by Mitchell Plitnick
The so-called “renewed” Israel-Palestine peace process is turning out to be nothing more than an illusion, as many observers from across the political spectrum expected. But the United States is apparently intent on blowing more smoke to maintain that hallucination as long as possible. And the Palestinian Authority, typically, [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The so-called “renewed” Israel-Palestine peace process is turning out to be nothing more than an illusion, as many observers from across the political spectrum expected. But the United States is apparently intent on blowing more smoke to maintain that hallucination as long as possible. And the Palestinian Authority, typically, is falling into a trap.
US Secretary of State John Kerry’s idea to keep a tight lid on the proceedings was a good one if talks lead somewhere. If they don’t, the aggrieved side is likely to head to the media to air their grievances, feeling that the process is not getting them where they want and that public pressure is their only option. Doing so, however, will surely anger the United States and open the door for the party causing the leaks to end up with the lion’s share of the blame for the talks’ failure.
Amid reports of deep Palestinian dissatisfaction with the way the talks are going, the US seems to be offering the public the same long-view analysis that they did months ago. Not commenting on what is actually taking place between the Israelis and Palestinians in their discussions, a senior State Department official offered the view that the turmoil in Syria and Egypt is spurring the two sides toward compromise.
“Both sides have made clear to us and to each other that they do not want the turmoil to engulf them and that therefore it motivates them to try to resolve their conflict to prevent that from happening,” the official told reporters. This rationale was part of the explanation Kerry offered as he was bringing the sides together as to why this time would be different from previous rounds of talks. It fails, however, to address the matters that are bringing the talks crashing down, which are just like those problems from previous talks.
Palestinian negotiators have been telling reporters that Israel is insisting on a new interim agreement, where a provisional Palestinian state would be established on 60% of the West Bank and no settlements would be removed in the initial stage. That is a non-starter for Palestinians, and they were making that clear before the talks even resumed. For their part, the Israelis, and specifically Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been making it equally clear that they will not use the 1967 borders as a reference and are not seeking anything more than establishing a new interim arrangement. So, the new impasse was entirely predictable. And this gives the US view the air of a performance, hiding the very real evidence that these talks were doomed from the first and the US should have, and may well have, known it.
Kerry’s decree that both sides refrain from talking to the media suits Israel just fine. The talks progressing at a snail’s pace or making no progress at all is very much in Netanyahu’s interest. Should there be measurable progress, it would set off a firestorm of political controversy in Israel, and would jeopardize his coalition, which is sympathetic to Israel’s settler population in the West Bank and is overwhelmingly committed to blocking any compromise on the key issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. Netanyahu’s biggest concerns thus far have centered around his own people; his man in the negotiating team, Yitzhak Molcho, is there to restrain Minister of Justice and lead negotiator Tzipi Livni from actually negotiating too much. So he is more than content to abide by Kerry’s diktat about talking to the media.
But the Palestinian team has to be concerned about the perception among their populace that they’ve been dragged back to the table to talk and allow Israel to claim it is negotiating in good faith while new settlement construction continues apace. Israel certainly has not made it any easier for them, announcing several new expansion projects in key settlement areas in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And Israel’s refusal to recognize the 1967 borders as a starting point, and the US’ acceptance of that stance, gives the Palestinian people even more reason to see these talks as nothing more than a sham. The PA negotiators are desperate to find a way to get the United States to change this framework, but the US was playing an understated role from the beginning. That led to the first Palestinian complaint of US mediator Martin Indyk not being involved in the discussions. With US eyes fixed now on Syria and the soap opera playing around that issue on Capitol Hill, it is far less inclined to reconsider its approach to Israeli-Palestinian talks. So, they go to the media, leaking their complaints in the probably vain hope the US will care.
While the US is not very concerned about these Palestinian leaks for now, that is likely to change at one of two points. The first possibility could occur if the Syrian crisis diminishes in some way, Egypt doesn’t erupt again and there is a comparative calming. Then people might start paying attention to these sputtering talks and the Palestinian complaints could become a more prominent story. This doesn’t seem as likely as the second possibility: the talks fail and the blame game begins. That raises the question of whether the Obama administration will follow the example of Bill Clinton and blame the Palestinians. It might consider the devastating effect on any hope for peace that Clinton’s initial blaming of the Palestinians resulted in (he later modified his story, but by then it was too late and, in any case, a lot less people were paying attention). But Netanyahu will surely be portraying the Palestinians as the party responsible for the failure, and will be able to use as evidence the fact that they, publicly, went along with Kerry’s program while the Palestinians did not.
The fact that Kerry this week entreated the European Union to back off even their very meager ban on funding projects in and with Israeli settlements while the question of bombing Syria was raging says a lot about his disposition in these talks and the naiveté of the Palestinians in ever thinking the US would even try to get Israel to negotiate toward a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. There hasn’t been even the slightest hint of US pressure on Israel to make any concessions whatsoever, and this is why the Palestinians have run to the media, despite knowing that Kerry and Obama would be displeased. Unfortunately, US behavior in these revived talks has met and exceeded even the lowest expectations of fecklessness and fully reaffirmed its position as a thoroughly dishonest broker.
