Israel-Palestine: Time to Move Beyond a US-Centred Approach (Freeman)

On 1 September, Charles Freeman --- former State Department and Defense Department official, US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and nominee in 2009 to head the National Intelligence Council --- delivered this speech to the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

You have asked me to speak to current American policies in the Middle East, with an emphasis on the prospects for peace in the Holy Land.  You have further suggested that I touch on the relationship of the Gulf Arabs, especially Saudi Arabia, to this.  It is both an honor and a challenge to address this subject in this capital/at this ministry.

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The declaration of principles worked out in Oslo seventeen years ago was the last direct negotiation between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to reach consequential, positive results.  The Oslo accords were a real step toward peace, not another deceptive pseudo-event in an endlessly unproductive, so-called “peace process.”  And if that one step forward in Oslo in 1993 was followed by several steps backwards, there is a great deal to be learned from how and why that happened.

There can be no doubt about the importance of today’s topic.  The ongoing conflict in the Holy Land increasingly disturbs the world’s conscience as well as its tranquility.  The Israel-Palestine issue began as a struggle in the context of European colonialism.  In the post-colonial era, tension between Israelis and the Palestinians they dispossessed became, by degrees, the principal source of radicalization and instability in the Arab East and then the Arab world as a whole.  It stimulated escalating terrorism against Israelis at home and their allies abroad.  Since the end of the Cold War, the interaction between Israel and its captive Palestinian population has emerged as the fountainhead of global strife.  It is increasingly difficult to distinguish this strife from a war of religions or a conflict of civilizations.

For better or ill, my own country, the United States has played and continues to play the key international part in this contest.  American policies, more than those of any other external actor, have the capacity to stoke or stifle the hatreds in the Middle East and to spread or reverse their infection of the wider world.  American policies and actions in the Middle East thus affect much more than that region.

Yet, as I will argue, the United States has been obsessed with process rather than substance.  It has failed to involve parties who are essential to peace.  It has acted on Israel’s behalf to preempt rather than enlist international and regional support for peace.  It has defined the issues in ways that preclude rather than promote progress.  Its concept of a “peace process” has therefore become the handmaiden of Israeli expansionism rather than a driver for peace.  There are alternatives to tomorrow’s diplomatic peace pageant on the Potomac.  And, as Norway has shown, there is a role for powers other than America in crafting peace in the Holy Land.

Over thirty years ago, at Camp David, Jimmy Carter pushed Israel through the door to peace that Egypt’s Anwar Sadat had opened.  Twenty years ago, the first Bush administration pressed Israel to the negotiating table with Palestinian leaders, setting the stage for their clandestine meetings in Oslo.  The capacity of the United States to rally other governments behind a cause that it espouses may have atrophied, but American power remains far greater than that of any other nation.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the Middle East.

For more than four decades, Israel has been able to rely on aid from the United States to dominate its region militarily and to sustain its economic prosperity.  It has counted on its leverage in American politics to block the application of international law and to protect itself from the political repercussions of its policies and actions.  Unquestioning American support has enabled Israel to put the seizure of ever more land ahead of the achievement of a modus vivendi with the Palestinians or other Arabs.  Neither violent resistance from the dispossessed nor objections from abroad have brought successive Israeli governments to question, let alone alter the priority they assign to land over peace.

Ironically, Palestinians too have developed a dependency relationship with America. This has locked them into a political framework over which Israel exercises decisive influence.  They have been powerless to end occupation, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and other humiliations by Jewish soldiers and settlers.  Nor have they been able to prevent their progressive confinement in checkpoint-encircled ghettos on the West Bank and the great open-air prison of Gaza.

Despite this appalling record of failure, the American monopoly on the management of the search for peace in Palestine remains unchallenged.  Since the end of the Cold War, Russia – once a contender for countervailing influence in the region --- has lapsed into impotence.  The former colonial powers of the European Union, having earlier laid the basis for conflict in the region, have largely sat on their hands while ringing them, content to let America take the lead.  China, India, and other Asian powers have prudently kept their political and military distance.  In the region itself, Iran has postured and exploited the Palestinian cause without doing anything to advance it.  Until recently, Turkey remained aloof.

On rare occasions, as in the case of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the Arabs have backed their verbal opposition to Israel with action.  Egypt and Jordan have settled into an unpopular coexistence with Israel that is now sustained only by U.S. subventions.  Saudi Arabia has twice taken the initiative to offer Israel diplomatic concessions if it were to conclude arrangements for peaceful coexistence with the Palestinians.  But, overall, Arab governments have earned the contempt of the Palestinians and their own people for their lack of serious engagement.  For the most part, Arab leaders have timorously demanded that America solve the Israel-Palestine problem for them, while obsequiously courting American protection against Israel, each other, Iran, and --- in some cases --- their own increasingly frustrated and angry subjects and citizens.

