Global IssuesMIDEAST: To Go On Talking
A second meeting of Palestinian and Israeli negotiators took place this week in Amman, Jordan, and expectedly bore no tangible result — except for an agreed third round by month’s end.
How to define the talks is itself a formidable issue. Israel and the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators (U.N.; U.S.; E.U.; Russia) would like them to be 'negotiations'; Palestinians retort with the turn of phrase 'preparatory talks'. Hence, Palestinian sources say Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas doubts the talks 'will mature into true negotiations.'
Abbas approved the meetings 'out of appreciation to the effort' of Jordan’s King Abdullah I. Last month, the Hashemite ruler visited the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah; his Foreign minister Nasser Judeh was in Bethlehem during Christmas.
But the Palestinian leader keeps conditioning negotiations with Israel on his long-held settlement freeze demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu renew his moratorium on settlement construction. A ten-month freeze ended in September 2010, ending the previous round of direct negotiations. The Israeli Prime Minister counters that full peace talks should resume 'without precondition.'
No one is interested to see the vacillating momentum sink. After another meeting with the King on Monday, Abbas pledged to 'exploit all chances, albeit weak, to push peace forward,' announcing a third meeting on Jan. 26, the precise Quartet deadline for both parties to present proposals in the realm of border and security arrangements for a Palestinian state to come into existence.
Indeed, the hope is that, even in absence of progress, the Palestinians stick to their commitment to the King (who is due to meet U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday next week), so that the talks continue well beyond the allocated timeframe — this, despite repeated intimations to the contrary.
Israeli sources quoted in the liberal daily Haaretz stressed the mediators’ main focus — to prevent the talks from aborting once more. 'The U.S. wants to get closest to November’s presidential elections in this way,' they speculated.
If so, this would represent an accomplishment in itself as it would neutralise the unremitting quandary. After all, 2011 was wasted on trying to unlock the settlement versus negotiations key to solve the conflict. Meanwhile, settlement building continued unabated, according to a report released on Tuesday by the left- wing Israeli NGO Peace Now.
Entitled ‘Torpedoing the Two-State Solution’, Peace Now reports a construction peak unprecedented since 2002. In 2011, Israel approved the building of 1,850 housing units in the occupied West Bank, a 20 percent increase over 2010 (though the 2010 rate of settlement expansion was unusually low due to Netanyahu’s moratorium).
In addition, 3,690 flats in Jewish neighbourhoods located in occupied east Jerusalem were approved by the Israeli government; plans for another 2,660 are currently being processed; and, 55 more units were built inside Palestinian neighbourhoods.
On Sunday, in an op-ed published in the Washington Post, former U.S. peace broker Dennis Ross offered Quartet mediators his counsel on how to overcome the impasse. The controversial diplomat — considered by Palestinian officials beholden to Netanyahu — stepped out in December after 20 years of mixed peace-building services under three consecutive U.S. presidents.
Under Barack Obama, Ross reportedly maintained a secret channel with Netanyahu, thus undermining parallel endeavours by White House Mideast envoy Sen. George Mitchell, deemed more acceptable amongst Palestinians. The latter resigned last May in protest, just before a summit with Netanyahu during which Obama outlined his two-state proposal 'along the 1967 borders', to no avail.
In his ‘How to Break a Middle East Stalemate’ column, Ross urges a series of gradual confidence-building measures, long held as the be-all and end-all of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.
'There should be no illusions about the prospects of a breakthrough any time soon,' Ross asserts, reflecting the well-known Israeli government’s assessment that, under what it sees as a barren reality created by the Arab democratic awakening, interim agreements and 'conflict management' policies are the best possible outcome.
So, Ross recommends that Israel gradually ends its military incursions in areas of the West Bank under putative Palestinian control (Area A: 18 percent); broadens areas under mixed Israeli-Palestinian responsibility where Palestinian security personnel could be allowed to operate more systematically (Area B: 22 percent); and, more Palestinian economic access to areas under full Israeli control (Area C: 60 percent).
Already during his 2009 election campaign, Netanyahu advocated 'economic peace' with the Palestinians. Yet, the relatively simple gesture of allowing the paving of an access road in Area C to the Palestinian city of Rawabeh currently under construction hasn’t been granted until now, despite recurring Israeli assurances to recurring Quartet entreaties.
Netanyahu reportedly agreed three times in the past to consider favourably similar confidence-building measures presented by Mitchell, yet reneged his promise.
Does Ross know something unbeknownst to current diplomats that could restore trust in Netanyahu?
According to Haaretz, at the request of the U.S. and Jordan, Netanyahu is mulling over such a 'stabilising package' of gestures, including the release of Palestinian prisoners. In return, he expects the Palestinians to continue talking, and to stop their statehood bid at the U.N. once and for all.
The revamped package called on by the Quartet would rely on Ross’s own recycled recommendations, i.e. 'locking the Palestinians in the talks in return for a few sweets,' as an Israeli diplomat put it.
© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service