Theatrical failure of peace
talks By Victor Kotsev
The Palestinians demand a clear Israeli
position on borders (the borders of a prospective
Palestinian state). Against all odds, the
Palestinians receive a clear Israeli position on
borders. The Palestinians then abandon the
negotiations, blaming Israel.
There are
many ways to interpret this sequence of events
(the best estimate available to the media of what
happened at the conclusion of the not-so-secret
peace talks in Jordan), and not all
interpretations are favorable to Israel. However,
one must admit that, yet again, there is a certain
amount of irony in the theatrics of the
Palestinian behavior, even if the motivation
behind it is presumed to be perfectly rational.
Breaking off the peace talks is in some
ways the most rational thing to do at the moment,
given the storm that is gathering in the
Middle East. And while
apocalyptic speculation over an impending major
war remains just that, speculation, the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process is so fragile
that even the smallest outbreak of violence
threatens to derail it. Something like a fairly
minor domestic cataclysm in Egypt is capable of
accomplishing that, let alone a military
confrontation in the restive Gaza Strip or a
full-blown descent of Syria into chaos.
The talks, which started at the initiative
of Jordan's King Abdullah II and with the
enthusiastic backing of the Quartet on the Middle
East, apparently served their purpose: to register
activity and to allow Jordan to take on a larger
role in Palestinian politics. In a less visible
parallel reconciliation process, the Palestinian
Hamas movement seems to be eyeing Jordan as its
next base, and talks between the rival Palestinian
factions seem to be in the works.
The
first direct meeting between Israeli and
Palestinian negotiators in over a year was held
early this month in Amman; the last meeting in the
series, culminating in the failure of the
initiative, was held days ago. The excuse for the
discussions had been a Quartet statement, issued
in response to the Palestinian application for
membership in the United Nations in September, for
"the parties to come forward with comprehensive
proposals within three months on territory and
security, and to have made substantial progress
within six months".
Almost to the last,
the Quartet - and specifically the European Union
- clung to the hope that the talks could lead to
higher-level negotiations. As recently as last
Wednesday, European Union officials were
reportedly trying to pressure Israel into offering
further concessions to the Palestinians. [1]
Yet the signs had not been good,
practically since the start of the talks. A couple
of weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu warned Israeli lawmakers that the
Palestinians "will not budge a nanometer". A week
ago, an open confrontation between the two chief
negotiators reportedly took place, with the
Palestinians blocking a presentation on security
issues by an Israeli military official.
"I
do not have the mandate to negotiate security
arrangements until you present detailed documents
with your position on the issue of borders and on
the security issue," the Palestinian negotiator
Saeb Erekat reportedly said, according to the
Israeli daily Ha'aretz. [2]
There had been
some talk about a more clear Israeli position on
borders in the next couple of months (something
that Netanyahu had resisted making public), but
the Israeli negotiators apparently surprised
everybody when they offered an outline last
Wednesday. It was a vague outline, delivered only
verbally. Ha'aretz writes that "One of the
principles that [Israeli negotiator Isaac] Molho
presented was that in any permanent agreement
between Israel and the Palestinians, most of the
Israelis who live in the West Bank will remain in
Israeli territory, while the Palestinians in the
West Bank will be in the area allotted for a
future Palestinian state." [3]
The
Palestinians announced the talks dead almost
immediately, though a meeting of the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) is expected to
formalize this decision on Monday. "[The Israeli
negotiator] killed the two-state solution, set
aside previous agreements and international law,"
a PLO official told Reuters. "Basically, the
Israeli idea of a Palestinian state is made up of
a wall and settlements." [4]
According to
another Ha'aretz report, "Palestinian officials
said on Friday that the Israeli delegation's
proposal would in practice have created borders
based on the route of Israel's security fence.
They said Israel was also demanding the right to
retain East Jerusalem and Jewish settlement blocs
in the West Bank. The Palestinian sources said
this would divide Palestinian territory into
cantons and deprive a future state of territorial
contiguity." [5]
This language is
consistent with older Palestinian accusations
against Netanyahu and his predecessors. To their
credit, the Palestinians reportedly submitted
detailed proposals of their own, in writing, weeks
ago.
Still, neither the vagueness of the
Israeli outlines nor the difference between the
positions of the two sides seems to be the real
reason behind the collapse of the talks. Many, if
not most observers had assumed that the
negotiations were still-born from the start; in
fact, both Israelis and Palestinians - and also
their foreign go-betweens - had been looking for
an excuse to restart the talks ever since it
became clear that the Palestinian bid for
independence at the UN would run into stiff
opposition. For a moment, all sides saw talking,
no matter the content of the discussions, as the
next best alternative to violence (and violence as
a dead-end), and jumped at the first available
opportunity.
For Jordan, the opportunity
that presented itself carries additional benefits
and risks. Both Egypt and Syria - the two
heavyweight Arab regional players, involved
intimately in the Palestinian affairs - are rocked
by instability, which in turn creates a power
vacuum in the Levant. For Jordan, the majority of
whose population is of Palestinian descent, this
comes at a particularly sensitive moment. The
Palestinian national aspirations, expressed
officially at the UN in the last months, can
threaten the territorial integrity, and indeed the
existence, of the Hashemite Kingdom.
Not
so - or less so - if the Jordanian government has
the Palestinians in a bear hug, dependent on it
for both their internal affairs and their
international contacts. It is hardly surprising that in
parallel to the Israeli-Palestinian process, and
somewhat hidden from public scrutiny by it,
another deal has been in the making.
This
weekend, Hamas' leader Khaled Meshaal visited
Jordan for the first time since he was expelled
from there over 12 years ago. "Jordan belongs to
the Jordanians and Palestine to the Palestinians,"
was somewhat predictably one of the main messages
he made in the Jordanian capital. [6]
His
visit, too, had been in the works for some months
- in fact, it was being arranged at roughly the
same time as King Abdullah started pushing for the
Israeli-Palestinian talks. [7] The latest reports
claim that Meshaal has decided to leave Damascus
permanently, and by all accounts Amman would be
near the top of his wish-list as a prospective
location for his new headquarters. Such a
relocation could also theoretically be accompanied
by an intra-Palestinian reconciliation between
Hamas and the PLO - a process that has also hit a
dead-end several times in the past months. Rumor
has it that with the end of this most recent round
of Israeli-Palestinian talks, negotiations between
the rival Palestinian groups are the next highest
item on the Jordanian agenda.
Whether such
talks have a serious chance of succeeding, or if
that in turn would lead to more talks or to more
violence with Israel, is impossible to tell. For
now, a comprehensive solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is out of sight, but
negotiations on various levels are often a
preferred alternative to violence, and rightly so.
While the Israeli government in principle
refuses to negotiate with Hamas (and vice versa),
the prisoner swap that took place between them
months ago suggests otherwise. Last year,
Netanyahu had suggested that a prisoner swap could
be a confidence-building measure that could lead
to a more serious engagement.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