Islam charges rulers with the duty to defend the faithful and to uphold justice.  It demands that they embody righteousness.  The resentment of mostly Muslim Arabs at their governing elites’ failure to meet these standards generates sympathy for terrorism directed not just at Israel but at both the United States and Arab governments associated with it.

The perpetrators of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States saw it in part as reprisal for American complicity in Israeli cruelties to Palestinians and other Arabs.  They justified it as a strike against Washington’s protection of Arab governments willing to overlook American contributions to Muslim suffering.  Washington’s response to the attack included suspending its efforts to make peace in the Holy Land as well as invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.  All three actions inadvertently strengthened the terrorist case for further attacks on America and its allies.  The armed struggle between Americans and Muslim radicals has already spilled over to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and other countries.  Authoritative voices in Israel now call for adding Iran to the list of countries at war with America.  They are echoed by Zionist and neo-conservative spokesmen in the United States.

The widening involvement of Americans in combat in Muslim lands has inflamed anti-American passions and catalyzed a metastasis of terrorism.  It has caused a growing majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to see the United States as a menace to their faith, their way of life, their homelands, and their personal security.  American populists and European xenophobes have meanwhile undercut liberal and centrist Muslim arguments against the intolerance that empowers terrorism by equating terrorism and its extremist advocates with Islam and its followers.  The current outburst of bigoted demagoguery over the construction of an Islamic cultural center and mosque in New York is merely the most recent illustration of this.  It suggests that the blatant racism and Islamophobia of contemporary Israeli politics is contagious.  It rules out the global alliances against religious extremists that are essential to encompass their political defeat.

President Obama’s inability to break this pattern must be an enormous personal disappointment to him.  He came into office committed to crafting a new relationship with the Arab and Muslim worlds.  His first interview with the international media was with Arab satellite television.  He reached out publicly and privately to Iran.  He addressed the Turkish parliament with persuasive empathy.  He traveled to a great center of Islamic learning in Cairo to deliver a remarkably eloquent message of conciliation to Muslims everywhere.  He made it clear that he understood the centrality of injustices in the Holy Land to Muslim estrangement from the West.  He promised a responsible withdrawal from Iraq and a judicious recrafting of strategy in Afghanistan.  Few doubt Mr. Obama’s sincerity.  Yet none of his initiatives has led to policy change anyone can detect, let alone believe in.

It is not for me to analyze or explain the wide gaps between rhetoric and achievement in the Obama Administration’s stewardship of so many aspects of my country’s affairs.  American voters will render their first formal verdict on this two months from tomorrow, on the 2^nd of November.  The situation in the Holy Land, Iraq, Afghanistan, and adjacent areas is only part of what they will consider as they do so.  But I do think it worthwhile briefly to examine some of the changes in the situation that ensure that many policies that once helped us to get by in the Middle East will no longer do this.

Let me begin with the “peace process”, a hardy perennial of America’s diplomatic repertoire that the Obama Administration will put back on public display tomorrow.  In the Cold War, the appearance of an earnest and “even-handed” American search for peace in the Holy Land was the price of U.S. access and influence in the Middle East.  It provided political cover for conservative Arab governments to set aside their anger at American backing of Israel so as to stand with America and the Western bloc against Soviet Communism.  It kept American relations with Israel and the Arabs from becoming a zero-sum game.  It mobilized domestic Jewish support for incumbent presidents.  Of course, there hasn’t been an American-led “peace process” in the Middle East for at least a decade.  Still the conceit of a “peace process” became an essential political convenience for all concerned.  No one could bear to admit that the “peace process” had expired.  It therefore lived on in phantom form.

Even when there was no “peace process,” the possibility of resurrecting one provided hope to the gullible, cover to the guileful, beguilement for the press, an excuse for doing nothing to those gaining from the status quo, and – last but far from least –  lifetime employment for career “peace processors.”  The perpetual processing of peace without the requirement to produce it has been especially appreciated by Israeli leaders.  It has enabled them to behave like magicians, riveting foreign attention on meaningless distractions as they systematically removed Palestinians from their homes, settled half a million or more Jews in newly vacated areas of the occupied territories, and annexed a widening swath of land to a Jerusalem they insist belongs only to Israel.

Palestinian leaders with legitimacy problems have also had reason to collaborate in the search for a “peace process”.  It’s not just that there has been no obviously better way to end their people’s suffering.  Playing “peace process” charades justifies the international patronage and Israeli backing these leaders need to retain their status in the occupied territories.  It ensures that they have media access and high-level visiting rights in Washington.  Meanwhile, for American leaders, engagement in some sort of Middle East “peace process” has been essential to credibility in the Arab and Islamic worlds, as well as with the ever-generous American Jewish community.  Polls show that most American Jews are impatient for peace.  Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they are eager to believe in the willingness of the government of Israel to trade land for it.

