A picture is not always worth a thousand words. The recently released photographs of Palestinian and Israeli leaders in Washington during their first direct talks in many months certainly don’t say anything new.
It was the status quo at its best, a mere procession of regional and US leaders before hungry cameramen. The leaders promised “not to spare any effort” and praised the undeniable altruism embedded in the very concept of “peace”. Israeli Prime Minister repeated the martyr-like emphasis of past Israeli leaders regarding the “painful” compromises and sacrifices required to defeat the many obstacles standing before them. Mahmoud Abbas — with his expired presidency over a corrupt Palestinian Authority — smiled, shook hands and spoke unconvincingly about his hopes and expectations.
Jordanian and Egyptian leaders also attended. Their presence was purely an endeavor to mark a difference between this event and the last failed attempt at reaching a peace agreement. When late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel’s Ehud Barak were herded into Camp David under the auspices of then President Bill Clinton, Arafat was left to fend for himself without any Arab backing. This left Barak, fully backed by the US, with all the cards. The process was a mockery then, as it is now.
Today’s badly staged talks are actually much less promising than the ones of July 2000. Barak had a considerably serious mandate, while Netanyahu runs a discontented coalition of largely rightwing fanatics. Arafat, although his popularity had dwindled, also represented a moral authority and a unifying figure among all Palestinian factions, including Hamas. Abbas, on the other hand, sits on the helm of hugely discredited and ineffectual band of contractors and self-serving politicians. More, Abbas operates with an expired mandate, and his cabinet members are handpicked to replace the democratically elected government of Hamas, whose members are either under siege in Gaza or held in Israeli prisons.
Needless to say, this latest round of peace talks is seriously lacking in legitimacy and goodwill.
Firstly, Israel has no interest in guaranteeing any positive outcome. It is hell-bent on carrying on with its colonization of the already disconnected West Bank and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s government intends on speeding up such efforts once the temporary settlement construction freeze expires, only a few days after the second round of negotiations resume on September 14-15. On the very first day of talks, Israeli troops also invaded parts of northern Gaza and expanded the so-called buffer zone by around 300 meters.
As for Abbas, the problem is compounded. His power is truly feeble in comparison to Israel’s political supremacy both in Tel Aviv and Washington, and also its near total control of Abbas’ own domain in the West Bank. Knowing this, one cannot be both realistic and still hope for ‘painful’ Israeli concessions. Still Abbas continues to hang around. He might feel he has no other option, as his absence would both chip away from his miniscule political worth and risk raising the ire of Washington, his greatest sustainer.
But even if the one-year-long talks miraculously yield an agreement, Abbas will not be able to sell this agreement to his own people. The aging leader is barely capable of uniting his own party, which is no longer the main player in Palestine’s political milieu. Today’s Fatah is a different Fatah to the one under Arafat in 1993. Its corruption has grown to the extent that it now functions as a self-serving welfare organization, whose members get richer through international handouts and business monopoly orchestrated by Israel.
Equally significant is the fact that yesterday’s ‘enemies of peace’ have become the legitimate parties that should actually be involved in any substantial talks with Israel. They are dismissed because they insist on a paradigm shift in how talks with Israel are conducted. They argue that any meaningful talks – especially between vastly unequal powers – must take place with a clear frame of reference, involving an even-handed third party, and predicated on the concept of ‘justice’ – not Kissinger’s deceptive ‘peace process’. The talks must also guarantee the welfare and security of the Palestinian people in the interim, through a long-term truce guarded by the United Nations. Peace talks held at gunpoint while the population is forcibly starved and besieged hardly promises any positive outcome.
What we can be sure of is that that the halfhearted peace attempt will garner nothing good. If an agreement is somehow concocted, it is doomed to fail. The Palestinian people, the absent but real party in any lasting solution, will simply not allow it. The Palestinian collective has the tendency to watch charades to their end, and then react at the opportune moment to defeat them. Almost every Palestinian revolt in the past has resulted from similar processes, the Second Palestinian Uprising of 2000 being the most pertinent example. When Arafat was being humiliated and forced into submission to US-Israeli diktats, Palestinians of all parties and from all sections of society rose in anger. Israel understood the revolt as a Palestinian attempt at extracting concessions and used unprecedented violence to quell their revolt. Many thousands were killed and wounded, and the rest is history.
