/ world today news/ Over the past few days, there has been a flurry of news reports confirming that US policy towards Gaza is firmly based on the revival of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
This policy is part of the standard Great Power diplomatic toolkit aimed at empowering a perceived third power as a way out of a political and military nightmare.
Alas, history shows that third-power policies are more often than not chimeras, not solutions, and that the choice comes down to making a deal with the group that is beyond the pale, or else accepting war for an indefinite future.
One of the first Third Power policies took place just over a century ago when the United Kingdom, struggling with rebellion in Ireland, sought a political grouping that would be intermediate between the now discredited system of direct rule and the demonized Sinn Fein.
For several years Lloyd George pursued the will of Gladstoneism, creating and supporting a parliament for the south of Ireland; but was eventually forced to abandon this idea and invite Sinn Fein’s Eamon de Valera himself to London to negotiate what would become the Free State (Eire).
Fast forward to Algeria, when French President Charles de Gaulle, after being brought back to power by the threat of a military mutiny and initially calling on the FLN rebels to surrender with honor, called for his own version of a third power: Algeria, “governed by Algerians, but in close alliance with France.
This alternative to both the status quo and the “horrific misery” of secession was rejected a year and a half later in favor of negotiations with the FLN and independence.
One could tell a similar story about other great powers fighting insurgencies, such as the Russians in Afghanistan (or, at least in terms of local military dominance, the Dutch in Indonesia or the Nationalist government in South Africa); but the point is that when the United States tries to create a third power, as it did in Cuba in 1958 (neither Batista nor Castro) and in Iran in 1978 (neither the Shah nor Khomeini), it follows an often-trodden path .
This time it is a dead end, and for a very simple reason: the long battles that drive politicians to seek a third power also make it impossible for any such power to have more than a fraction of the legitimacy of the enemy against which the great power or its client is fighting.
Of course, politicians may decide, for many reasons, that they would rather continue fighting than reach a political settlement with their enemies.
In that regard, brandishing a third force standard might be less a sign of naivety and more a way to try to distract the audience from the decision to keep fighting.
Such a decision is often accompanied by an appeal to the moral dislike of the enemy; for example, his use of terrorism and his maximalist political agenda.
The fact that those making such arguments may themselves have a history of both negotiating and coordinating with the odious enemy does not make the moral condemnation or the search for a third force any less sincere. But still there is a way out – if there is a will.
A good example of this is the policy of the US and Israel towards the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) after the latter was expelled from Lebanon.
One would imagine that with Yasser Arafat and company retreating to Tunisia, the Third Power – in this case King Hussein’s Jordan – would be at the center of trying to find a Palestinian policy.
But these attempts ended, predictably, in a dead end; and the Israelis turned to the PLO, negotiating with the group that their own law had until then prohibited them from contacting.
Of course, the Oslo Accords failed—a point I will return to below—but the problem here is that both the US and Israel made progress precisely because they discarded the Third Power fantasy and de-anathematized the PLO.
Indeed, the PLO boycott has always been shot with holes, with face being saved by talks that were conducted through third parties.
Nevertheless, as a political gesture, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s move was symbolically important, not only shaking Israel but costing him his life, an outcome that could easily have happened to de Gaulle.
The point is simple: peace is made between enemies, not friends. Negotiations can be conducted without any implication that one side trusts the other or considers them morally legitimate, or that future agreements can never be overturned (as appears to have happened between Hamas and Israel, and Hamas and USA, repeatedly over the past decade). Negotiations in this sense are not a reward for good behavior, but a response to mean acts and dishonesty.
Because in the end, the only alternative is to keep fighting, with the goal of a Hamas-free Gaza ruled by a revitalized Palestinian Authority receding like Gatsby’s green light.
The Israelis can fight for weeks, months or even years more, with the US continuing to provide cover; they can kill or capture or exile any member of Hamas; and it will not make the PA stronger or better able to govern Gaza. It is time for those who pride themselves on their sense of realism to face the facts and renounce the Third Force.
Translation: SM
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