Elliott Abrams: Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks Are Suspended. So What?
[Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, handled Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.]
The sky is not falling. Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations were suspended on Sunday, perhaps briefly and perhaps for months, after Israel's 10-month moratorium on settlement construction expired. Palestinian officials said they would refuse to talk if construction restarted, and so they did. Yet war hasn't broken out, nor will it.
Terrorism exploded after the Camp David talks broke down in 2000 because the Palestinians' leader at the time, Yasser Arafat, supported it. Fortunately, those days are gone. As current Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told Jewish leaders in New York last week, violence "has to be dealt out of the equation permanently regardless of what happens in the peace process."
Also last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reminded his people that "we tried the intifada and it caused us a lot of damage." Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, can commit acts of terror at any time. But with Israeli and Palestinian officials working together to keep the peace, Hamas can't create a general uprising.
Peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have been an on-again, off-again affair since they began with the Oslo Accords in 1993. During the Arafat years talks alternated with terrorism, for Arafat viewed both as useful and legitimate tactics. After the so-called second intifada of 2000-2001 and the 9/11 attacks, Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ran out of patience with that game, as did President George W. Bush. From then on they worked to push Arafat aside.
After Arafat's death in November 2004, negotiations between Israel and the PLO were almost continuous—until 2009. They broke down when the Obama administration made settlement construction the central issue, declaring that it had to stop dead for peace talks to proceed. Mr. Abbas, who heads both the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, could not allow President Obama to take a harder line than his own, so he echoed the demand.
Why Mr. Obama felt it necessary to raise this issue is unclear, for it had successfully been put aside during the Clinton and Bush years...
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The sky is not falling. Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations were suspended on Sunday, perhaps briefly and perhaps for months, after Israel's 10-month moratorium on settlement construction expired. Palestinian officials said they would refuse to talk if construction restarted, and so they did. Yet war hasn't broken out, nor will it.
Terrorism exploded after the Camp David talks broke down in 2000 because the Palestinians' leader at the time, Yasser Arafat, supported it. Fortunately, those days are gone. As current Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told Jewish leaders in New York last week, violence "has to be dealt out of the equation permanently regardless of what happens in the peace process."
Also last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reminded his people that "we tried the intifada and it caused us a lot of damage." Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, can commit acts of terror at any time. But with Israeli and Palestinian officials working together to keep the peace, Hamas can't create a general uprising.
Peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) have been an on-again, off-again affair since they began with the Oslo Accords in 1993. During the Arafat years talks alternated with terrorism, for Arafat viewed both as useful and legitimate tactics. After the so-called second intifada of 2000-2001 and the 9/11 attacks, Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ran out of patience with that game, as did President George W. Bush. From then on they worked to push Arafat aside.
After Arafat's death in November 2004, negotiations between Israel and the PLO were almost continuous—until 2009. They broke down when the Obama administration made settlement construction the central issue, declaring that it had to stop dead for peace talks to proceed. Mr. Abbas, who heads both the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, could not allow President Obama to take a harder line than his own, so he echoed the demand.
Why Mr. Obama felt it necessary to raise this issue is unclear, for it had successfully been put aside during the Clinton and Bush years...