Even US diplomats who are trying to get new talks started between Israel and the Palestinians don’t believe they will get very far. I haven’t found any Israelis or Palestinians who feel they have a chance, assuming they begin.
You can’t blame anyone for thinking that.
It is a long time ago now, but when the Israelis and the Palestinians first started talking to each other in the early 1990s there was a real sense of hope and expectation. Something important seemed to be happening. The most intractable conflict of the century looked as if it might even be settled.
That didn’t happen. A 16-year-old Palestinian or Israeli who may have been swept up in the excitement of the first negotiations will now be well into his or her 30s. In the time that they were growing up, a lot of hope was squandered and blood spilt.
This time, if the talks happen, the two sides won’t even be sitting in the same room, around the same table, and probably not in the same building either. Even at their worst moments in the 1990s they could at least look each other in the eye.
The plan is that the US envoy, George Mitchell, will shuttle between them. The so-called proximity talks will only happen if a way can be found to get around the Palestinian refusal to negotiate while Israel continues to build settlements for Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in defiance of international law.
Sleight of hand?
Recently in Jerusalem one senior diplomat sighed and told me that a fundamental flaw of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s was that it allowed Israel to expand its network of settlements in the occupied territories. It allowed Israel to talk, and to build, for years. He was stating the obvious, but still did not want to be named.
The Palestinians do not want any more of that. US President Barack Obama agrees. But last year he could only extract limited restrictions on settlement building from Israel, and none at all in East Jerusalem. The impasse left US-Israeli relations in a crisis, which continues.
Reports from Washington and Jerusalem in recent weeks have suggested that the United States is trying to give the Palestinians the assurances they want to get back into talks.
One version is that Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is trying to set up a sleight of hand in occupied East Jerusalem. Publicly, he will go on proclaiming that Israel will build homes for Jews wherever it likes in the city it has declared as its capital; privately, it will tell the Americans, who will tell the Palestinians, that construction will be halted.
The Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, has already denied that is happening. Is that part of the game, or should we take at face value the remarks of man who has been pushing Jewish settlement inside Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem?
Hard choices
Let’s assume for a moment that they find a way for proximity talks to begin.
The Palestinians will need diplomatic cover from the Arab League, which will come with conditions and a time limit for results. But even if a highly unlikely diplomatic miracle happens, and some sort of deal looks possible, it is hard to see how the Palestinians could deliver their side of a bargain while the split continues between Fatah and Hamas, the two main factions.
Mr Netanyahu, on past form, will be happy with a process that drifts on into the future, buying him time to put off the moment when he would have to confront his cabinet with some hard choices about the future. His government, which has a core of right-wingers who are against territorial compromise in the West Bank and Jerusalem, would fall before he could deliver his side of a bargain.
So with so much pessimism around, why are they considering getting into talks? US diplomats believe neither side wants to be blamed for strangling a new peace process at birth. They are fairly open in private about the difficulties but fear the alternative is a vacuum, which as usual would fill with violence.
Some realists are even looking ahead to what happens when the talks fail. Will the Americans unveil a peace plan of their own, that lays out the shape of a future settlement? Will they allow a vote at the UN Security Council mandating a territorial compromise which would give the Palestinians the state they want, with a capital in Jerusalem and most of the land Israel captured in the 1967 war?
Smouldering fires
Just as likely is a third scenario: that Palestinian-Israeli talks will be overtaken by the explosion of one of the fires that are smouldering dangerously in the region.
In the last few months there has been a great deal of talk of another war between Israel and Lebanon, perhaps with Syria too. Israel and the United States say that Syria has transferred bigger and better missiles to Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.
Their claim has been repeatedly denied by Syria and Lebanon. But it’s out there, and while it is war cannot be discounted.
Linked with that, because Syria and Hezbollah are allies of Tehran, is the slow-burning crisis over Iran’s nuclear plans. After years of talk, tension, and failed sanctions, it might be only months away from getting critical.
A new round of sanctions against Iran is taking a long time to emerge from the Security Council. Israel may decide by this time next year to call time on a diplomatic process it has never believed will work and send its air force to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Travel through the Middle East, as I have done this spring, and you will see a place where the cafes are full, the sun is shining and the streets are busy with daily life, not political tumult or war fever. But start a conversation and you will find that the future does not look like a welcoming place.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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