Jonathan Freedland: Peace plans come and go. Obama may have to try a wholly new approach
[Jonathan Freedland is the Guardian's policy editor and has been a columnist for the paper since 1997. He served for four years as the Guardian's Washington correspondent and US affairs remain a keen interest, along with British politics and the Middle East.]
Surely the heart should give a cheer at the hints and signals that suggest Barack Obama will stand before the world next month, either at the UN general assembly or the G20 in Pittsburgh, and launch his own bid for Middle East peace. We have told ourselves for so long that a solution is possible – that everyone knows the contours of an eventual agreement between Israelis and Palestinians – that the urge is almost overwhelming to believe it is within reach.
After all, here is a president who is internationally admired where his predecessor was reviled; a president apparently alive to the nuances and complexities of this deeply troubled region; above all a president who believes in diplomacy. Surely, if anyone was destined to play the role of Middle East peacemaker, it is Obama. What's more, the moment seems ripe. For once, large swaths of the Arab world share a common interest with Israel: Saudi Arabia and others fear Tehran more than they fear Tel Aviv, and might be prepared to bury their differences with Israel if that brings united, international action against Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Is it too much to hope that Obama is the right man and September 2009 the right time to bring peace to the Middle East?...
... Let's say Obama gets over that hump and talks begin. Do we have grounds to be hopeful then? Veteran analyst and sometime negotiator Hussein Agha is not optimistic: "What exactly is the difference between this and Camp David or Annapolis?" Advocates say the novelty is that this effort will be trilateral, with the US a full participant, while George Bush left the two sides to their own devices. But such a view forgets that Condoleezza Rice travelled to the region 17 times in 10 months. And Israelis and Palestinians hardly lacked for US hand-holding in the Clinton era. And it still didn't work.
Indeed, the Camp David talks of 2000 should give further pause. Israel was represented then by Ehud Barak, who had at least some ideological commitment to peacemaking. He faced in Yasser Arafat a Palestinian leader with the authority to sell any deal to his people. A new initiative would pit Netanyahu, who has made a career out of scepticism towards peace, against Mahmoud Abbas, whose legitimacy among Palestinians is fragile. It is surely a stretch to imagine that these circumstances are more conducive to success than those of nine years ago.
Some will be encouraged by today's Guardian report suggesting that the US envisages a two-year timeline, perhaps even a deadline. But then they will remember the speech Bush made in 2003 promising a Palestinian state by 2005. Or they will recall Bush's promise of statehood by 2008. In the Middle East, deadlines come and go.
There is one significant difference this time: Obama himself. Not his negotiating skills, which are unproven, but his standing in the Arab and Muslim world. That is, unequivocally, better than any of his predecessors (though the settlements stand-off is denting it fast). The problem is that it has come at a price: a Jerusalem Post poll in June found that only 6% of Israelis regarded the Obama administration as pro-Israel. That will surely make it that much harder for the US to persuade Israelis to grant the concessions any agreement will need.
So, not for the first time, an attempt at peace seems to be facing impossible odds. It is a glum thought: Obama's effort taking its place alongside Oslo, Camp David and Annapolis as attempts that failed. What can be done?
The best approach might be to make the problem apparently harder. For the last two decades, advocates of a two-state solution have sought to reduce the scale of the challenge, to confine a peace process to reversing the effects of 1967, ending the occupation that began that year and letting Palestinians rule the lands they lost. But that is to pretend the conflict began in 1967. It did not. It goes back at least to Israel's founding in 1948, if not to the arrival of the first Jewish newcomers, determined to rebuild their ancient homeland, in the last years of the 19th century...
Read entire article at guardian.co.uk
Surely the heart should give a cheer at the hints and signals that suggest Barack Obama will stand before the world next month, either at the UN general assembly or the G20 in Pittsburgh, and launch his own bid for Middle East peace. We have told ourselves for so long that a solution is possible – that everyone knows the contours of an eventual agreement between Israelis and Palestinians – that the urge is almost overwhelming to believe it is within reach.
After all, here is a president who is internationally admired where his predecessor was reviled; a president apparently alive to the nuances and complexities of this deeply troubled region; above all a president who believes in diplomacy. Surely, if anyone was destined to play the role of Middle East peacemaker, it is Obama. What's more, the moment seems ripe. For once, large swaths of the Arab world share a common interest with Israel: Saudi Arabia and others fear Tehran more than they fear Tel Aviv, and might be prepared to bury their differences with Israel if that brings united, international action against Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Is it too much to hope that Obama is the right man and September 2009 the right time to bring peace to the Middle East?...
... Let's say Obama gets over that hump and talks begin. Do we have grounds to be hopeful then? Veteran analyst and sometime negotiator Hussein Agha is not optimistic: "What exactly is the difference between this and Camp David or Annapolis?" Advocates say the novelty is that this effort will be trilateral, with the US a full participant, while George Bush left the two sides to their own devices. But such a view forgets that Condoleezza Rice travelled to the region 17 times in 10 months. And Israelis and Palestinians hardly lacked for US hand-holding in the Clinton era. And it still didn't work.
Indeed, the Camp David talks of 2000 should give further pause. Israel was represented then by Ehud Barak, who had at least some ideological commitment to peacemaking. He faced in Yasser Arafat a Palestinian leader with the authority to sell any deal to his people. A new initiative would pit Netanyahu, who has made a career out of scepticism towards peace, against Mahmoud Abbas, whose legitimacy among Palestinians is fragile. It is surely a stretch to imagine that these circumstances are more conducive to success than those of nine years ago.
Some will be encouraged by today's Guardian report suggesting that the US envisages a two-year timeline, perhaps even a deadline. But then they will remember the speech Bush made in 2003 promising a Palestinian state by 2005. Or they will recall Bush's promise of statehood by 2008. In the Middle East, deadlines come and go.
There is one significant difference this time: Obama himself. Not his negotiating skills, which are unproven, but his standing in the Arab and Muslim world. That is, unequivocally, better than any of his predecessors (though the settlements stand-off is denting it fast). The problem is that it has come at a price: a Jerusalem Post poll in June found that only 6% of Israelis regarded the Obama administration as pro-Israel. That will surely make it that much harder for the US to persuade Israelis to grant the concessions any agreement will need.
So, not for the first time, an attempt at peace seems to be facing impossible odds. It is a glum thought: Obama's effort taking its place alongside Oslo, Camp David and Annapolis as attempts that failed. What can be done?
The best approach might be to make the problem apparently harder. For the last two decades, advocates of a two-state solution have sought to reduce the scale of the challenge, to confine a peace process to reversing the effects of 1967, ending the occupation that began that year and letting Palestinians rule the lands they lost. But that is to pretend the conflict began in 1967. It did not. It goes back at least to Israel's founding in 1948, if not to the arrival of the first Jewish newcomers, determined to rebuild their ancient homeland, in the last years of the 19th century...