Editorial
Until the choices run out

In an interview published in the London Evening Standard this week, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela criticised Nelson Mandela for accepting the Nobel Peace Prize with the apartheid government’s last president, his “jailer” FW de Klerk: “Hand in hand they went. Do you think De Klerk released him [from prison] from the goodness of his heart? He had to. The times dictated it, the world had changed.”

Despite her misplaced vitriol towards Mandela, she is at least partially right about former President De Klerk’s motive. Until the 1980s, the apartheid regime was strong and it had many choices. But then reality took over and it realised defeat and total destruction were imminent; it had no choice but a settlement with the liberation movements.

The South African example is relevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where both sides still have many choices and the strength to carry on, and where the “peaceful” vision of a two-state solution is taking a battering. The Palestinians have the huge Muslim bloc supporting them - albeit more out of hatred of Israel than love of the Palestinians. Israel knows it will not be defeated, notwithstanding occasional arguments with Western supporters like America; it is seen as a bastion of Western democracy against the spread of militant Islam.

The Americans this week announced that Israel and the Palestinian Authority would begin “indirect” negotiations facilitated by George Mitchell, who was instrumental in bringing a settlement to Northern Ireland. But Israeli commentators expect little to be achieved.

Akiva Eldar, writing in Ha’aretz, says: “Perhaps the two-state solution is baseless. It is possible that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of those problems that are insoluble. Perhaps we have reached that awful crossroad where we must choose between a new version of the unilateral disengagement from Gaza - meaning that the West Bank would be abandoned to Hamas and those who stand behind it - or a countdown to the end of either a Jewish Israel or a democratic one. Woe to anyone who must face such a choice.”

Ehud Yaari, writing in Foreign Affairs, is pessimistic about a final-status agreement with the Palestinian “Oslo camp”. He recommends relinquishing a significant part of the territories for an armistice and a conflict-management strategy towards Hamas.

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