Kicking the Can Again

This week, after six trips to the Middle East and several bouts of shuttle diplomacy, Secretary of State John Kerry announced a new round of Israeli/Palestinian “peace talks”. He stated at the kick off, “I firmly believe that these leaders can make peace.” This was accomplished at great personnel sacrifice as his wife Teresa is seriously ill. My reaction upon hearing this news was “What is he thinking?” What has changed during the last four years of stalemate to make it worthwhile to expend so much personal effort and political capital on a process that has almost no chance of success?

The same regional players are still in place. The Palestinians are still divided between the Fatah led Palestinian Authority (PA) government in Ramallah and the Hamas led government in the Gaza strip. The PA is still run by the same dysfunctional, corrupt, unelected, unrepresentative old men who have been in place since the western powers overthrew the elected Hamas government in 2006. Hamas, which represents 1.4 mm Palestinians in the Gaza strip, is not invited to the party.

On the Israeli side the same Netanyahu led right wing, settler dominated government is still in place. If anything it has become even more right wing since the last elections with the addition of the Jewish Home Party to the governing coalition. JHP’s leader Naftali Bennett was recently quoted as advocating killing suspected militants rather than bringing them to trial; saying “If you catch terrorists, you have to simply kill them” and “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life – and there’s no problem with that.” (See here and here)

The Obama administration, in a move seemingly designed to insure failure, appointed former Ambassador to Israel, former AIPAC executive, former Executive Director of the pro-Israel think tank Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Martin Indyk as its Middle East mediator. Indyk makes former mediator Dennis Ross (frequently called “Israel’s lawyer”) look positively unbiased in contrast. In a presentation that I heard by Indyk a few years ago, he couldn’t use the word “Palestinian” without appending the word “terrorist” to it.

The only possible objective that I can see for this declared 9 month negotiation process is to move the process past this year’s United Nations session. The U.S. can claim that the Palestinian State should not join the International Criminal Court (Israel’s worst nightmare) since there is an ongoing American sponsored negotiation process. This would be in line with the strategy (such as it is) of kicking the can down the road and hoping for the best. In general talking is better than shooting. In this case, failed talks may result in shooting.

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