Previous “peace processes” have exploited all these impulses.  In practice, however, these diplomatic distractions have served to obscure Israeli actions and evasions that were more often prejudicial to peace than helpful in achieving it.  Behind all the blather, the rumble of bulldozers has never stopped.  Given this history, it has taken a year and a half of relentless effort by U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell to persuade the parties even to meet directly to talk about talks as they first did here in Oslo, seventeen years ago.  When the curtain goes up on the diplomatic show in Washington tomorrow, will the players put on a different skit?  There are many reasons to doubt that they will.

One is that the Obama administration has engaged the same aging impresarios who staged all the previously failed “peace processes” to produce and direct this one with no agreed script.  The last time these guys staged such an ill-prepared meeting, at Camp David in 2000, it cost both heads of delegation, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, their political authority.  It led not to peace but to escalating violence.  The parties are showing up this time to minimize President Obama’s political embarrassment in advance of midterm elections in the United States, not to address his agenda --- still less to address each other’s agendas. These are indeed difficulties.  But the problems with this latest --- and possibly final --- iteration of the perpetually ineffectual “peace process” are more fundamental.

The Likud Party charter flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River and stipulates that: “The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state.” This Israeli government is committed to that charter as well as to the Jewish holy war for land in Palestine.  It has no interest in trading land it covets for a peace that might thwart further territorial expansion.  It considers itself unbound by the applicable UN resolutions, agreements from past peace talks, the “Roadmap,” or the premise of the “two-state solution.”

The Palestinians are desperate for the dignity and security that only the end of the Israeli occupation can provide.  But the authority of Palestinian negotiators to negotiate rests on their recognition by Israel and the United States, not on their standing in the occupied territories, Gaza, or the Palestinian diaspora.  Fatah is the ruling faction in part of Palestine.  Its authority to govern was repudiated by voters in the last Palestinian elections.  The Mahmoud Abbas administration retains power by grace of the Israeli occupation authorities and the United States, which prefer it to the government empowered by the Palestinian people at the polls.  Mr. Abbas’s constitutional term of office has long since expired.  He presides over a parliament whose most influential members are locked up in Israeli jails.   It is not clear for whom he, his faction, or his administration can now speak.

So the talks that begin tomorrow promise to be a case of the disinterested going through the motions of negotiating with the mandate-less.  The parties to these talks seek to mollify an America that has severely lessened international credibility.  The United States government had to borrow the modest reputations for objectivity of others --- the EU, Russia, and the UN 000 to be able to convene this discussion.  It will be held under the auspices of an American president who was publicly humiliated by Israel’s prime minister on the issue that is at the center of the Israel-Palestine dispute ---Israel’s continuing seizure and colonization of Arab land.

Vague promises of a Palestinian state within a year now waft through the air.  But the “peace process” has always sneered at deadlines, even much, much firmer ones.  A more definitive promise of an independent Palestine within a year was made at Annapolis three years ago.  Analogous promises of Palestinian self-determination have preceded or resulted from previous meetings over the decades, beginning with the Camp David accords of 1979.  Many in this audience will recall the five-year deadline fixed at Oslo.  The talks about talks that begin tomorrow can yield concrete results only if the international community is prepared this time to insist on the one-year deadline put forward for recognizing a Palestinian state.  Even then there will be no peace unless long-neglected issues are addressed.

Peace is a pattern of stability acceptable to those with the capacity to disturb it by violence.  It is almost impossible to impose.  It cannot become a reality, still less be sustained, if those who must accept it are excluded from it.  This reality directs our attention to who is not at this gathering in Washington and what must be done to remedy the problems these absences create.

Obviously, the party that won the democratically expressed mandate of the Palestinian people to represent them --- Hamas --- is not there.  Yet there can be no peace without its buy-in.  Egypt and Jordan have been invited as observers.  Yet they have nothing to add to the separate peace agreements each long ago made with Israel.  (Both these agreements were explicitly premised on  grudging Israeli undertakings to accept Palestinian self-determination.  The Jewish state quickly finessed both.)   Activists from the Jewish diaspora disproportionately staff the American delegation.  A failure to reconcile either American Jews or the Palestine diaspora to peace would doom any accord.  But the Palestinian diaspora will be represented in Washington only in tenuous theory, not in fact.