If violence spirals this time around, it promises to be much worse than before. Those who cling to resistance in Palestine have been bolstered by the success of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. More, they are emboldened by their political legitimacy as a result of the democratic elections of 2006. Predictably, Netanyahu will not shy away from interpreting Palestinian protests as a conspiracy to intimidate Israel. The problem with violence is that once it reaches a new threshold, it rarely retreats to old parameters. What took place in Gaza at the hand of the Israeli army in 2008-09 was frighteningly genocidal in its scope. Future violence is likely to stay within this category.
To avoid this, Washington’s strategists really need to reconsider the long-term consequences of their government’s policies. Obama’s choreographers might succeed in getting a few leaders to stand in perfect order before a crowd of reporters, but they will fail to contain the political chaos that will ensue when the talks fail, as they surely will.
I’m 60 years of age, a Vietnam Vet and heard of these mysterious peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis thousands of times through out my lifetime.
Yet, strangely, there has NEVER been any peace there in my lifetime.
Do Americans really kid themselves that the Israelis are genuine in this ?
You gotta be kiddin me ?
As is almost always the case when writers deal with the Palestinian-Israeli disaster they must first and foremost pick sides. Once they have done that they must put up straw arguments so that they can shoot it down very neatly and nicely with their “historical” evidence. As a result fact and fiction are interwoven into a narrative that seeks to be convincing but simply shows up the writers own confusion between ideology and intellectual honesty.
What do you want Mr Baroud?
You seem to be living in a hallucinogenic state where you cannot have peace without negotiations but at the same time you want the negotiations to fail because those who don’t want peace are not prepared to participate in negotiations. As far as I can gather everybody who is directly involved in this matter was invited to attend the meeting in the US.
The facts are very simple:
1. Israel exist
2. Hezbollah, Hamas and their handler Iran has not been and will probably in the near future not be able to wipe Israel from the map
3. Hamas refuse to accept the existence of Israel.
4. Hamas was invited to the talks but CHOSE not to go primarily because of fact no 3 above
5. The last time I checked Abbas is still the elected President of Palestine
The net result is that Israel can only negotiate with the Palestinians who are prepared to negotiate with them. Of course in any negotiations parties will only make concessions to strong negotiating counterparts. The reality is that the Palestinians only have themselves to blame for going into these negotiations as weak as they are.
So instead of railing against the Obama administration and the Israelis for a weak Palestinian position, shout at your Palestinian compatriots (both Hamas and Fatah) for not getting their act together. You would do your cause a hell of a lot more good if you did this than simply parroting the Iranian position. I must say i struggle to find the root of the stupidity that forces you and other Arabs to continue to allow Iran to use you as their soldiers to fight a war with Israel while they sit safely separated by 1500 kilometers from the killing fields.
Therefore, get your act together, find creative and innovative ways (and please, spare us the threats of the 3rd or 4th Intafada it is a tragicomedy that will only serve to create more young and innocent “martyrs”) to unite the Palestinians so that you can overcome the weaknesses that you correctly point out plagued both Arafat and Abbas. Of course they will also have to be prepared to accept that fact that Israel exist and there is no way that you are going to get Iran to come and wipe Israel from the face of the earth.
In other words, get real, get off your back side and DO something more constructive with your legacy than writing drivel like this.
You write as a conclusion to your comment on the article by Baroud :
In other words, get real, get off your back side and DO something more constructive with your legacy than writing drivel like this.
Does “DO something more constructive” mean, the Palestinians should make yet more concessions to end Israeli agression and terror?
You are rehashing the usual Israeli propaganda such as “Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map”, a deliberate misrepresentation of the Iranian president’s words, “Hamas doesn’t want peace”, and about the Hizbollah which ousted Israel from south Lebanon.
These falsehods and others serve a sinister purpose: Israel needs them to perpetuate the status quo, which gives it a commanding position in the region.
Why get serious in talking “peace”, when perpetuation of the state of conflict is at your overwelming advantage ?
The Palestinian party is too weak to talk “peace” to Israel alone. So long as there is such an inbalance of political, economical, and military power between the two negotiating parties, there will be no progress. To break the stalemate, the Arab regimes should lend their weight, which they are loathe to do, perhaps in fear of displeasing their US master.
There will be no peace in the Middle East until American dual-citizen government and finacial officials drive israel to the ‘bargaining table”. But don’t hold you breath on that. It’ll never happen. America’s corporate and political elites are making too much money on weapons sales, government destabilization and Energy Resources theft in Muslim nations…