My three-point plan for peace in the Middle East

That was my gut feeling the other day as I watched television pictures of the opening speeches by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at the start of the latest US-sponsored Middle East peace talks.

Like most people, I felt a real sense of deja vu. How many times have we been here before?

Watching Netanyahu, Abbas and Barack Obama, I couldn’t help thinking back to a similar scene 10 years ago, in July 2000, at the start of the Camp David summit. Around that time, I remember sitting in an east Jerusalem coffee house. It was the sort of place in which only Arab men gather, the room alive with the hubbub of card play and talk, amid the smell of pipe smoke and black Turkish coffee. Only a single television silently showing CNN news, an obvious concession to the summit, imposed itself on this otherwise traditional male reprieve from the outside world.

“Look, look. They can’t even decide who should go through the door first,” joked an old Palestinian man, pointing at the screen as the room erupted in laughter.

Caught live by the television cameras, we watched a farcical scene unfold in which the then Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority chairman, Yasser Arafat, each insisted in turn that the other lead the way into one of Camp David’s secluded cabins to begin the next round of talks. “After you,” said one. “No, after you,” said the other. And so it went on, back and forth like a pantomime line. Meanwhile, standing in the doorway alongside the “peacemakers”, a clearly embarrassed President Bill Clinton could only look on at the battle of body language and the uneasy stand-off that spoke volumes about the relationship between these two implacable Middle East foes.
For Palestinians back then, watching those pictures in the living rooms of Ramallah, Hebron and Gaza, the signs were anything but reassuring. Today, a decade later, little has changed, with Palestinians and Israelis alike having little cause for optimism. How can they when the two chief negotiators, Netanyahu and Abbas, are at best mistrusted and at worst utterly discredited in the eyes of their people back home. Certainly, for many Palestinians, they have about as much confidence in Mahmoud Abbas delivering them justice as they do Middle East envoy Tony Blair.

These days, Mahmoud Abbas appears to speak only for himself. He says the PLO endorsed these latest talks even though none of the non-Fatah parties approved them. At least up until a decade ago the majority of Palestinian factions were to some extent in favour of the Oslo peace accords but, with today’s talks, the opposite is true. According to a late August poll by the Palestinian Centre for Public Opinion only one in three Palestinians supports these negotiations.

While on the one hand Abbas insists that he represents the Palestinian people, he has no compunction in brazenly and unilaterally declaring his presidential term extended before failing to hold Palestinian Legislative Council and municipal elections.

Across the West Bank, increasing numbers of Palestinians regard Abbas as little more than an Israeli stooge, while in Gaza, where Fatah’s rivals Hamas hold sway, he is seen as nothing less than a collaborator. With Abbas and his Fatah party so clearly acting out of self-interest, it’s hardly surprising that fewer and fewer Palestinians are inclined to let them speak on their behalf, let alone negotiate with the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu over the future of their land and lives.

And speaking of “Bibi” and leaders preoccupied with self-interest, when will the Israeli people themselves finally see through the facade of a man who has been not only the focus of numerous fraud allegations, but whose hawkish views have represented nothing but an obstacle to any peace process?

Before the start of the current talks Netanyahu said there would be “no preconditions”, yet Israel itself has always set the preconditions, by confiscating Palestinian land and refusing to impose a freeze on illegal settlement expansion. Time and again Netanyahu has shown himself unwilling to compromise on the so-called final status issues: no right of return for Palestinian refugees, no removal of any settlement, no return to the 1967 borders, no change on the Israeli position of annexing all of east Jerusalem, no withdrawal from the Jordan Valley, and that Israel should be recognised as a state for the Jews.

Are we honestly expected to believe that while in Washington old Bibi will undergo some kind of Damascene conversion – if you pardon the expression? And all this before that other thorny issue of Hamas itself and where it sits in any future peace process for the region.

Asked just before the current talks began what role Hamas would have in the process, George J Mitchell, United States special envoy for Middle East Peace, replied with one word: “None.” How unbelievably redundant is such thinking. Is this as far as joined-up thinking goes among diplomats when it comes to breaking the deadlock on building a Middle East peace process?

Already, based on that one last remark, I can hear the clamour of response from some quarters insisting that it is impossible to talk to Hamas because they don’t want to talk, or recognise the state of Israel and would rather just “sweep it into the sea”. The fact is a way has to be found to engage with Hamas – not on the basis of liking or disliking them, but simply because, in pragmatic terms, Hamas, not Mahmoud Abbas, are the people who can deliver.

As Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah put it recently: “No serious analyst believes that peace can be made between Palestinians and Israelis without Hamas on board, any more than could have been the case in Northern Ireland without Sinn Fein and the IRA.”

Whether Washington or anyone else likes it or not, three things are urgently needed if any toe-hold is to be gained in establishing the basis for a continuing peace process. First, bring Hamas into the diplomatic dynamic and negotiations. Secondly, encourage change within the Palestinian leadership to bring forth leaders with a genuine strategy for the future, rather than their own self-interests. And, thirdly, the international community must pile pressure on Israel to halt its illegal settlement expansion and hold it accountable for its failure to respect Palestinian rights. Short of some movement on these fronts, peace will remain as elusive as ever, and I’ll probably be writing much the same column in another 10 years.

By David Pratt