THE ON-OFF, on-off Middle East peace process looks as if it is going into on mode again. It went seriously off after US vice-president Joe Biden was humiliated in March when, during a visit to Jerusalem, it was announced that an Israeli building programme was to go ahead in the occupied east of the city. This episode severely tested Mr Obama’s credibility as a peace broker in Palestinian and Arab eyes. Since then he has put some more steel into his demands on Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, while other parties have concluded it is worth another try. But their efforts are overcast by accumulating obstacles and growing disbelief.
George Mitchell has proposed another round of indirect proximity talks to the Israelis and Palestinians. Both sides have welcomed the initiative, while making conditions about their content and the transition to weightier direct encounters. Mr Obama is now reported to favour the pursuit of a two-state settlement of the conflict within two years. That is a very ambitious target, given the existing circumstances of stalemate and scepticism; but it does match the increasingly clear recognition that such a prospect cannot be held out indefinitely while Israel continues to establish new immutable facts on the ground in the occupied territories, and while the Palestinians and Arabs supporting a two-state settlement have so little goodwill to defend it with.
Mr Obama’s national security adviser General James Jones has warned that delaying these talks will embolden Iran and its allies in Hizbullah and Hamas who have little time for what is on offer. Mr Obama’s administration sees a successful Israeli-Palestinian settlement as a way to outflank them in the region. Preventing Iran’s effort to become a nuclear state with heavier sanctions and more determined pursuit of a two-state settlement thus go hand in hand. This draws Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan into Mr Mitchell’s diplomacy and they have good reason to co-operate.
Mr Netanyahu’s fractious right-wing coalition would prefer to elongate proximity talks about a settlement than transform them into final negotiations. Several of his partners oppose a two-state agreement in principle, while his own Likud party favours a strong Israeli security stance bolstered by creeping annexation and fragmentation of the West Bank.
The question all Israelis must face is whether the undoubted short-term security delivered by such policies, along with the separation wall and military action or threats against Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon, has been achieved by effectively subverting a two-state settlement. Without that Israel will become more and more like an apartheid state, facing growing international censure and an intensifying internal struggle for Palestinian political rights rather than a separate state.
So a great deal hangs on Mr Obama’s commitment to see a settlement before he faces another election in 2012. His task is made more difficult by excluding Hamas in advance from this process, given that they have a democratic mandate in Gaza which gives them strong grounds to reject any imposed agreement.