Other Arabs, including the Arab League and the author of its peace initiative, Saudi Arabia, will not be at the talks tomorrow.  The reasons for this are both simple and complex.  At one level they reflect both a conviction that this latest installment of the “peace process” is just another in a long series of public entertainments for the American electorate and also a lack of confidence in the authenticity of the Palestinian delegation.  At another level, they result from the way the United States has defined the problems to be solved and the indifference to Arab interests and views this definition evidences.  Then too, they reflect disconnects in political culture and negotiating style between Israelis, Arabs, and Americans.

To begin with, neither Israel nor the conveners of this proposed new “peace process” have officially acknowledged or responded to the Arab peace initiative of 2002.  This offered normalization of relations with the Jewish state, should Israel make peace with the Palestinians.  Instead, the United States and the Quartet have seemed to pocket the Arab offer, ignore its  precondition that Israelis come to terms with Palestinians, and gone on to levy new demands.

In this connection, making Arab recognition of Israel’s “right to exist” the central purpose of the “peace process” offends Arabs on many levels.  In framing the issue this way, Israel and the United States appear to be asking for something well beyond pragmatic accommodation of the reality of a Jewish state in the Middle East.  To the Arabs, Americans now seem to be insisting on Arab endorsement of the idea of the state of Israel, the means by which that state was established, and the manner in which it has comported itself.  Must Arabs really embrace Zionism before Israel can cease expansion and accept peace?

Arabs and Muslims familiar with European history can accept that European anti-Semitism justified the establishment of a homeland for traumatized European Jews.  But asking them even implicitly to agree that the forcible eviction of Palestinian Arabs was a morally appropriate means to this end is both a nonstarter and seriously off-putting.  So is asking them to affirm that resistance to such displacement was and is sinful.  Similarly, the Arabs see the demand that they recognize a Jewish state with no fixed borders as a clever attempt to extract their endorsement of Israel’s unilateral expansion at Palestinian expense.

The lack of appeal in this approach has been compounded by a longstanding American habit of treating Arab concerns about Israel as a form of anti-Semitism and tuning them out.  Instead of hearing out and addressing Arab views, U.S. peace processors have repeatedly focused on soliciting Arab acts of kindness toward Israel.  They argue that gestures of acceptance can help Israelis overcome their Holocaust-inspired political neuroses and take risks for peace.

Each time this notion of Arab diplomacy as psychotherapy for Israelis has been trotted out, it has been met with incredulity.  To most in the region, it encapsulates the contrast between Washington’s sympathy and solicitude for Israelis and its condescendingly exploitative view of Arabs.  Some see it as a barely disguised appeal for a policy of appeasement of Israel.  Still others suspect an attempt to construct a “peace process” in which Arabs begin to supply Israel with gifts of carrots so that Americans can continue to avoid applying sticks to it.

The effort to encourage Arab generosity as an offset to American political pusillanimity vis-à-vis Israel is ludicrously unpersuasive.  It has failed so many times that it should be obvious that it will not work.  Yet it was a central element of George Mitchell’s mandate for “peace process” diplomacy.  And it appears to have resurfaced as part of the proposed follow-up to tomorrow’s meeting between the parties in Washington.  It should be no puzzle why the Saudis and other Arabs could not be persuaded to join this gathering.

As a last thought before turning to what must be done, let me make a quick comment on a relevant cultural factor.  Arabic has two quite different words that are both translated as “negotiation,” making a distinction that doesn’t exist in either English or Hebrew.  One word, “musaawama,” refers to the no-holds-barred bargaining process that takes place in bazaars between strangers who may never see each other again and who therefore feel no obligation not to scam each other.  Another, “mufaawadhat,” describes the dignified formal discussions about matters of honor and high principle that take place on a basis of mutual respect and equality between statesmen who seek a continuing relationship.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s travel to Jerusalem was a grand act of statesmanship to initiate a process of mufaawadhat – relationship-building between leaders and their polities.  So was the Arab peace initiative of 2002.  It called for a response in kind.  The West muttered approvingly but did not act.   After a while, Israel responded with intermittent, somewhat oblique suggestions of willingness to haggle over terms.  But an offer to bicker over the terms on which a grand gesture has been granted is, not surprisingly, seen as insultingly unresponsive.

I cite this not to suggest that non-Arabs should adopt Arabic canons of thought, but to make a point about diplomatic effectiveness.  To move a negotiating partner in a desired direction, one must understand how that partner understands things and help him to see a way forward that will bring him to an end he has been persuaded to want.  One of the reasons we can't seem to move things as we desire in the Middle East is that we don’t make much effort to understand how others reason and how they rank their interests.  In the case of the Israel-Palestine conundrum, we Americans are long on empathy and expertise about Israel and very, very short on these for the various Arab parties.  The essential militarism of U.S. policies in the Middle East adds to our difficulties.  We have become skilled at killing Arabs.  We have forgotten how to listen to them or persuade them.

