Israel-Palestine: What Has Happened to George Mitchell's Talks?

Funny thing about US envoy George Mitchell's latest visit to the Middle East: most of the US and British press didn't take much notice.

Mitchell was in talks yesterday with Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and opposition leader Tzipi Livni. The New York Times decided this was worth one paragraph with the lead sentence:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday skirted calls by George J. Mitchell, President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East, for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, demanding prior Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state instead.

The Washington Post relied on an Associated Press summary, "Stark differences between U.S. and Israeli policy toward peace talks with the Palestinians emerged clearly Thursday."

Even those brief mentions, however, raise the question: has Netanyahu effectively blocked Washington's pursuit of substantial Israeli-Palestinian negotiations?

Ha'aretz, the Israeli newspaper, offers a possible answer:

The Obama administration is preparing a Middle East peace process that will include simultaneous bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Israel and Syria. The plan is based on the Arab peace initiative that offers establishing normal relations between Israel and Arab League states in exchange for withdrawing from the occupied territories and establishing a Palestinian state.

The United States will put together a "security package," including demilitarization of the territories from which Israel will withdraw and the option of stationing a multinational force in them for years.

Frustratingly, Ha'aretz gives no clue to its source, so it is unclear if the information has been leaked by Washington. Even more curiously, the spin on the plan is that "the Obama administration believes that a breakthrough in the peace process between Israel and the Arab states would restrain Tehran's influence and contribute to the diplomatic effort to block Iran's nuclearization". This could be an attempt by an Israeli official to sell the US approach to a domestic audience, or it could be an American attempt to overcome Tel Aviv's opposition by setting out the "Iran-first" framework.

All this speculation and spin, however, may be no more than academic, given the current Israeli position. Palestinian Authority leaders, meeting Mitchell in the West Bank today, made clear, "The U.S. must hold Israel to previous peace commitments and pressure it to accept the principle of Palestinian statehood."

Comments

[Josh Mull]

"...Yossi Alpher, a former official with Israel's Mossad spy agency and a co-founder of the bitterlemons.org Middle East political Web site, said that Netanyahu's conditions could be a poison pill that prevents any peace talks from getting under way."The position he took today cannot in any way generate a peace process," Alpher said. "The Palestinians are not going to offer him this recognition. It could be a deal-breaker, but it could be an opening gambit. It's too early in this whole new process to tell."

http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2009/04/plan-for-palestinian-state-is-dead-end.html

"..Rahm Emanuel told an (unnamed) Jewish leader; "In the next four years there is going to be a permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn't matter to us at all who is prime minister."

He also said that the United States will exert pressure to see that deal is put into place."Any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory," the paper reports Emanuel as saying. In other words, US sympathy for Israel's position vis a vis Iran depends on Israel's willingness to live up to its commitment to get out of the West Bank and permit the establishment of a Palestinian state there, in Gaza, and East Jerusalem."

http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2009/04/rahm-emanuel-any-treatment-of-iranian.html

[Scott Lucas]

Josh,

Thanks for these. Fits the evolving analysis....

S.