A new chance for peace

AFTER six visits to the region and a few months of shuttle diplomacy by the US Secretary of State John Kerry, Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to resume the stalled peace talks. Kerry said on Friday that both sides have laid the groundwork for resumption of the peace process. But mere resumption of talks is hardly an achievement.
History has taught us that both sides to the conflict have never agreed on the essence of a final resolution. There are a number of structural obstacles that might impede any genuine progress in months to come. Majority of both Israeli and Palestinian societies favor a peace agreement based on a two-state solution. And out of them — a majority of two-thirds — according to a newly released poll conducted by the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University in collaboration with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, believe that chances for such a breakthrough are low. This skepticism on the part of the two societies weighs heavily on the talks to be held in Washington next week.
The obstacle is more obvious on the Israeli side. While Netanyahu claims that his government is ready for peace with the Palestinians, a real progress in the talks would be a setback to his coalition arrangements with the hard-liners in his own Likud party and other political parties necessary for the stability of coalition. Netanyahu had experienced a similar situation before. In 1998, he signed the Wye River agreement with late Arafat only to lose power a few weeks later when hard-liners and ultra religious parties in his own coalition walked out of his government. Will it this time be different? Hardly!
Additionally, the settler community in the occupied territories has over the years become important in any decision with regard to peace with the Palestinians. Any Israeli territorial concession to the Palestinian side will be a hotly debated issue in Israel. This is where settlers can step in and impact the national debate on peace with the Palestinians. It will be enough for some radical settlers to attack Palestinians to spark a wave of violence. Never has an Israeli government conceded territories to the Palestinians during violence. The settlers know this dynamics very well and they have the ability to undermine any Israeli government’s efforts to meet the minimum requirements of the Palestinian negotiators. The situation can further get complicated in case Hamas decides to spoil the process!
It is not as if the obstacles exist only within the Israeli and Palestinian societies. In fact, the United States has become part of the problem over the last decade and so.
The failure of the successive American administrations to put their money where their mouths are and their inability to push for a genuine peace process led to a lack of faith that Washington could play the role of an effective honest broker in the conflict. If anything, Kerry’s way of handling the resumption of talks only creates dim hopes in the region. Since Kerry stepped in to help the parties resume peace talks, President Obama has stopped talking about the peace as he used to do when he first become president. In other words, there is little if any presidential investment in the process, a fact that would further weaken the credibility of the American side in this task.
Thus far, Kerry has failed to assure the Palestinian side of the endgame. The talk about a two-state solution rings hollow given what Israel has been doing in the occupied territories. Kerry made the Palestinians agree on the resumption of talks with the Israeli side without freezing settlements and without a clear reference to the talks based on the borders of 1967.
In brief, neither the Palestinian side nor the Israeli government wants to be blamed if the task failed. In the past, Arafat was blamed for the failure of the Camp David talks.
Netanyahu does not want to complicate his relationship with the American administration nor with part of his own society. Likewise, Abbas fears that the American administration may get less interested given the changes in the region and as a consequence more Palestinians would be turning to his rivals in Hamas. Seen in this way, both Abbas and Netanyahu will go to Washington with little exceptions.

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