) and without any form of meaningful representation in it. It is one thing to be an ethnic minority facing discrimination. It is something quite different to be a noncitizen of any state.

None of this applies to the other examples he cites such as the Falkland Islands, the India-China border area, Korea, or even the Western Sahara. He compares the West Bank to Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabakh, noting, “The international community does not invest much energy worrying about the precise status of either of these autonomous self-governing regions.” “Why not allow the Palestinian Authority to stumble along in the same way?” he asks. Well obviously because it’s a surefire recipe for another explosion of violence with major regional and international consequences, but more to the point both of them are functionally independent while nominally claimed by a larger state. Neither are under direct occupation, as is true in the West Bank, and as will be true even if Frum gets his way (his passage about foreign aid continuing to flow to the West Bank based on good behavior strongly suggests who is going to be judging that “good behavior” and controlling that flow). Nagorno-Karabakh is an area contested between Armenia and Azerbaijan, much like Kashmir is being fought over by India and Pakistan, or numerous other regions around the world disputed between states. The analogy to the West Bank and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories is extremely weak at best. Moreover, Kosovo’s independence is recognized by the United States, Britain, France and Germany, among many others, in spite of Serbia’s ongoing claims. There are a great many other examples he might have, but did not bother to, cite. In almost all of these cases there is a surfeit rather than a lack of citizenship, states fighting over whose citizenship people should have rather than a state fighting to deny people the right to any citizenship at all. Even more ridiculous is Frum’s analogy between his idea and Israel’s no-peace, no-war arrangement with Syria.

Obviously, there are lots of ethnic and other oppressed minorities, but almost all of them are citizens of the states that oppress them, which affords them some means, even if it’s theoretical at any given time, of pursuing their rights through the political system in which they live. Palestinian citizens of Israel are quite a good example of this. Oppressive governments and dictatorships of any variety can wither away and die over time, they can implode, they can be brought down by revolt or velvet revolution, they come and go. Oppressed citizens, including ethnic or religious minorities, are positioned to take advantage of sudden explosions or gradual accretions of greater rights. Minority groups can and have advanced their communal interests through political and social processes, and this has happened all over the world. The basis for all of this is extremely simple: citizenship. To be the citizen of the Palestinian Authority, or any nonmember state of the United Nations, that is to say any sub-national authority which doesn’t really enjoy sovereignty in its own territory, is meaningless. I can only assume that Frum hasn’t taken this reality into consideration, or he wouldn’t be so glib about it or so blind as to think it’s a sustainable arrangement.

“Obviously,” as he says “it’s not a great deal for the Palestinians” to remain not citizens of the state that truly rules them, and in his vision will continue to rule them, and not citizens of any other state for that matter. Millions of people will therefore be without the rights and responsibilities of citizenship for the foreseeable future because it’s inconvenient for Israel to either give them citizenship or allow them their own independence. The question David Frum needs to ask himself is, were he in this position, would he accept it? Would he allow it in any other context? And if not, what would he do about it? What on earth makes him think this is okay?