MIDEAST: A Good Time Not to Make Peace

• Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler (jerusalem)
• Sunday, September 27, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Most analysts agree that the past week of Middle East diplomacy has actually set back the cause of peacemaking. If they are right that the intensive U.S.-led effort has actually diminished prospects for a breakthrough towards Palestinian-Israel peace, who is to blame?

U.S. President Barack Obama can certainly not be faulted for not plunging into the cold waters of a long-stilled peace process.

At his summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the President made his point forcefully about the 'urgency' for the parties to stop their squabbling about how to start negotiations, and to get down to the nitty-gritty of working out a solution to their conflict.

In the region itself, though, the call for 'action now' cuts little ice.

Rather, what we see is a customary show of shared disillusion and scepticism among Palestinians and Israelis alike. Both sides have turned on its head the Obama rebuke that the U.S. is 'losing patience.'

They seem to have all the patience in the world.

'Excuse us Mr. President - it's all very well to chastise Netanyahu and Abbas, but we all know just how difficult are the issues to be resolved,' declared Keren Neubach, a talk show host on Israeli national radio, introducing her programme after what was dismissed by Israeli commentators as 'The Rebuke Summit'.

She added: 'Our conflict with the Palestinians can't be resolved just by you waving a magic wand and telling us to make it go away.'

Like Israelis, Palestinians too have not been swayed by Obama's vigorous statements, or by his conviction that peace is workable with the present Israeli government.

In an interview to the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat last Thursday, Abbas described the right-wing Netanyahu government as a 'genuine problem'. There is 'no infrastructure for negotiation,' the Palestinian leader stressed. He added that an outline for negotiations had already been agreed upon with the previous Israeli government, 'so we can't simply go back to square one.'

Criticising the Israeli leader's unwillingness to accede to a settlement freeze, Abbas also noted that 'Netanyahu says Jerusalem will not be negotiated on and refugees will not be negotiated on. So what do we really have left to talk about?'

On both sides, the impression is that neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian leadership is particularly keen to be pressed into action.

Indeed, each appears distinctly less interested in signing on to any immediate peace drive which would involve compromise on their part, and more interested in preserving their domestic legitimacy. Both leaders fear for their legitimacy with their respective political constituency were they to agree to enter negotiations in the current circumstances.

Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian Authority minister and director of the Palestinian Government Media Centre, writes in the joint Israeli-Palestinian website Bitter Lemons: 'Should the Palestinian leadership be pressured into a peace process that is not preceded by a complete cessation of Israeli settlement construction in all occupied territory, this will undermine that leadership in the eyes of the Palestinian public and provide more ammunition to those opposed to negotiations as the means to resolve the conflict.'

Despite Netanyahu's protestations that he is 'ready for negotiations without pre-conditions,' there is no indication that he is genuinely eager for real peace moves soon.

His strategy in New York has been heralded as a success, especially by his toughest nationalist supporters, both because he is perceived as having resisted the pressure for a settlement freeze and having tilted the blame onto the Palestinians as 'the unwilling peace partner'.

Against this mood, the insistence by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on the U.S. PBS network that Israelis and Palestinians move quickly to grab this 'unique moment' for making peace sounds rather hollow.

Instead, it seems all-too-auspicious a 'moment' for those who are looking to stall peacemaking yet again, to put the peace process, rather than the settlements, into a deep freeze.

'If you don't make progress and engage in peacemaking,' Emmanuel warned, 'you give Hamas and Hizbullah and Iran, who are enemies of the peace process, and vocal opponents of it, a veto.'

Obama's 'urgency' is in fact fixed on those 'enemies' of peacemaking. The global 'moment' is not at all about Middle East peacemaking, but all about Iran and its nuclear ambitions.

That culminated in the disclosure of the existence of another secret Iranian nuclear plant just prior to the opening of next week's talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France - and Germany).

At his summit, Obama went further than mere 'rebuke'. He laid down clear- cut U.S. markers about which direction Middle East peacemaking ought to take.

Just as Palestinians applauded enthusiastically, Netanyahu most certainly did a double-gulp, on hearing a U.S. president declare for the first time (as Obama did at the UN), 'The United States does Israel no favours when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians.'

There can be no doubting the genuineness of Obama's commitment to press on with a comprehensive regional peace. Pessimists who write off the lack of real U.S. engagement and talk of a blow to peacemaking are premature.

What is true is that despite the White House's proclamation of a pressing moment, it is unlikely that Obama will be free to act decisively on Israel- Palestine until he has dealt successfully with the Iran nuclear issue - one way or another.

After all, settling the Iran threat is part and parcel of the comprehensive peace to which Barack Obama has committed himself.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

Where next?

Advertisement