There is a tendency at the opening of each new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations for the parties to begin at the point where the previous negotiations concluded. That should be avoided this time. Because the most contentious issues remain on the table, it is not surprising that negotiators would start by referring back to the last point of commonality. In effect, the parties were rehashing the unresolved arguments they had failed to agree upon previously. Launching from the last point of agreement effectively meant embarking on the path that the parties could not previously traverse. This path became a rut from which the parties were unable to extract themselves.
I strongly urge President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and Senator Mitchell to resist this temptation to look backward and instead prod the leaders of the new talks to begin by negotiating something that was not discussed in the previous negotiation. They should try to get an agreement about the definition of "security" for both sides, and stop the division that "security" relates only to Israel and "borders" only to the Palestinians. Both concepts pertain to both sides.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would be able to move forward much more comfortably if he is seen as taking an original approach in pursuing an agreement. For Netanyahu, this could mean an agreement that begins with a statement of principles about the security of the Israeli people and the State of Israel, and about the security of Palestinian people and the emerging State of Palestine. Since security is so intimately interwoven with the definition of the boundaries of the two states and the supervision and monitoring of those boundaries, beginning with security will lead directly to negotiations about critical final status issues and waste no time.
For Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a beginning that defines Palestinian security as equal in importance to Israeli security would be an important step forward, as it would have to include, among other things, Israeli commitments about refraining from military incursions into Palestinian territory and strict limitations on Israeli incarceration of new Palestinian prisoners beyond the thousands already in security jails.
Another common practice in previous negotiations is for the third party -- the mediator -- to engage its most senior person at the last stage of negotiation. This practice must be reversed. It is at the beginning of negotiation that the mediator has the maximum leverage, because he or she has just demonstrated the ability to overcome the long impasse in which there were no negotiations. The mediator -- in this case the President of the United States -- should exploit this moment of maximum leverage by making a dramatic proposal or initiative that breaks new ground right away and gets the parties out of the rut.
President Obama has set up an excellent occasion and venue for such a breakthrough step by inviting the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to have dinner with him together with President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan on the evening before the negotiations begin. An attention-grabbing advance at that occasion would enable the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to demonstrate to their negotiators that they are ready for serious business. The negotiators will then come together not only with a new point of agreement, which would become public, but also with the example of their leaders already breaking previous taboos with new openness.
Should President Obama, Secretary Clinton and Senator Mitchell adopt the two points of departure from previous practice set out above, they stand a good chance of showing the peoples of the region that this negotiation is the real thing and not a replay of all the previous stalemated games.
Stephen P. Cohen is the author of "Beyond America's Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009) and president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development. He served as Academic Consultant to the National Intelligence Council from 2003-2006 and on the US Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World in 2003.
James Zogby: Trying to Be Hopeful About Peace
If Arafat had made a counter offer, instead of going home to a hero's welcome and starting the war he had been planning, or if Abbas had actually hit "reply" on his email, then there might be some reason to think that these talks are a continuation of earlier talks. They aren't.
Settler leader speaks of holding Netanyahu to his word on construction
Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu's former chief of staff and the recently named director-general of the settler advocacy group the Yesha Council, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about what he thinks his old boss will do and the challenges facing the settler movement.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel-settlement-qa-20100829,0,1354446.story
A poisoned process holds little hope
08.25.2010 | Financial Times
By David Gardner
Full text: http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/the-truth-behind-the-peace-process/
EXCERPTS: "...the heart of the question remains the continuing Israeli occupation. It is essential to remember that the biggest single increase of Jewish settlers on Arab land – a 50 per cent rise – took place in 1992-96 under the governments of peace-makers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres at the high-water mark of the Oslo peace accords."
"A decade on, the Israeli settlement enterprise has turned the occupied West Bank into a discontiguous scattering of cantons, walled in by a security barrier built on yet more annexed Arab land and criss-crossed by segregated Israeli roads linking the settlements. Last month, B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, published a study showing Israel has now taken 42 per cent of the West Bank, with 300,000 settlers there and another 200,000 in East Jerusalem. The siege of Gaza has turned that sliver of land into a vast, open-air prison."
"The outlines of a deal are clear, in the (Bill) Clinton parameters of 2000 and Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, endorsed by 22 Arab and 57 Muslim countries (as well as Hamas, as part of the 2007 Mecca accord). There has to be an end to the occupation, and the US and Quartet cannot just allude to this; they must demand it."
The muslim world would love it?
It might very well be serious this time.
Because to invite Hamas to the table is to admit that it is a legitimate actor. This would send years and millions of dollars worth of PR down the gurgler. PR aimed at characterizing an organization that spends more than 90% of its budget on Social Welfare programmes as a terrorist outfit.
Besides, money is being made, right here in America, selling weapons to all sides. Peace over profit? Not in God's country.
Funny thing is, all parties involved know this. Maybe that's why they're kept out....
Fatah hold 45 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Assembly, Change and Reform (Hamas) 75.
Hamas have already gone over the line in efforts to negotiate:
"Hamas has accepted Israel's right to exist and would be prepared to nullify its charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, Aziz Dwaik, Hamas's most senior representative in the West Bank, said on Wednesday."
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=166275
These "negotiations" are set up to fail, the failure will be used to buy more time, more facts on the ground, more skyrockets, more reprisals, more land.
Oops. Did I say skyrockets?
WTF would you do if your land continued to be stolen over a period of 60 years by a neighbouring State and that State refused to acknowledge the rights guaranteed under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Geneva Accords and U.N. Resolutions?
What would you do if that State offered only to negotiate with a failed and now out of office President whom they'd bought?
Ahh but that is the plan.
1. Dealing with Security first is sorta of saying lets put the alarm in before we build the house. If a small victory is required to get more faith in the process then maybe some sort of economic agreement can be a good start
2. Another problem with the article, these guys know each other very well. I dont see any value to delay discussion on the complicated topics. And thats where things will stall and thats when leadership from the quartet comes in