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by Mitchell Plitnick
If John Kerry wants to find a silver lining in the heavy criticism US foreign policy has faced due to the events in both Egypt and Syria, he might find it in, of all places, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The secretary of state embarked on the talks by saying there [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
If John Kerry wants to find a silver lining in the heavy criticism US foreign policy has faced due to the events in both Egypt and Syria, he might find it in, of all places, the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The secretary of state embarked on the talks by saying there would be no discussion of them in the media; that any reliable information about them would only come from him; and that he would not talk about them. Given the history of leaks in such talks and the widespread coverage generated by any negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, this seemed like a very ambitious promise. But amid an imminent attack on Syria after the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime and the controversial, tacit US support for a coup in Egypt that turned out to be a lot more bloody than Washington probably expected, attention has been completely drawn away from the Israel-Palestine conflict.
That must have come as a relief this week for Kerry. Things were difficult enough, with Israel having announced major new settlement projects soon after the rekindled talks began. For the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) negotiators, who certainly knew that some sort of Israeli construction would continue during the talks, it was the size and locations of the planned settlement projects that caused the problems. It was not easy for them to credibly continue on with the talks, but they did.
Then, on Monday, Israeli forces went into the Palestinian town of Qalandiya, located in the “Greater Jerusalem” area, which is under full Israeli control, in an attempt to arrest a Palestinian for allegedly dealing weapons. The raid, which started off as just another one out of about 500 such operations that Israel performs in the West Bank every month, ended in blood, with three Palestinians dead, one of whom was apparently an employee of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA).
In response, the Palestinians announced that a negotiating session with Israel, scheduled to take place that day in Jericho, had been cancelled. Israeli media claimed that the meeting took place, and the US denied that the meeting had been cancelled. But the Israeli government itself was silent on the point, and the PA never retracted the statement of cancellation. So, who knows?
What we do know is that the violence in Qalandiya is just another example of how difficult it is to hold negotiations during Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It’s true that most of the time, raids like the one undertaken on Monday are executed at night, precisely to avoid confrontation with the people living in the town being targeted. For whatever reason, this one was carried out in the morning, just as people were going out to pursue their daily activities. But that also is not entirely unusual — it’s not the norm, but of the hundreds of such operations that take place each month, some number happen when others are around.
Thus, confrontation is inevitable, from time to time. But under these circumstances or others, confrontation cannot be avoided under the umbrella of occupation. And, while incidents that result in fatalities have been rarer in recent months, that has yet to become the norm.
Had the Qalandiya clash occurred when people outside the West Bank were paying attention rather than looking at Syria and Egypt, it may well have jeopardized talks beyond the point where the PA could continue. It would have come on top of the settlement expansion controversy and the (also largely under the radar) Palestinian complaint that the US, which the Palestinians are counting on with astonishing naïveté to help push Israel into an agreement, is not taking an active role in the talks. Israel, for its part, is insisting that greater US involvement would be an impediment. The surrealism of that debate cannot be overstated.
The sum total of all of this is that the talks, barely a few weeks old, are off to a terrible start, from what we can see of them. And it is hard to imagine what we might not be seeing that could substantially change that assessment.
On top of these issues, today there was a report in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is getting increasingly mistrustful of his Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, who is also the leading government representative for peace negotiations. Livni was widely viewed as a fig leaf (and a fairly weak one, being a decidedly conservative figure herself, her clear support for a two-state solution notwithstanding) when she joined Netanyahu’s government, but she’s not exactly on the same page with Bibi on peace talks.
The Ma’ariv report indicated that Netanyahu was dismayed that Livni had offered too many “concessions,” particularly on the matter of territory and in even broaching the topic of Jerusalem. Netanyahu obviously knows these things need to be discussed, but he doesn’t want to do so too quickly. So much for the mantra that “everything is on the table”, which has been repeated by Israel for months.
Livni also has to contend with working hand in hand with Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu’s closest confidante and his frequent messenger to the US, Palestinians and other foreign leaders.
The denials of any friction that came from both Livni’s and the Prime Minister’s office were pro forma statements and rang extremely hollow. Ma’ariv claims that Molcho believes that the goal of these talks should not be a permanent and comprehensive agreement, but an “agreement in principle,” the details of which would be worked out later. It is overwhelmingly likely that this is Netanyahu’s view, and Livni’s attempts to follow through with what the US has stated as a goal of these talks, a full and final agreement, which the Palestinians have embraced, is what is causing the tension.
Such a provisional agreement would almost certainly be a non-starter for the Palestinian leadership because it would be a repeat of the Oslo Accords of 1993, which, twenty years later, have not brought greater Palestinian freedom. What’s forming is a very grim picture that’s seemingly implying that even the most pessimistic predictions for this round of talks might not have been pessimistic enough.
At some point in the near future, attention will not be as absolutely diverted toward Syria and Egypt as it is today. Until then, any political fallout in Israel, the West bank and the US can be forestalled. But once eyes are back on these peace talks, the political piper will demand his payment. If this is still what peace talks look like by then, Kerry may have to re-examine his strategy of silence. He may need to figure out some way to throw people a bone of hope to counter what has been, to date, almost uniformly negative messages about the talks. The silver lining of distraction is a transitory gift at best.
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