Is Obama’s Pressure for Direct Israeli-Palestinian Talks Pushing Region Towards War? (Updated)
Byzantine politics have nothing on negotiation strategies in the Middle East between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Headlines July 29 initially announced that the Arab League — meeting in Cairo and under heavy pressure from the Obama administration — had approved Abbas’ return to direct negotiations with Israel. Comments from Jerusalem, including from Netanyahu, hailed this welcome gesture as a chance to get back on track towards a two-state solution.
All sounds good: the Obama administration applying pressure on the Arab side, the Arabs respond and move forward; Israelis welcome the move.
But to those familiar with the nature of these negotiations, none of this made any sense.
For one thing, Abbas, like his predecessor Yasser Arafat, has no interest in direct negotiations — and neither does the Arab League. For another, Netanyahu knows only too well that the Palestinians are not ready to undertake real state-building, and that the negotiations are essentially an American (and European) fantasy about a “solution” in two years that must be appeased without either fulfilling it, or getting blamed for its failure.
Commented Dore Gold:
From the Palestinian viewpoint this is less about peace and more about how to get Israel blamed by the Obama administration for the failure in negotiations that Mahmoud Abbas is certain will come.
Ultimately, it’s a game of musical chairs where all the players — including the American administration — don’t want to be caught standing in the spotlight when the music stops. And of course, there are no lack of self-critical Israelis prepared to point the finger for any failure at themselves.
A closer reading of events in Cairo confirms this less optimistic scenario. In response to Obama’s pressure, all the Arab League did was give Abbas permission to return to direct negotiations when he wants to. Al Jazeera’s account read:
The Arab League has declined to endorse an immediate resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, saying it needs further guarantees from the United States before approving talks.
For all the high hopes, it’s the same situation: Abbas and the Arab League have major preconditions just to sit down and negotiate, and they want the U.S. to do their work for them:
Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary-general, said that direct negotiations should be preceded by “written guarantees” from the United States, particularly on the subject of Israeli settlements.
As one participant in the Cairo meetings put it, the League gave “a yellow light that needs some work before it becomes a green light.” In other words, the Arab League gave Abbas the go-ahead to do what he was already doing.
In reality, the Arab League decided not to decide, and to avoid confrontation with either side. On the one hand they told the American administration that they won’t stop Abbas and that in principle they support direct talks, but at the same time they don’t send Abbas to the talks and they reiterate the Arab preconditions. They get praised for doing nothing, just because they didn’t do something worse, leaving a reluctant Abbas to make the decision himself. And of course, Abbas can just pile on the preconditions, including the removal of Hamas from Gaza, and a Palestinian state cleansed of all Jewish presence.
Dore Gold also commented:
The real Palestinian goal is not to negotiate, but rather to win international, and especially U.S. backing for a unilaterally declared Palestinian state, modeled on Kosovo’s unilateral move in 2008. With this month’s decision in the International Court of Justice that Kosovo’s unilateral declaration was legal, the Palestinians have added incentive to follow this route.
Barry Rubin sees this as:
A defeat for U.S. policy and may be the death knell for direct negotiations this year. After all the flattery, distancing from Israel, and going easy on Arab regimes, the Obama administration has failed to get them to deliver what his three predecessors obtained easily without such measures: direct Israel-Palestinian talks.
Of course, all of this occurs in the looming shadow of September 26, the date at which Netanyahu’s self-imposed “settlement freeze” expires. As Yoel Marcus pointed out, Abbas — rather than take advantage of this concession — has used the time to withdraw from direct negotiations and make further demands.
Netanyahu has made it clear he cannot extend it without a revolt from his own party and other members of his coalition. And so some analysts expect Abbas to wait until sometime in September to agree to direct negotiations in exchange for that extension. If that ploy fails, it may produce another explosion of violence, right about the time of the 10-year anniversary of the Oslo Terror War (September 29, 2000). And this time, it will be with U.S.-trained Palestinian troops.
In a broader context, the role of the Arab League reveals something that lies behind much of the problem with negotiations. Although Western journalists don’t like to emphasize it much, the bottom line for Abbas and any other Palestinian leader is that just appearing to cooperate with and make concessions to Israel is the kiss of death. Indeed, the Palestinians are the designated sacrificial victims of Arab anti-Israel strategy: they must suffer in order to blame and delegitimize Israel.
What Daniel Pipes noted almost twenty years ago still holds true:
Recognizing the critical role of Arab help has several implications for Middle East politics. First, it means that the PLO has very little of the political power so often ascribed to it. The PLO may appear to shape the policy of most Arab states, but in fact it reflects their wishes. It brings up the rear, echoing and rephrasing the weighted average of Arab sentiments. This suggests that it will moderate only when its Arab patrons want it to; so long as the Arab consensus needs it to reject Israel, the PLO must do so. Aspiring peacemakers in the Middle East must therefore not make settlement of the Arab-Israeli dispute contingent on PLO concurrence, for this is to give a veto to the organization least prone to compromise.
No one is going to war with Israel any time soon, and certainly not for the sake of the Palestinians.
The Palestinians have, with the help of the incomparably incompetent President Barack H. Obama, painted themselves into a corner regarding the negotiations, and they are unable to weasel their way out.
When Obama demanded an Israeli building freeze, the Palestinians took hold of this and made it their fundamental demand for renewing talks. This Obama intervention led the Palestinians to believe that this was just the prelude to Obama and the Europeans imposing a pro Palestinian settlement on the Israelis which would grant the Palestinians all their demands while decisively cutting Israel to pieces.
