Amid simmering tensions over Iran policy, the U.S. and Israeli governments appear to have quietly forged common ground in recent weeks on Israeli-Palestinian talks, with the United States accepting that a possible “framework” agreement might not address every outstanding issue in the negotiations.
Such an agreement, the two countries seem to agree, would maintain a role for Israel in providing for its security, presumably by maintaining some form of military presence in the West Bank.
What’s not clear is if the Palestinians will go along. Last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected a plan by Secretary of State John Kerry for a 10-year Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley.
As recently as October, Martin Indyk, the lead American peace negotiator, told J Street that an interim agreement was not in the cards. The objective, he told the liberal Israel policy group, was a final-status agreement.
Yet last weekend, addressing the annual Saban Forum in Washington, Kerry and President Barack Obama each suggested there would be a middle phase aimed at addressing Israel’s lingering security concerns.
“I think it is possible over the next several months to arrive at a framework that does not address every single detail but gets us to a point where everybody recognizes [it’s] better to move forward than move backwards,” the president told the annual forum on Dec. 7.
Netanyahu’s comments to the forum, delivered the next day via satellite, reiterated Israel’s longstanding position that under any agreement, it must retain the ability to provide for its own security.
“I think that any kind of peace we’ll have is likely, initially at least, to be a cold peace,” Netanyahu said. “So there must be ironclad security arrangements to protect the peace, arrangements that allow Israel to defend itself by itself against any possible threat. And those arrangements must be based on Israel’s own forces.”
For years, the question of Israel’s long-term security presence in the West Bank has dogged attempts by Israel and the Palestinians to return to peace talks. Israel has long maintained that it must retain a security corridor in the Jordan Valley.
Kerry’s proposal, presented to Abbas last week, calls for the Israeli military to be stationed on border crossings and mountaintops in the area for up to 10 years. During this period, the Israeli military would train Palestinian security forces to eventually replace them.
“Americans are talking about the security arrangements to adopt the entire Israeli point of view, whether regarding the Jordan Valley, the border crossings, or the [West Bank’s] airspace,” an anonymous Palestinian official told the official Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam.
“The Palestinian position is to not [allow] any Israeli soldier in the Palestinian state,” the official added.
The Obama administration appears to have sided with Israel on this matter by accepting that, at least initially, Israel will have a role in securing borders and fighting terrorism in Palestinian areas, among other security responsibilities.
Among Palestinians, the administration’s language was perceived as marking a dramatic departure from previous understandings.
“This contradicts completely what we were promised by the American secretary of state at the beginning of this peace process — to avoid any partial or interim agreements,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top Abbas aide, told the Voice of Palestine radio on Dec. 9, according to a report in the Associated Press.
Both Obama and Kerry suggested that they understood the shift would not be welcomed by the Palestinians.
JNS.org contributed to this report.