The United States-led effort to negotiate a permanent peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has hit a snag. On Tuesday, the two sides failed to reach an understanding following a meeting with the American negotiator, but an Israeli official has indicated that there will be another meeting.
“The atmosphere was business-like and the sides agreed to meet again to try to find a solution to the crisis,” said an Israeli official, who asked not to be identified, after the latest talks wrapped up on Tuesday morning in Jerusalem.
This actually represents an improvement. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to end the talks and mete out unspecified retaliations in response to the Palestinian Authority seeking statehood recognition via membership in a number of international organizations and treaties. By seeking self-representation in these charters, Palestine is effectively seeking to be recognized as an independent entity separate of Israel that is capable of seeking reprieve against Israel for it’s human rights violations and occupation of the Palestinian territories via the International Criminal Court and other international intermediaries.
“Israel continues to use peace negotiations as a smokescreen for more settlement construction,” said Mohammed Shtayyeh, a senior Fatah official and one of the peace talk negotiators. “[The Israelis] are the only ones imposing conditions: to negotiate with settlement construction, creating new conditions on the ground in order to pre-empt the result of any negotiations.”
On Wednesday, Netanyahu ordered a freeze on contact between the senior members of his government and their Palestinian counterparts. The communications ban does not, however, extend to Israel’s defense or security officials or to Tzipi Livni, the Israeli minister of justice and lead negotiator for Israel in the peace talks.
“They will achieve a state only through direct negotiations and not through empty proclamations or unilateral moves, which will only push a peace accord farther away,” Netanyahu told his cabinet at its weekly meeting last week.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed 15 international treaties on behalf of the Palestinian Authority last week, including the Fourth Convention of the Geneva Convention. This represents the first group of four sets of international conventions — 63 in total — that the self-government body seeks to enter. An Abbas aide has indicated that the second set is ready to be signed.
The blame game
Israel sees these treaties as the Palestinians violating a key confidence-building concession both sides agreed on to clear a path for the talks: the Palestinian Authority would suspend its campaign for unilateral recognition by the United Nations if Israel released the 104 Palestinian prisoners who were jailed prior to the Oslo Peace Process. These are the same 104 prisoners Israel promised to release in 1999 under the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, but never did because of Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation and human rights abuses in the Second Intifada that lasted from 2000-2005.
Palestine blames Israel for failing to release the last group of prisoners in March as planned. The last group, which includes the most controversial prisoners, was denied release in the hope that Israel can convince the Palestinians to agree to extend the talks past the April 29 deadline. The stalling has increased the Palestinian Authority’s suspicions that Israel will back out of the release — as it did in 1999 — or quietly re-arrest the prisoners after the talks have concluded.
The negotiations — at least, from the outside — seem to have deteriorated into a cycle of pointing blame. Since the talks started in July, negotiations have stalled over Palestine’s refusal to recognize Israel as a state, over Israel’s internationally-denounced illegal land grabs through settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, over restricting Palestinians’ access to water and over Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
“I believe that Israel has stalled as a combination of Palestine’s actions in seeking recognition and the circumventing of the negotiation process the United States requires and the egos that are at stake,” Eli Verschleiser, treasurer of the American Jewish Congress, told MintPress News. “Both Israel and the Palestinians have dug their heels in for too long, and that typically surrounds individual egos and the backlash and internal strife that they get from their people.”
An American-sought peace that avoided sanctions against Israel
Since the peace talks started, the only party that has been fully committed to a peaceful, mutually beneficial resolution has been the United States. Representing a government that has grown increasingly frustrated with the back-and-forth allegations and counter-allegations, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has iterated his determination to carry out this peace process, no matter what.
“You can facilitate, you can push, you can nudge, but the parties themselves have to make fundamental decisions and compromises,” Kerry said last week during a visit to Algeria. “The leaders have to lead and they have to be able to see a moment when it’s there.”
The United States fears that without a peace settlement, there may be a third intifada, or uprising. With the Palestinian Authority actively seeking independent recognition abroad, it is likely that the body will seek to bring the Israeli government up on charges of illegal occupation and violations of human rights for Israel’s apartheid-like treatment of Palestinians living in Israeli territory and mistreatment of Palestinian political prisoners.
Should American support for Israel falter, Israel would lose its shield. In the past, Israel has been spared a long litany of sanctions that the United States has vetoed or blocked. The possibility of civil unrest among Palestinians, combined with a hardened pushback from Israelis that is fueled by frustrations fed by an increased international delegitimization, may spark violence that would eclipse the string of violence in 2000 that left 1,010 Israels and 3,354 Palestinians dead.
Some, however, believe that the United States — with its weakened diplomatic position following a wave of international missteps, such as allegations that the National Security Agency illegally surveilled international communications, including the communications of world leaders — no longer has the credibility or international support to force the two sides to agree.
“The current round of negotiations has never gotten off the ground,” said Doron Ben-Atar, a professor of history at Fordham University. “The prisoner release controversy does not even rise to the level of a minor disagreement. No negotiations have taken place since November. The basic premise of the negotiations Kerry launched was that Israel needs to pay the Palestinians for agreeing to negotiate.
“The collapse of the talks has to be understood within the broader global context. The Obama administration has lost all credibility among America’s friends and allies. You see it in the Far East with Japan moving to arm itself against China. You see it in South Korea. You see it in Europe. And you see it in the Middle East: just last week the Syrian government used chemical weapons against rebel areas. In this context, no side is willing to make any concession.”
Seeking peace where peace is not wanted
Others feel that Israel has no intentions of securing a peace deal. In light of an expansion of its illegal land grabs and settlements in occupied Palestinian territories and in recognition of Israel’s dropping international esteem, an increasing number of people see Israel’s involvement in the peace talks as nothing more than a PR stunt.
According to a December 2013 Arab World for Research & Development poll, only 25 percent of Palestinians between ages 18 and 30 said they were more hopeful about the peace process than they were a year before.
“Israel continues to use peace negotiations as a smokescreen for more settlement construction,” said Mohammed Shtayyeh, a senior Fatah official and one of the peace talk negotiators. “[The Israelis] are the only ones imposing conditions: to negotiate with settlement construction, creating new conditions on the ground in order to pre-empt the result of any negotiations.”
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, many feel that even if the two sides do come to an understanding, it doesn’t mean that the people will accept it. In the five years following the successful ratification of the Oslo Accords, more people died than in the 15 years prior to it, including Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated. Ultimately, while politicians can make agreements and settlements deals, it is up to the Palestinians and Israelis on the streets to actually carry them out.
“In general, when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and without taking a side, I’m very much of the opinion that Westernized education is the key to peace,” Verschleiser of the American Jewish Center told MintPress. “When women and children are educated, they begin to see that there is much more to life than fighting.”