Israel/Palestinian Peace – a wild notion, or imminent?

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UPDATE ON THIS POLL RESULT: (‘Will there be a peace settlement by the end of 2008?’) Sadly, the peace agreement didn’t happen. We all know what did, whether we agree or not. In case you’re interested the poll result from readers was: No chance – 25%; paper statement only – 25%; Yes, definitely – 20%; Yes, probably – 20%; Probably not – 20%

Comment at end

UPDATES COMING THICK AND FAST:

1. (19th Oct) From Jerusalem’s World Net Daily: According to a “top Hamas source”: Hamas has been communicating with Blair’s office, expect him to meet with Hamas “in the future”. (Hopefully this time, if Blair visits Gaza, they will NOT pre-announce it. Tell us afterwards, please.)

2. (19th Oct) Rice has sent a thank you letter to Hamas for its efforts in maintaining a ceasefire in Gaza: “… a top Hamas source told WND his terror group has been making headway in ending its international isolation. He claimed Hamas was in communication with unspecified elements in the U.S., including unnamed presidential candidates, and with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who serves as the Quartet’s main Mideast envoy.” Another letter, purportedly from Bush to Syria’s Assad on the Golan Heights is dismissed here.

3. (19th Oct) Pan-Arab peace plan being considered by Israel (Voice of America). See more on the peace plan.

4. (20th Oct) Israel prepares to hand over more cities to Palestinian control. ‘Jenin model’ for Nablus & Hebron? …”fueling Blair’s efforts. Blair … is working closely on this matter with Jones and Dayton. … Blair wants to continue working in Jenin, and then gradually moving on to Nablus and Hebron.” Tulkarm and Kalkilya are also named here.

5. (20th Oct) EU’s Javier Solana arrives on 5 day trip to Middle East: Solana and the EU have more to discuss than just trade.

6. (20th Oct) Egypt plan gives Hamas veto

7. (21st Oct) Arab News: “New Window of Opportunity” (they’re all catching up!)

18th October, 2008

THEY SAY THE DARKEST HOUR IS JUST BEFORE DAWN

I HAVE THIS FEELING …

With only a few weeks before we know who is leading the world’s most powerful country, I keep getting this wild notion that we are actually about to see an historic peace settlement between Israel & the Palestinians. And President Bush is still president until January 20th, 2009. That’s three months from now.

It may not be a final arrangement, but I would not be too surprised if within the next several weeks, some major announcement is made.

There is plenty of news around right now which adds fuel to this. Those who have given up on a negotiated settlement before Bush departs are looking to something serious under the next president (providing, they seem to think, his name’s Obama!)

So what benefit is there in a delay? I can see few, but I can see many disincentives to delay. There are many obstacles likely to surface around new individuals at the helm as they work towards coalescing locally and grandstanding/negotiating internationally.

I have no inside track on this; and if I had, I would not air it here. But putting two and two together there are many reasons that many parties could be working flat out right now to get something down on paper; or a firm handshake of intent, if nothing else.

Why NOW?

Mainly because tempus fugit, and the alternative to “now” may be “never”, or at best “eventually”. It is perhaps not surprising how imminent political death focuses the mind, or minds.

This article from IsraPundit is thoughtful and points up some of the reasons I would not be surprised to see a settlement of some sort before Christmas.

THE MAIN PLAYERS/ACTORS/DECISION MAKERS

The main states or entities are Israel, the Palestinians, Hamas, the USA, the neighbouring Arab States, the EU and Russia; not necessarily in that order. And they are driven, or not as the case may be, by leaders.

By people.

THE LEADERS

PRESIDENT BUSH

President Bush, still suffering from the after-effects of Iraq, despite its improving situation, would like nothing more than to stand between the important parties as they shook on a deal. What a way to leave his presidency.

In one swoop he could re-write the history books – instead of the warrior president who messed up in the Middle East, he would go down as the peacemaker in the land of ancient feuds.

