Palestine after the Arab Spring.

• Author: Finkelstein, Norman G.
• Position: COMMENTARY

When a series of uprisings across the Arab world in 2010-2012 overthrew a number of autocratic rulers and weakened others, the initial expectation was that these developments would significantly strengthen Arab official support for the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, and remove various restraints on popular support for the Palestinians and the latter's freedom of action in the Arab world. The response to Israel's late 2012 assault on the Gaza Strip, Operation Pillar of Defense, appeared to validate such assessments, as--in sharp contrast to Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09--Arab leaders beat a path to Gaza City amidst intense bombing to demonstrate their solidarity with not only the Palestinian people but a Hamas government most of them had previously spurned. (1) Similarly, there were few constraints against popular expressions of support for the beleaguered Palestinians. One notable consequence of this mobilized Arab-Muslim support was that Pillar of Defense was much less destructive than Cast Lead.

Since then the situation has shifted dramatically. On the one hand, a growing number of Arab states have been consumed by internal strife and foreign intervention, and are no longer capable of pursuing a coherent and active foreign policy beyond--at best--regime preservation. In other states, most notably Egypt, the old order has returned with a vengeance, attributing many of its problems to contrived Palestinian subterfuge and encouraging unprecedented levels of anti-Palestinian hysteria in the media.

More broadly, regional upheaval has intensified the regional Cold War. In this equation, several key conservative Arab states have sought out Israel as a valuable ally in their rivalry with Iran. Rather than outbidding each other in support of the Palestinians, or seeking to control the "Palestinian card," as was the case in previous eras, this time around the Palestinian question is all but ignored, seen primarily as an obstacle and nuisance to more important affairs of state.

From the vantage point of 2015, the prospects for Palestinian self-determination could hardly be worse. A regional agenda no longer exists, and rather than serving as a unifying factor for rival camps, the Palestinian struggle is overwhelmingly absent. For their part, competing Palestinian factions have become subordinate elements of these regional coalitions, desperately seeking supporters (and funders) rather than leveraging the autonomous (symbolic) power of the Palestine cause. To an even greater extent than during the height of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Palestine is absent from the Arab agenda.

The implications of regional isolation for the Palestinians were apparent in two important developments last year: the diplomatic process engineered by US Secretary of State John Kerry, which collapsed after nine months in April 2014; and Operation Protective Edge, Israel's summer 2014 massacre in Gaza.

The Kerry Process

In July 2013, Secretary Kerry launched a diplomatic initiative for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. In retrospect, the timing made perfect sense. Previous rounds of negotiations had come to naught largely because the Palestinians had refused to sign on to an agreement granting Israel's long-standing bottom line demands: the annexation of its major settlement blocs on some 10 percent of the West Bank and the nullification of the Palestinian refugees' right of return. But the Palestinians in 2013 were politically the weakest they had ever been since the occupation began in 1967. This was due to four principal factors:

* Regionally, as discussed, the Arab world was completely shattered. Its officials and to some extent public opinion as well evinced a sharply diminished interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and it was in no position to resist US demands relating to it. Kerry was meticulous in preparing the grounds for Palestinian defeat. When he asked the Arab League to amend its 2002 Peace Initiative to include a reference to land swaps, it amended the initiative. When he asked it to meet and endorse his guidelines for the diplomatic process, it met and endorsed his guidelines. (2) The Palestinians were completely isolated.

* Hamas, which had been the principal obstacle to the Palestinian Authority (PA) imposing its will, had seen its role and influence sharply reduced. Responding to the Arab uprisings, Hamas placed its bets on a regional triumph of the Muslim Brotherhood and placed its eggs in the basket of the Morsi government in Egypt, severed ties with Syria, and was consequently ostracized by Iran. When the Egyptian military overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013, it left Hamas in its most desperate state since its founding.

* The Palestinian people had never been more despondent and resigned. Talk of a third intifada bore no relation to the reality on the ground: apathy, exhaustion, cynicism and despair.

* The PA was more dependent on the US than ever, while its leaders lacked even the...