I am not myself an “Arabist,” but I am old enough to remember when there were more than a few such people in the American diplomatic service.  These were officers who had devoted themselves to the cultivation of understanding and empathy with Arab leaders so as to be able to convince these leaders that it was in their own interest to do things we saw as in our interest.  If we still have such people, we are hiding them well; we are certainly not applying their skills in our Middle East diplomacy.

This brings me to a few thoughts about the Western and Arab interests at stake in the Holy Land and their implications for what must be done.

In foreign affairs, interests are the measure of all things.  My assumption is that Americans and Norwegians, indeed Europeans in general, share common interests that require peace in the Holy Land.  To my mind, these interests include --- but are, of course, not limited to --- gaining security and acceptance for a democratic state of Israel; eliminating the gross injustices and daily humiliations that foster Arab terrorism against Israel and its foreign allies and supporters, as well as friendly Arab regimes; and reversing the global spread of religious strife and prejudice, including, very likely, a revival of anti-Semitism in the West if current trends are not arrested. None of these aspirations can be fulfilled without an end to the Israeli occupation and freedom  for Palestinians.

Arab states, like Saudi Arabia, also have compelling reasons to want relief from occupation as well as self-determination for Palestinians.  They may not be concerned to preserve Israel’s democracy, as we are, but they share an urgent interest in ending the radicalization of their own populations, curbing the spread of Islamist terrorism, and eliminating the tensions with the West that the conflict in the Holy Land fuels.  These are the concerns that have driven them to propose peace, as they very clearly did eight years ago.   For related reasons, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has made inter-faith dialogue and the promotion of religious tolerance a main focus of his domestic and international policy.

As the custodian of two of Islam’s three sacred places of pilgrimage --- Mecca and Medina --- Saudi Arabia has long transcended its own notorious religious narrow-mindedness to hold the holy places in its charge open to Muslims of all sects and persuasions.  This experience, joined with Islamic piety, reinforces a Saudi insistence on the exemption of religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem from political interference or manipulation.  The Ottoman Turks were careful to ensure freedom of access for worship to adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths when they administered the city.  It is an interest that Jews, Christians, and Muslims share.

There is, in short, far greater congruity between Western and Arab interests affecting the Israel-Palestine dispute than is generally recognized.  This can be the basis for creative diplomacy.  The fact that this has not occurred reflects pathologies of political life in the United States that paralyze the American diplomatic imagination.  Tomorrow’s meeting may well demonstrate that, the election of Barack Obama notwithstanding, the United States is still unfit to manage the achievement of peace between Israel and the Arabs.  If so, it is in the American interest as well as everyone else’s that others become the path-breakers, enlisting the United States as best they can in support of what they achieve, but not expecting America to overcome its incapacity to lead.

Here, I think, there is a lesson to be drawn from the Norwegian experience in the 1990s.  The Clinton Administration was happy to organize the public relations for the Oslo accords but did not take ownership of them.  It did little to protect them from subversion and overthrow, and nothing to insist on their implementation.   Only a peace process that is protected from Israel’s ability to manipulate American politics can succeed.

This brings me to how Europeans and Arabs might work together to realize the objectives both share with most Americans: establishing internationally recognized borders for Israel, securing freedom for the Palestinians, and ending the stimulus to terrorism in the region and beyond it that strife in the Holy Land entails.  I have only four suggestions to present today.  I expect that more ideas will emerge from the discussion period.  A serious effort to cooperate with the Arabs of the sort that Norway is uniquely capable of contriving could lead to the development of still more options for joint or parallel action on behalf of peace.

Now to my suggestions, presented in ascending order of difficulty, from the least to the most controversial.

First, get behind the Arab peace initiative.  Saudi Arab culture frowns on self-promotion and the Kingdom is less gifted than most at public diplomacy.  Political factors inhibit official Arab access to the Israeli press.  The Israeli media have published some – mostly dismissive – commentary on the Arab peace initiative but left most Israelis ignorant of its contents and unfamiliar with its text.  Why not buy space in the Israeli media to give Israelis a chance to read the Arab League declaration and consider the opportunities it presents?  I suspect the Saudis, as well as other members of the Arab League, would consider it constructive for an outside party to do this.  It might facilitate other sorts of cooperation with them in which European capabilities can also compensate for Arab reticence.  The Turks and other non-Arab Muslims should be brought in as full participants in any such efforts.  This wouldn’t be bad for Europe’s relations with both.  By the way, given the U.S. media’s notorious one-sidedness and American ignorance about the Arab peace plan, a well-targeted advertising campaign in the United States might not be a bad idea either.

