Israeli envoys are in Washington for talks with US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell on restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and steps to move forward. Palestinians will meet separately with Mitchell on Friday and have lowered any expectations for the latest US attempt to restart peace talks. Abbas has repeatedly said he would not return to talks without a freeze in Israeli settlements, which is mandated by a US-backed peace plan. Israel refuses to comply, offering at best to slow construction for a limited period.
Last week at the United Nations General Assembly, Obama made clear the imperative of a sustainable Middle East peace, including a two-state solution, not only to Israelis, Palestinians, and their Arab neighbors, but to the international community as well. Obama urged the sides to move beyond the two main sticking points — continued Israeli settlement construction and the framework for resuming talks. From the BBC:
Last week’s three-way talks appeared to make little headway on the obstacles between the two sides – Israel’s rejection of US and Palestinian demands that it put a total stop to settlements. Disagreements over the settlements issue have blocked all attempts to restart peace talks since they were suspended last December.
Congressman Robert Wexler (D-FL) is a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe, a Member of the Middle East Subcommittee and a leading congressional voice on Middle East issues. He recently spoke at the Center for American Progress and suggested that the best way forward might be to lead with the issue of borders. The continued emphasis on Israeli settlements, Wexler argues, has stymied talks so far. He suggests that a new focus on the definition of Palestinian borders would open the door for negotiation by providing a concrete – albeit contentious – issue for both sides to debate.
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The US has been in some way involved in helping to resolve the conflicts between Israel and Palestine since the creation and recognition of the Jewish state in the hopes that it would help stabilize the region. Listen to a history of America’s role in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Javier Barrera Israel, Middle East
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed today Jehan Sadat, the wife of the courageous former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, weighed in on the lessons of the Camp David Summit her husband participated in 30 years ago. In this piece she emphasized that one of the central tenets of her husband’s peace effort was “serious work.” She proceeds to correctly note that “for many, the so-called peace process is a myth–a lot of talk with few results.”
When America Abroad interviewed Dennis Ross, the Clinton Administration’s point man for the peace talks, he recalled a conversation with Israeli official Dan Meridor that made a similar point. Meridor referred to the peace process as a bicycle that then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was riding.
He can’t stop pedaling; as long as we’re pedaling we have a process and we can move ahead. He stops pedaling, he falls off. …He might not want to proceed but he doesn’t have a choice. So it was this notion of as long as you’re pedaling you’re okay; a soon as you stop you crash and it is true that one of the dangers of having any negotiating process is it takes on a life of its own independent of its purposes. You’re so afraid of the crash that you keep it going and you look past some of the what might be called the–the lack of fulfillment of obligations–because what I was saying–there had to be accountability.
What both Ross and Sadat are warning against is negotiating only for the sake of negotiations. Agreements that are disingenuous or simply unable to be fulfilled may keep a process going, but they do little to advance the cause of peace. The Annapolis conference held in the winter of 2007 was long on ceremony and smiles, but short on substance. It was the sort of gambit that makes observers lose even more faith in a peace process that has fallen short time and again. The Obama Administration should turn its attention to forging a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. But it must first ask whether that peace is currently possible. If it is not, then the US can help by supporting intermediary steps essential for peace—the construction of a professional Palestinian security force being one example. A durable agreement will only come when both parties have the willingness and capability to keep it.
Chris Williams Egypt, Israel
Anwar Sadat, Jimmy Carter and Menachem Begin at Signing of Egypt-Israel Peace Agreement, March 26, 1979, Photo © State of Israel
Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty. Israel will celebrate with multiple celebrations throughout the country while Egypt is making no such plans. Al-Arabya News reports:
“No commemoration is planned in Cairo” for Thursday’s anniversary, foreign ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said, in a sign of the cold peace that still reigns between the two neighbors amid widespread popular opposition to the treaty in Egypt.
The “cold peace” is rooted in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has continued to plague the Middle East. Abdel Moniem Said, Director of al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies:
“To say that the peace is cold or warm is inaccurate; its temperature is closely linked to fluctuations in the region, primarily the Israel-Palestinian conflict.”
Three decades after the Camp David Accords, peace between Israel and Egypt remains intact which wasn’t the case when the UN created a two-state solution for Palestine in 1947.
Listen to a brief historical summary of relations between Egypt and Israel produced by AAM.
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Javier Barrera Egypt, Israel
