The 3-way option

Foreign Affairs magazine has published a major statement from former Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, a likely future candidate for prime minister, on his view of how to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, titled "How to build Middle East peace: Why bottom-up is better than top-down."

Ya'alon offers an impressive analysis of why decades of diplomacy have failed and the conflict's enduring stagnation. His ‎‎"bottom-up" solution contains four elements, three of which are somewhat antique bromides and one of which ‎is an exciting, untried idea -- the three-way option. ‎

Stripped to its essentials, Ya'alon's article calls for: ‎‎1.‎ Promoting Palestinian economic growth and infrastructure development; ‎2. Improving Palestinian governance, anti-corruption efforts, and institution-building in general; 3. Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation; and 4.‎ A regional initiative that would bring in Arab states interested in helping to manage and eventually ‎solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, whether or not those states have formal relations with Israel.

The first three have been tried repeatedly through the decades and have failed to bring any resolution closer. In 1993, then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres published "The New Middle East," his lovely vision of a prosperous Palestinian ‎population that would be a good neighbor for Israel. The trouble is that his hopes were shattered ‎by Palestinian rejectionism, incitement and death-cultism, which still continue today. Surely no one still seriously believes in 2017 ‎that enrichment will moderate the Palestinians. ‎

In 2002, then-President George W. Bush focused on improved governance, but 15 years later things are more ‎wretched than ever, with anarchy, corruption, and violent feuding. Worse, the historical record ‎strongly suggests that good governance would just lead to a more efficient Palestinian machine for ‎attacking Israel. ‎

Security cooperation is an area -- virtually the only one -- in which Israel and the Palestinian Authority work ‎together: Basically, the Israel Defense Forces protects the PA and the PA helps the IDF stave off attacks. ‎However mutually useful, this collaboration has shown zero potential to expand to resolve their larger ‎conflict. ‎

In contrast, the fourth proposal, bringing in the Arab states, is an important initiative that has yet seriously to be ‎attempted. Here, Ya'alon's plan holds out real hope. ‎

That's because a remarkable symmetry exists between what Palestinians want from Israel and what Israel wants ‎from the Arab states plus Turkey and Iran, namely recognition and legitimacy. Noting this parallel, I‎proposedin The Wall Street Journal that both aspirations be addressed in tandem, linking concessions by the Arab states to Israel with Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. Everyone would gain from this: "The Arab states ‎achieve what they say is their main goal, justice for the Palestinians. Israel gets peace. Palestinians have their ‎state." ‎

For example, if the Saudis end their economic boycott of Israel, Israel would increase Palestinian access to ‎international markets. If the Egyptians warm up relations, Palestinians would get more access to the Israeli labor ‎market. If the major Arab states sign peace treaties with the Jewish State of Israel, the Palestinians would get their ‎state. ‎

The Obama administration made a short but intensefeintin this direction in 2009, but the Saudis turned it down ‎and it sputtered to a close. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi raised the idea again in 2016, again without consequence. In ‎short, the three-way option between the Arab states, Israel, and the Palestinians has not yet been pursued in a ‎serious or sustained way. ‎

With el-Sissi and Ya'alon now on record favoring the three-way option, and with Arab states shaken awake by the ‎Obama administration's bizarre cooperation with Iran, Middle Eastern leaders may be willing to work with ‎the Jewish state in ways they were not ready for in 1990 or 2009. It's certainly worth a try by the incoming ‎Trump administration. ‎

Progress in Arab-Israeli diplomacy will not come from retreading the defunct ideas of Peres or Bush, nor can ‎security cooperation possibly lead to political breakthroughs. My first preference remains U.S. support for an ‎Israeli victory. But if that is too much for now, then involving the Arab states at least offers a way out of the ‎stale, isolated, and even counterproductive sequence of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. ‎

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) is president of the Middle East Forum.