Second, help create a Palestinian partner for peace. There can be no peace with Israel unless there are officials who are empowered by the Palestinian people to negotiate and ratify it.  Israel has worked hard to divide the Palestinians so as to consolidate its conquest of their homeland.  Saudi Arabia has several times sought to create a Palestinian peace partner for Israel by bringing Fatah, Hamas, and other factions together.  On each occasion, Israel, with U.S. support, has acted to preclude this.  Active organization of non-American Western support for diplomacy aimed at restoring a unity government to the Palestinian Authority could make a big difference.  The Obama Administration would be under strong domestic political pressure to join Israel in blocking a joint European-Arab effort to accomplish this.  Under some circumstances, however, it might welcome being put to this test.

Third, reaffirm and enforce international law. The UN Security Council is charged with enforcing the rule of law internationally.  In the case of the Middle East, however, the Council’s position at the apex of the international system has served to erode and subvert the ideal of a rule-bound international order.  Almost forty American vetoes have prevented the application to the Israeli occupying authorities of the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremberg precedents, human rights conventions, and relevant Security Council directives.  American diplomacy on behalf of the Jewish state has silenced the collective voice of the international community as Israel has illegally colonized and annexed broad swaths of occupied territory, administered collective punishment to a captive people, assassinated their political leaders, massacred civilians, barred UN investigators, defied mandatory Security Council resolutions, and otherwise engaged in scofflaw behavior, usually with only the flimsiest of legally irrelevant excuses.

If ethnic cleansing, settlement activity, and the like are not just “unhelpful” but illegal, the international community should find a way to say so, even if the UN Security Council cannot.  Otherwise, the most valuable legacy of Atlantic civilization --- its vision of the rule of law --- will be lost.  When one side to a dispute is routinely exempted  from principles, all exempt themselves, and the law of the jungle prevails.  The international community needs collectively to affirm that Israel, both as occupier and as regional military hegemon, is legally accountable internationally for its actions.  If the UN General Assembly cannot “unite for peace” to do what an incapacitated Security Council cannot, member states should not shrink from working in conference outside the UN framework.  All sides in the murder and mayhem in the Holy Land and beyond need to understand that they are not above the law.  If this message is firmly delivered and enforced, there will be a better chance for peace.

Fourth, set a deadline linked to an ultimatum. Accept that the United States will frustrate any attempt by the UN Security Council to address the continuing impasse between Israel and the Palestinians.  Organize a global conference outside the UN system to coordinate a decision to inform the parties to the dispute that if they cannot reach agreement in a year, one of two solutions will be imposed.  Schedule a follow-up conference for  a year later.  The second conference would consider whether to recommend universal recognition of a Palestinian state in the area beyond Israel’s 1967 borders or recognition of Israel’s achievement of de jure as well as de facto sovereignty throughout Palestine (requiring Israel to grant all governed by it citizenship and equal rights at pain of international sanctions, boycott, and disinvestment).  Either formula would force the parties to make a serious effort to strike a deal or to face the consequences of their recalcitrance.  Either formula could be implemented directly by the states members of the international community.   Admittedly, any serious deadline would provoke a political crisis in Israel and lead to diplomatic confrontation with the United States as well as Israel, despite the Obama Administration itself having proclaimed a one-year deadline in order to entice the Palestinians to tomorrow’s talks.  Yet both Israel and the United States would benefit immensely from peace with the Palestinians.

Time is running out.  The two-state solution may already have been overtaken by Israeli land grabs and settlement activity.  Another cycle of violence is likely in the offing.  If so, it will not be local or regional, but global in its reach.  Israel’s actions are delegitimizing and isolating it even as they multiply the numbers of those in the region and beyond who are determined to destroy it.  Palestinian suffering is a reproach to all humanity that posturing alone cannot begin to alleviate.  It has become a cancer on the Islamic body politic.  It is infecting every extremity of the globe with the rage against injustice that incites terrorism.

It is time to try new approaches.  That is why the question of whether there is a basis for expanded diplomatic cooperation between Europeans and Arabs is such a timely one.  And it is why I was pleased as well as honored to have been asked to set the stage for a discussion of this issue.

Israel-Palestine Analysis: Can Ramallah's "Security" Card Advance the Talks? (Yenidunya)

After the killing of four Israeli settlers and wounded of two others in the West Bank on 31 August, the Palestinian Authority arrested dozens of Hamas members. However, Hamas' war on the peace process has continued through an attempt to legitimise the targeting of the settlers.

On Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah praised Hamas for the West Bank attacks and said, "This is the way to free Jerusalem and Palestine." Supported byIran's statements calling the participants of peace talks in Washington "traitors", Hamas sharpened its tone.

Israeli settlers in the West Bank are legitimate targets since they are an army in every sense of the word, senior Hamas official Ezzat al-Rashk said on Saturday:

They are now a real army in every sense of the word, with more than 500,000 automatic weapons at their disposal, on top of the basic protection by the [Israel Defense Forces].