Well the Palestinians were wrong, for the hundredth time, and now they have to find some face saving way to resume the talks with Israel.
This may not be possible for them.
Everyone talks like the “Palestinians” have any say in anything. They have always been tools of the Arab regimes in the region and now their fate lies squarely in the hands of Hamas. Careful what you vote for. We in the US are now learning that also, elections have consequences.
“As Yoel Marcus pointed out, Abbas — rather than take advantage of this concession — has used the time to withdraw from direct negations and make further demands.”
What a wonderful and unintentionally accurate typo. Leave out the oti and you get the real situation in a nutshell. Direct negations. Abbas couldn’t have said it better if he had a sense of humor.
Oh, please. It wouldn’t matter if Abraham Lincoln were president, those people over there are going to fight and kill each other until there are none of them left. They’ve been fighting and dying and lying for millennia. Israel does whatever it damn well pleases regardless of who is in office.
and well they should
Re Mark #3 “Israel does whatever it damn well pleases”
And so does Obama! Judenrein (clean of Jews) in Judea and Samaria, that would suit him just fine.
If Obama’s negotiating position is “Israel may attack Iran if it agrees before hand to a Palestinian state without preconditions” then he has merely given Israel the right to name how it is to be executed – nuclear annihilation or being pecked to death by a new Arab state that has not agreed to “an end of conflict.”
Reading drivel such as this makes me truly sorrow that the ‘early’ Israelis did not adopt the American pioneers’ approach to ethnic cleansing.
If the Palestinians lay down their arms, there will be no more war.
If the Israelis lay down their arms, there will be no more Israel.
Obama clearly prefers the latter.
Daniel Pipes is one of the bozos who believes that some sort of alternative to a two-state solution exists. There is an alternative — a one state solution, in which Jews are (again) a hated minority.
Whether it takes ten month or ten or twenty years to come to an argreement, negotiations for such an agreement, involving partition of the land west of the Jordan River into a separate Arab and Jewish states, is the only way that the Zionist dream can survive. Anyone who says otherwise is smoking crack.
You’re one of those bozos who believe the Arabs want a two-state solution.
Re Marcus #5: You fail to consider the viability of the current status quo. By not recognizing what the local Palestinian Arabs already recognize, you have eliminated the possibility of reframing the discussion.
Arabs in Judea and Samaria do not want an independent state. Either they wish to eliminate Israel or they wish to join themselves to her. Those who wish to join themselves to Israel are in the vast majority. They would prefer the freedoms and privileges of their association with the Jewish State, rather than the utter corruption of their own leaders. They want the health care, the jobs and the living standards of the Jewish State rather than the relative poverty of Egypt and Jordan. They prefer business opportunities and social connections that are currently available than a separate polity. They prefer not voting at all to the thumbscrews of atavistic Arab politics. They prefer music to silence. This is not figurative. Hamas does not permit Western music at all and only limited music of the Arab genre.
Frankly, change is not always better when it is foisted upon people. Obama would win an Olympic gold medal in foisting if there were such an event.
jerry — and so, given that the majority of arabs in judea and samaria want the freedoms and privileges of associating with the jewish state, are you willing to give them the same rights as israeli arabs, including seats in the knesset?
if not, why not? what is the rationale for giving political rights to israeli arabs, but not to arabs in judea and samaria?
Except you forgot to account for the fact that the jihad being waged by the Dar al Islam via their Palestinian proxies, which they conveniently created to provide a pretext after the 1967 Six Day War, is permanent. Hence, even if Israel were to make the insane suicidal mistake of returning to the pre 1967 indefensible Auschwitz borders for the creation of a Palestinian terrorist state, it still would not result in peace, as the Dar al Islam would simply use it as a stepping stone for further attacks against Israel via the invention of another convenient pretext to justify renewed jihad against Jews.
Not to mention that you are forgetting about Hezbollah and their Iranian and Syrian backers, which is also waging a permanent jihad on Israel’s southern flank, not for the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state, but instead for the genocidal purpose of wiping the Jewish state off the map.
if there were to be another partition of the land requiring the Jews to leave the areas ceded to the “Palestinians,” and abbas has said that he, the moderate, would insist upon it, then, it seems perfectly appropriate to require the “Palestinians” in Israel to relocate to the “Palestinian” state. if it is “Palestine for the Arabs,” then, let it be “Israel for the Jews (and those accepting its constitutional identity as a Jewish state).” NB: it is illegal, in some cases, a capital crime, to sell land to Jews in the P.A., Jordan, and a number of other Muslim countries. any outrage about that? not a bit.
“And this time, it will be with U.S.-trained Palestinian troops.”
We are such tools.
The oil rich Muslim states own our state department.
Answer this question what are the alternative’s to peace terrorism war isn’t it time to stop this now friend
The peace process is a sham (taqiyya) as there is no peace possible since the Dar al Islam’s jihad, with or without their Palestinian proxies, is permanent. The jihad will last as long as Israel doesn’t commit national suicide or otherwise until the Dar al Islam is rendered too weak to pursue jihad.
Moreover, the imposition of a Palestinian terrorist state would not be a solution, for it would not deter Hezbollah and Iran from pursuing jihad against the Jewish state of Israel.
Hence, the only solution lies with rendering the Dar al Islam into abject poverty to make it too poor to pursue jihad.