The Chance of Peace in the Middle East

Every U.S. President since Jimmy Carter has saved some political capital to spend, usually at the end of their second term, on the obligatory U.S. function of mediating negotiations toward a lasting peace between Israeli's and the Palestinians. Where Carter came close to accomplishing just that, he and each of his successors, and the principle figures involved, have ultimately failed.

The only representative involved in the current September 2010 round of talks in Washington who seems to hold great hope (however irrational) seems to be President Obama, who will host Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. This is the same President Obama who cheerily and blithely claimed (with a straight face, no less) that the economy is on the mend, that his healthcare bill is something more or other than a giveaway to the healthcare industry, and that the combat mission in Iraq is over.

This is all to say that while Obama may be brimming with feigned confidence that there will be peace in the Middle East within a year, no one else is. To his credit, the President has broken with his predecessors in hosting the talks earlier than the established schedule, halfway through his first term. It's either a fairly bold (stupid?) move at a moment of political peril for him, or it may reflect a realistic self-assessment about the likelihood of a second term.

The same three points of contention have derailed the effort each time: determining the actual borders in the two-state solution; allowing Palestine self-governance; and allowing the right of return for those Palestinians and relatives thereof who fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 Nakba. The resolution of these intractable problems remains elusive, and most Israeli's and Palestinians are not hopeful that the attempt this time will prove any more successful.

The dynamics entering into the current round are complex and multi-faceted, as they always are. Israel's refusal to accept Hamas as the legitimate ruling party of the Palestinians is probably the deal-breaker from the get-go. While democratically elected to power in early 2006, Hamas, the party Israel actually helped to form to counter the feared Fatah, is viewed now rather as the main threat to Israel's security. Israel has used the 'illegitimacy' of Hamas to wall off and inflict collective punishment on Gaza, which is now the largest and most populated open -air prison the world has probably ever known.

Making matters even worse, Israel continues to build settlements in the West Bank area despite a six-month moratorium, and continues to demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. On the face of it, it is reasonable to suspect that Israel's main ambition is the acquisition of more territory, and that peace with the Palestinians means only that the Palestinians are more willing to allow that to happen.

The difficulty here is that with the borderlines already so blurred and ever-changing as walls go up, settlements expand and Palestinian homes and olive trees are upended, the goal of reaching any agreement about the borders in a twin state solution is unrealistic at the moment. If Israel would sign an intermediate agreement to cease and desist all building, expansion, and raising of Palestinian homes and property, and lawfully comply with the new agreement for a couple of years, it would go a long way in proving to the world and to the Palestinians that they are sincere in their wish to uphold a basic agreement in any 'final solution.'

The second major component of any negotiated peace between Palestine and Israel is that of Palestinians right of autonomy and self-rule. While Israel has stated its willingness to loosen its iron grip on traffic entering and leaving the Gaza strip, that hardly qualifies as either autonomy or self-rule. Israel is unlikely to allow Palestinians full autonomy as long as Palestine continues to recognize Hamas as its governing body.

As to the third still-unresolved condition for peace in the Middle East, Israel makes no secret that it was founded as a state for Jews, and it fully intends to stay that way. Recent efforts to have non-Jews take an oath of allegiance coupled with the destruction of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem would in fact indicate that the state of Israel is stepping up its efforts to ethnically cleanse itself of other faiths and other peoples. Given the current climate and the unusually strong influence of the right-wing of the Knesset, the concept of allowing the right of return for Palestinians to their land in Israel as part of the peace agreement is probably a non-starter.

The current conditions then are particularly unfavorable for any accord in the Middle East, and one has to wonder why Obama chose this particular time, politically and otherwise, to step up to the plate and take his swing.