Of course there are many doubters in America as well as in the worldwide community.

But we should ask this question: if Obama becomes president, which according to the polls is still the likely outcome of November’s election, would everything in the Middle East be put on hold as he, naturally, turned his attention to domestic issues? Even if he does not withdraw from Iraq as quickly as some have been led to believe, he is unlikely to be able or willing to spend the time needed on the Israel/Palestine question. Israel would be a demanding and expectant partner.

And why, in any case, would Bush be happy to leave Obama, a newcomer on the scene, to take any praise for settling all of this in say a year or two’s time? Someone who has shed no blood, sweat or tears over the Middle East?

TONY BLAIR – THE QUARTET’S ENVOY IN THE MIDDLE EAST

And the Quartet’s envoy Tony Blair (in all probability chief negotiator, though his role was defined as re-building the infrastructure on the ground for the Palestinian people) is just as driven.

He too would very much like this achievement to help blot out the bad memories of some of his involvement in ‘Bush’s wars’. (I do NOT share, of course, the disdain over this, and believe it was probably Blair’s finest moment). But he also has political as well as legacy reasons, for not wanting his part in the peace settlement to drag on for years, at the mercy of others’ priorities. If he had a strong hand in securing a settlement, the Palestinian sympathisers in Britain would find it hard to continue their cries of ‘war criminal’. The region is plastered with British fingerprints decades long. And Mr Blair has pastures new he wishes to explore.

Will he want to continue his meetings and negotiations slowly for the next year or two, while Obama learns on the job? I doubt it. He is well-known to be patient, but is also a man in a hurry. An oil and water mix.

On 27th September this year the Quartet made barely disguised criticism of Israel in a call to both sides to seal a peace deal this year and expressed “deep concern” over continuing settlement expansion by the Jewish state in the West Bank.

A ministerial session of Quartet members — the United States, Russia, European Union and the United Nations — ended with a call on the parties “to make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008.”

Quartet members “expressed deep concern about increasing (Israeli) settlement activity, which has a damaging impact on the negotiating environment and is an impediment to economic recovery and called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity.”

They also reiterated that the parties “must avoid actions that undermine confidence and could prejudice the outcome of the negotiations.”

EHUD OLMERT – ISRAEL’S INTERIM PRIME MINISTER

Less than three weks ago the outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made some highly significant remarks, on the issue of Israel’s ‘land grabbing’. Israel, he said, finding a new and unexpected voice, will need to concede much land for a settlement. Easier for him to say, now that the writing is on the wall for his premiership and there are no more battles within for him to win at a personal level.

Sep 29th, 2008 , JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview published on Monday that Israel must withdraw from nearly all of the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem to attain peace with the Palestinians and that any occupied land it held onto would have to be exchanged for the same quantity of Israeli territory.

He also dismissed as “megalomania” any thought that Israel would or should attack Iran on its own to stop it from developing nuclear weapons, saying the international community and not Israel alone was charged with handling the issue.

In an unusually frank and soul-searching interview granted after he resigned to fight corruption charges — he remains interim prime minister until a new government is sworn in — Mr. Olmert discarded longstanding Israeli defense doctrine and called for radical new thinking, in words that are sure to stir controversy as his expected successor, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, tries to build a coalition.

“What I am saying to you now has not been said by any Israeli leader before me,” Mr. Olmert told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot in the interview on the occasion of the Jewish new year, observed from Monday evening till Wednesday evening. “The time has come to say these things.”

His expected successor, Tzipi Livni, is seen as having been far more doveish than he had been on this issue. Olmert will want to make peace to tidy up his own legacy after having had a bad year with ongoing police investigations. But left too long at the mercy of competing powers within Israel Livni might find, as is often the case, that her position hardens when in power. Already voices are raised against Olmert, just in case he is softening up the ground for Livni. The hope from the harder Right is that she will immediately cause a split in her Kadima party and be forced to call a general election, ushering in the centre right Likud party.