Israel-Palestine Talks: So What is a Settlement? (Stone)
Israel-Palestine: An Interview with Hamas Leader Khaled Meshaal (Narwani)

In response, Ramallah arrested dozens of Hamas members and vowed to hit them with the iron fist.

Hamas' action, rather than undermining the talks, may have strengthened the Palestinian Authority's hand in the negotiations. Officials from Ramallah are sending message to Washington that extra pressure on the PA damage the chance for peace and security of the region.

On Sunday, the chief PA negotiator Saeb Eerekat said that if his organisation and Israel "sign[ed] an endgame agreement on all core issues, I believe we will bring Gaza back." Then Erekat added that he feared the "Palestinian Authority will dissolve if we fail to reach an endgame agreement".

Talking to Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam on Monday morning, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas took the message further by linking it to a core demand: "We clarified that [the Palestinian Authority] would not agree to continued Israeli presence, military or civil, within a future Palestinian state." Message? want peace and security, it is that Palestinian state, existing peacefully alongside Israel, that should have a monopoly over the use of power in its terrority.

Ramallah had already warned that they would leave the negotiation table if the 10-month-freeze in the settlements did not continue. Its latest deployment of peace and security will be put to two Israeli groups: a relatively "practical" camp in giving concessions but conceding on security and a relatively "conservative" one that moving strategically to capitalise on the failure of the talks. The former one is the alliance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak alliance and the latter is the team of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Shas leader Eli Yishai.

Lieberman has already said that the direct talks with the Palestinians would not bring a general peace agreement. He is backed by Yishai, who recently said that the Israeli forces lost against 2000 Hezbollah men "because Israel's people had distanced themselves from God". On the other side, Netanyahu says that creative thinking can remove obstacles on the way to Mideast peace and Ehud Barak fills in the details by saying that Israel will neither cancel the 10-month curb on settlement expansion nor extend it before getting a concession from the other side on borders.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials are playing another card on the negotiation table. Israel's ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, said on Friday that West Jerusalem is offering the Palestinians gestures, in place of extending the settlement moratorium, to keep them in peace negotiations. Indeed, the move seizes upon the PA's "security" theme, with the gestures including the removal of checkpoints and transfer of greater control of the West Bank to Ramallah.

Yet all of this may be overshadowed by the news from diplomatic circles who said on Sunday that Israel is considering calling off the meeting with the PA's negotiating team, scheduled to be held in Jericho on Monday, after news of the discussion was leaked to the press. [Editor's Note: The meeting has been cancelled.]

So, before the scheduled high-level meeting in Sharm-e-Sheikh on 14 September, the question is put forth: can the Palestinian Authority's own "security" card, ironically brought into play by its rival Hamas, offer a way forward in talks or will the sticking points over Israeli settlements --- the moratorium on West Bank expansion ends in less than three weeks --- ensure that there is no movement?

Israel-Palestine: An Interview with Hamas Leader Khaled Meshaal (Narwani)

On the eve of this week's direct talks between the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority, Sharmine Narwani spoke with Hamas political director Khaled Meshaal in Damascus:

SN: The peace process has been going on for 19 years -- what in your view has been the major reason for its failure thus far?

KM: Three reasons. First of all, Israel does not want peace. They talk about peace but they are not ready to pay the price of peace. The second reason is that the Palestinian negotiator does not have strong cards in his hand to push the peace process forward. The third reason is that the international community does not have the capability or the desire to push Israel towards peace.

Israel-Palestine Analysis: The Lopsided Table at the Direct Talks (Agha/Malley)

SN: On Thursday, direct talks begin again between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel -- the US has worked hard to bring this about. What are your thoughts on this round, the US role, and prospects for a breakthrough?

KM: These negotiations are taking place for American and Israeli considerations, calculations and interests only. There are no interests at all for us as Palestinians or Arabs. That's why the negotiations can only be conducted under American orders, threats, and pressure exerted on the PA and some Arab countries.

The negotiations are neither supported nationally nor are they perceived as legitimate by the authoritative Palestinian institutions. They are rejected by most of the Palestinian factions, powers, personalities, elites, and regular people -- that is why these "peace talks" are destined for failure.

This represents a perfect example of how the US administration deals with the Arab-Israeli conflict --- how American policy appears to be based on temporary troubleshooting instead of working toward finding a real and lasting solution.

Consecutive US administrations have adopted this same policy of "managing conflict" instead of "resolving conflict". This can be useful for American tactical and short-term purposes, but it is very dangerous on the long-term and the strategic levels. This approach will ultimately prove catastrophic for the region.

