Week in review: US Middle East peace effort stalls

Paul Woodward, Online Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 06. 2009 10:12AM UAE / November 6. 2009 6:12AM GMT

After nine months, a Middle East peace initiative launched with high expectations by the new administration in Washington has not only lost momentum but its promise of an even-handed approach increasingly lacks credibility.

In a speech in Cairo that was widely applauded across the region last June, the US president, Barack Obama, boldly declared: "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop."

Five months later Mr Obama's resolve appears to have withered. He sent his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, to deliver news that Israel was only too eager to hear.

"Signalling an end to the brief flirtation with the Palestinian cause, the US secretary of state flew to Jerusalem to voice full American support for Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu," The Daily Telegraph reported.

"In an effort to repair badly strained US-Israeli relations, she heaped praise on Mr Netanyahu, lauding his offer to limit settlement construction - even though it falls well short of President Obama's original demands.

"She said: 'What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy of settlements... is unprecedented in the context of prior to negotiations.'

"Risking the ire of the Arab world, she also joined Israeli calls for an immediate Palestinian return to the negotiating table without preconditions.

"America's about-turn on the most contentious issue stalling a resumption of Middle East peace talks has delighted Israel.

"But it will also damage Mr Obama's reputation as a peacemaker for many Arabs, bolster critics who have accused him of naïvety and enhance a growing sense of betrayal in the Palestinian territories."

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported: "The Obama administration is scaling back its ambitions for the Arab-Israeli peace process, focusing on maintaining some degree of low-level dialogue in the face of big divisions between the two sides.

"US officials began outlining Washington's diminished expectations as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton completes a one-week tour of the Middle East on Wednesday. She had tried to kick-start a new round of talks during stops in Israel and Arab capitals, but the divisions proved too wide to bridge.

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused US calls for a complete freeze of settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Palestinians have ruled out resuming negotiations without the freeze.

"Mrs Clinton subsequently pressed Arab leaders to agree to support talks with just a partial Israeli freeze. But barring that, US officials said all sides might be forced to accept a lower level of engagement in the talks to guard against a new round of violence in the Palestinian territories.

"There is a fear that militant groups, such as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hizbollah in Lebanon, could use a political vacuum to spark renewed violence.

" 'There's value in having the process' in itself, said State Department spokesman PJ Crowley on Tuesday. In a sign of the administration's changing focus, Mr Crowley added: 'If this particular path, we think, can't get us there, we'll look for others.'"

Agence France-Presse reported: "Amjad Atallah, a former legal adviser to the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, said the US shift on settlements has only weakened Abbas further and made him more reluctant than ever to enter peace talks with Israel.

" 'They (Palestinians) argue that if the United States was not prepared to back up what it said on settlements, why would it be prepared to back up what it might say on borders?' Atallah said.

"The members of the US administration, believing in their powers of 'moral persuasion,' were caught off guard, said the analyst with the New America Foundation.

" 'They thought once it got into permanent status negotiations, things would go relatively quickly. What they didn't count on was the Israeli government's instransigeance,' he added."

In Arab News, Osama Al Sharif wrote: "For many years US officials were content to describe the building of settlements in the occupied areas as an obstacle to peace. And now in Clinton’s view it is an issue that negotiators will have to resolve among themselves. This is an insult to every Palestinian. To presume that both parties will find a satisfactory solution to this 'obstacle' within the framework of future negotiations is simply stupid.

"The reality is that Washington has opted to turn its back to Obama's commitments. The White House is in no mood for a showdown with Israel over settlements and other issues. The US Department of State has decided to shift pressure from Israel to the Palestinian National Authority. What matters for US policymakers today is not justice for the Palestinians, but a resumption of peace talks at any price.

"It is safer to threaten the Palestinians than confront the Israelis in a risky face-off. Obama has abandoned his pledges to Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians. It is as simple as that."

The Israeli columnist, Gideon Levy, wrote in Haaretz: "Now is the time to say to the United States: Enough flattery. If you don't change the tone, nothing will change. As long as Israel feels the United States is in its pocket, and that America's automatic veto will save it from condemnations and sanctions, that it will receive massive aid unconditionally, and that it can continue waging punitive, lethal campaigns without a word from Washington, killing, destroying and imprisoning without the world's policeman making a sound, it will continue in its ways.

"Illegal acts like the occupation and settlement expansion, and offensives that may have involved war crimes, as in Gaza, deserve a different approach. If America and the world had issued condemnations after Operation Summer Rains in 2006 - which left 400 Palestinians dead and severe infrastructure damage in the first major operation in Gaza since the disengagement - then Operation Cast Lead never would have been launched.

"It is true that unlike all the world's other troublemakers, Israel is viewed as a western democracy, but Israel of 2009 is a country whose language is force. Anwar Sadat may have been the last leader to win our hearts with optimistic, hope-igniting speeches. If he were to visit Israel today, he would be jeered off the stage. The Syrian president pleads for peace and Israel callously dismisses him, the United States begs for a settlement freeze and Israel turns up its nose. This is what happens when there are no consequences for Israel's inaction."

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported: "The Palestinians should give up seeking an independent state and pursue a single country in which they would enjoy equal rights with Israelis, the chief Palestinian negotiator in Mideast peace talks said Wednesday.

"The remark by Saeb Erekat was not a novel idea - prominent Palestinians, including past negotiators, have floated it before, usually when efforts to achieve a negotiated solution to the decades old-conflict with Israel are faltering as they are now...

"Erekat's call for a one-state solution while speaking with reporters in Ramallah on Wednesday appeared to be a scare tactic, fed by frustration with the failure of peace talks to resume. Erekat said growing Jewish settlements are eating away at lands the Palestinians' want for their state.

"Therefore, Erekat said, Palestinians 'should refocus their attention to the one-state solution, where Muslims, Jews and Christians can live as equals'."

pwoodward@thenational.ae