Another reason to settle before she forms a new government? She would be far more secure politically after an agreement.

MAHMOUD ABBAS, President of the Palestinian National Authority

Abbas too is under enormous pressure from all quarters, at home and abroad. Just a few weeks ago he wrote this in the Wall Street Journal:

“I continue to believe that we can achieve a lasting peace, with the Israeli and Palestinian peoples living as neighbors in two independent states. But if we do not succeed, and succeed soon, the parameters of the debate are apt to shift dramatically. Israel’s continued settlement expansion and land confiscation in the West Bank makes physical separation of our two peoples increasingly impossible. The number of Israeli settlers in the Palestinian West Bank grew by approximately 85% after the Oslo accords were signed.

We are impatient for our freedom. Yet partial peace, as proposed again by my current interlocutors, is not the way forward. Partial freedom is a contradiction in terms. Either a Palestinian lives free or continues to live under the yoke of Israeli military occupation.”

In this, he has identified his parameters for peace.

JORDAN

The Global Financial Crisis and the Middle East: An Opportunity for Intra-Regional Cooperation and Security

“The region’s relative incapacity to absorb income and investment on a diversified basis could lead to economic instability if the global financial downturn grows worse, says Prince El Hassan bin Talal.

The global financial crisis started with the bursting of the subprime mortgage and credit bubbles in the United States. But it is quickly spreading across the world and beginning to have an impact on the Middle East, even in areas that are not directly tied in to the global marketplace”

But Jordan’s King Abdullah II has expressed doubt that a peace deal will be reached by the end of President George W. Bush’s term this year.

In an interview Saturday with Spain’s El Pais daily, King Abdullah II said he doubted a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement will be clinched by the time the US President leaves office in January 2009.

“For the first time I view myself as pessimistic. And I believe I am one of the most optimistic leaders in the Middle East,” AFP quoted the king as saying.

“The success of the peace process will depend on whether there are successful advances between Israelis and Palestinians when the next US administration takes over,” said the monarch, who will start a tour of Spain later Saturday.

“If we manage nothing by the end of the year, given the uncertainty between Israel and Palestine, there will be no future for the peace process,” he said.

So not all Middle East leaders are hopeful. But even so, the Jordanian King’s thought could be interpreted as a spur to advancements in peace negotiations, as they and we all face the abyss.

SYRIA

US News reports (15th October, 2008): “Late in the life span of the Bush administration, U.S. officials have cautiously reached out to Syria through contacts that, until recently, they had shunned because of alleged Syrian support for terrorists and for efforts to destabilize Lebanon and Iraq.

It is too early to tell whether recent high-level meetings involving State Department officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and senior Syrian officials will lead to any breakthrough in relations. But Syria clearly hopes so.”

Given that Syria has just this week, formally established diplomatic ties with Lebanon for the first time since independence six decades ago, shaking off a long-held reluctance to acknowledge a French colonial decision to carve Lebanon from territory that had been Syrian, there is a clear change in Syria’s thinking.

Other neighbouring countries, Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia will all want to see some permanent good come out of recent years before it is all change at the White House. Bush took years to turn his attention to this issue, distracted as he was for much of his time by the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. They recognise that if peace is put on the back shelf it could be covered in dust before it is taken back off. Dust and blood.

And meanwhile there is Iran and the threats that some feel from this quarter.

EU

Despite occasional noises off about the EU’s possible future role in negotiating peace should the current attempts fail, it still seems a long shot at least in the short term, given the disparate nature of opinion within the 27 states of the EU, and its historic inability to agree on very little as regards foreign policy matters. But recently the French president, whose country holds the current EU presidency, Sarkozy, has been sounding hopeful or at least ambitious.

RUSSIA

Russia seems ambivalent as to its role in the Middle east, having made some deals with Iran, many of which its allies do not necessarily approve. In May 2008 Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak’s call to Russia to “cease providing weapon systems which could destabilize the area”. To Hizbullah and/or Iran? He called on the Russians to “play a positive role in the Middle East peace process”.

