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MIDEAST: A Good Time Not to Make Peace
Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Sep 27, 2009 (IPS) - 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.
(END)
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