Although Israeli and Palestinian leaders are pessimistic about the chances of a breakthrough in the U.S.-mediated proximity talks that began this week, the Obama administration is hoping the process itself will generate a new peacemaking dynamic.
U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell met for three hours with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu May 5 to kick off the indirect negotiations, the first Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in more than a year.
Mitchell was to travel between Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem and the headquarters of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. However, according to the French news agency AFP, Abbas said May 5 that the PLO executive committee still hadn’t decided whether to go ahead with the indirect talks.
After the PLO leadership meets Saturday, May 8, “we will inform Mitchell whether we are ready to start the negotiations,” Abbas said in a statement. Mitchell reportedly was to see Abbas on Friday, May 7, with talks anticipated to begin shortly afterward.
Abbas also said this week that he would be allocating four months for the indirect talks, insisting that the main disagreements must be discussed — control of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, borders and Israel’s West Bank settlements.
Whether or not the parties make headway, Israeli analysts anticipate a major U.S. peace push this fall.
Over the past few months, U.S. officials have made it clear that the Obama administration sees Israeli-Palestinian peace as a major U.S. interest. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made the point in a Washington speech last month: Not only does the lack of peace threaten Israel’s future hold back the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, it “destabilizes the region and beyond,” she said.
That position has translated into tough messages to both sides from Mitchell, who got the two sides to agree to launch the indirect talks.
Mitchell has made clear that he has no intention of carrying messages back and forth between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah (less than half an hour’s drive away from one another), but that he intends to put forward U.S. bridging proposals wherever they might be helpful.
He also has indicated to both sides that if the talks falter, the Obama administration will not be slow to blame the party it holds responsible. Indeed, Palestinian officials say Mitchell told them that the United States would take significant diplomatic steps against any side it believed was holding back progress.
The U.S. side sees the proximity talks as a four-month preparatory corridor leading to direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The strategy seems to be to move the process along as far as possible before September, when the Israeli moratorium on building in West Bank settlements is due to expire.
Then, Israeli analysts say, President Barack Obama will reconsider his options: If the talks are progressing well, Washington will try to persuade the Israelis to extend the building freeze and the Palestinians to agree to direct negotiations.
But if the talks are foundering, Obama may consider putting a U.S. peace plan on the table and calling an international peace conference to pressure the parties to move forward, according to a recent report by David Ignatius in the Washington Post, which quoted senior administration officials.
Israeli media also have reported that Obama told several key European leaders that if the talks stall, he will convene an international peace conference in the fall.
The Netanyahu administration sees the proximity talks as a means of managing the conflict and keeping the international community at bay — as long as it is seen to be giving peacemaking a chance. But Israeli officials have little faith in the Palestinians’ negotiating intentions and suspect them of planning to use the talks to generate further U.S. pressure on Israel.
Thus, Netanyahu has gone out of his way to convince U.S. officials of his good faith. Contrary to his previous position — that core issues such as borders, Jerusalem, refugees, security and water only could be discussed in direct talks — Netanyahu has agreed to have everything on the table in the proximity phase.
Moreover, he pressed for a vote in his Likud Party last week deferring internal party elections for two years, defeating inveterate party hawks and giving himself new wiggle room to maneuver in the peacemaking arena.
At one point Netanyahu considered offering the Palestinians an interim mini-state with temporary borders, according to Israeli media, but Abbas, apparently fearful that the temporary measure could become permanent, quickly shot down the idea.
Instead, Netanyahu may be ready to hand over more West Bank land to Palestinian political and security control in a goodwill gesture designed to show Israel’s ultimate readiness to roll back its occupation of the West Bank.
Convinced that a deal with Netanyahu’s hawkish government is not possible, Abbas recently called on Obama to “impose” a solution that would lead to an independent Palestinian state. Abbas also wants Washington in his corner should he decide to go to the United Nations for a binding resolution recognizing a Palestinian state and delineating its borders.
Given the lack of optimism over indirect talks, Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser, is proposing that Obama put a new set of peace parameters on the table and urge the parties to negotiate a final peace deal within the U.S.-initiated framework. Should either side refuse, Brzezinski says the United States should get U.N. endorsement of the plan.
This is the type of scenario Israeli analysts are predicting for September, especially if the proximity talks fail to make progress: binding U.S. peace parameters serving as new terms of reference for an international peace conference and subsequent Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
Over the past decade, the two sides have come close to a comprehensive accord twice, but talks broke down both times in disagreement over core issues, especially Jerusalem.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.