Is the implication here that one of the Quartet’s members is NOT fully committed?

In the end it will all be in the hands of the many negotiators, whether like Blair, purportedly narrowly focussed, or those from the various interested parties or the UN, working between and amongst nation states or political groupings.

I think it probably goes without saying, that Blair may have been talking quietly beyond his original brief anyway, if only through intermediaries, in order to help mend fences.

THE ECONOMICS OF IT ALL

The present financial world turmoil may too be focussing minds.

“The Price of Peace” is surely high. But abandoning the present momentum because of the world’s economy worries could be dearer still

Many rich oil exporting nations will not be looking forward to a downturn of demand as the west’s recession bites and people use less oil than expected. And countries such as Palestine will need to continue to export cheap goods.

OTHER RECENT THOUGHTS ON A PEACE SETTLEMENT

The Guardian says there is renewed talk about an Arab peace initiative. Word of this, the say, was relayed to Obama by Abbas in July this year.

Abbas revealed later that when he told the Democratic candidate about the Arab peace initiative – offering Israel normal relations with all 22 Arab countries in exchange for a Palestinian state – Obama’s (clearly private) response was unambiguous: “The Israelis must be crazy not to accept that.”

The Guardian article continues -

So it is good news that leading Israelis are planning a campaign to breathe new life into the Arab peace initiative, advertising the benefits of a comprehensive settlement which consigns the entire conflict to history.

Here, in July 2008, Obama says he will not waste a minute in ‘brokering Middle East peace’.

• This from “Youth Radio” is undated. But if it is current, (and the writer has his/her Israeli prime ministers muddled, as it looks) it is interesting to know that youth is hopeful. They above all, need to be.
• Daniel Pipes (July 2008) – “If not peace now, what?” Note he does not ask “when” but “what”. It’s rhetorical. We know the answer.

For all these reasons, I still feel in my bones that there is something afoot in peace negotiations.

By the middle of January we will know whether I am just a wishful thinker. If I’m just a dreamer, it won’t be for the first time.

Blair’s Impossible Dream – Middle East Peace

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PAN ARAB PEACE PLAN BEING CONSIDERED BY ISRAEL

Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak says his government may give serious consideration to a Saudi plan to consolidate peace talks between Israel and Arab nations.

He made the comment Sunday in an interview with Israeli army radio. He said Prime Minister-designate Tzipi Livni seems open to the plan to merge peace talks with several nations into one process.

The deal, proposed in 2002, has been endorsed by the Arab League.

Barak said that Israel has joint interest with moderate Arab leaders with keeping extremist groups at bay, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

The plan calls for a pan-Arab recognition of Israel in exchange for Israel’s return of all land it took during the 1967 Mideast war.

Tzipi Livni took over as the leader of her party, Kadima, in September after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stepped down in a corruption scandal. But Olmert remains as caretaker prime minister until a new government is formed.

Under a presidential mandate, Livni has until early November to present the new Cabinet.

ENDS article

20th October – Livni has secured a two week extension to try to form a government.

USA Today reports on the Suadi peace initiative:

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat noted that pursuing the Saudi peace initiative did not necessarily undermine the direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians and he encouraged Israel to pursue this track.

“I think Israel should have done this since 2002. It is the most strategic initiative that came from the Arab world since 1948,” he said. “I urge them to revisit this initiative and to go with it because it will shorten the way to peace.”

A good post at Doc’s Talk stating the case against the present “noises off” on a peace settlement. He makes interesting points, including one about Blair’s recent call to Israel:

“Must Israel Care? Quartet Middle East envoy Tony Blair called on Israel to pump $28 million a month into Gaza banks to save the financial system from collapse. Blair wrote that the money is needed to cover salaries that are paid for by the Palestinian Authority (PA). (Aren’t they seeking independence from Israel? They terrorize Jews, but we must pay to save their rotten and corrupt terror infested system!)”

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