SN: There is debate about whether Hamas accepts the premise of a two-state solution -- your language seems often vague and heavily nuanced. I want to ask if you could clarify, but I am also curious as to whether it is even worth accepting a two-state solution today when there has been so much land confiscation and settlement activity by Israel in the West Bank and East Jerusalem?

KM: Hamas does accept a Palestinian state on the lines of 1967 --- and does not accept the two-state solution.

SN: What is the difference between the two?

KM: There is big difference between these two. I am a Palestinian. I am a Palestinian leader. I am concerned with accomplishing what the Palestinian people are looking for --- which is to get rid of the occupation, attain liberation and freedom, and establish the Palestinian state on the lines of 1967. Talking about Israel is not relevant to me --- I am not concerned about it. It is an occupying state, and I am the victim. I am the victim of the occupation; I am not concerned with giving legitimacy to this occupying country. The international community can deal with this (Israeli) state; I am concerned with the Palestinian people. I am as a Palestinian concerned with establishing the Palestinian state only.

SN: Can you clarify further? As a Palestinian leader of the Resistance you have to give people an idea of what you aspire to -- and how you expect to attain it?

KM: For us, the 20 years of experience with these peace negotiations --- and the failure of it --- very much convinces us today that the legitimate rights of Palestinians will be only be gained by snatching them, not by being gifted with them at the negotiating table. Neither Netanyahu nor any other Israeli leader will ever simply gift us a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority has watered down all its demands and is merely asking for a frame of reference to the 1967 borders in negotiations, but Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to accept even this most basic premise for peace. Nor will America or the international community gift us with a state --- we have to depend on ourselves and help ourselves.

As a Palestinian leader, I tell my people that the Palestinian state and Palestinian rights will not be accomplished through this peace process --- but it will be accomplished by force, and it will be accomplished by resistance. I tell them that through this bitter experience of long negotiations with the Israelis, we got nothing -- we could not even get the 1967 solution. I tell them the only option in front of us today is to take this by force and by resistance. And the Palestinian people today realize this -- yes, it has a steep price, but there is no other option for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people tried the peace process option but the result was nothing.

SN: While Hamas has not been a participant in the peace process, many of the Arab nations have pushed for these very negotiations. So then why have they persisted with these talks if most of them think the process is futile?

KM: This bloc (of Arab nations) which has pursued the peace process strategy with Israel is ready to continue with habitual and continuous negotiations without even a single outcome. They will continue with this peace process with Israel because they are not ready to turn to the other option.

SN: And the other option is?

KM: The confrontation of Israel. The other option is resistance --- which will gain the strong cards to pressurize Israel. In short, a weak party (this Arab bloc) will adopt a course of action though he knows that he will see no positive outcome, as he does not have his own strength and has no strong cards. At the same time there is also a great pressure on The Resistance from America and Israel in order to prevent our success. If the peace process is blocked without hope, there is no option for the Palestinian people -- for the people of the region -- but the option of continuing with resistance, even though they realize the pressure that will come, and even though they realize there is a conspiracy against The Resistance.

SN: Well one of these Arab nations that keeps pushing for the peace process is Egypt. Egypt is also a party to the siege of Gaza. And yet Hamas accepts the decision of the Arab League to choose Egypt to mediate reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Why did Hamas accept Egypt as a mediator?

KM: There is no doubt we have differences with Egypt regarding many of its political positions and decisions. But the reasons for Egypt's mediation of reconciliation talks are different. The first is that Egypt is a major country in the region --- it is not easy for other nations to just bypass them on any issue. The second reason goes back to geopolitics and the history between Palestine and Egypt, which make Egypt more vested in the Palestinian issue than virtually any other country.

The third reason is that the reconciliation itself consists of two parties --- Hamas and Fatah. No mediator in this reconciliation effort will succeed unless both groups agree to their participation. Fatah simply refuses the intervention of any other Arab country as this will anger Egypt. We in Hamas do not refuse Egypt as the caretaker for the mediation -- what is important for us is not whether we have X or Y as the mediator, what is important to us is that reconciliation itself has to be advanced in a correct way. And it was evident in the last round that the main impediment to this reconciliation is American interference.

SN: But then does reconciliation become impossible if Egyptians always cave to US pressure?

KM: Yes, there is an American pressure where Egypt is concerned. Mahmoud Abbas is also acquiescing to that same pressure and this undoubtedly makes the reconciliation more difficult.

SN: Why, in your view, does the West not engage directly with Hamas and make you a partner to the solution? Surely the only path to a comprehensive peace is a solution agreed upon by all major parties to a conflict?

KM: The West is trying --- either because it lacks the capability or desire --- to get somewhere in the region through pressuring the Palestinian side, and not pressuring the Israeli side. The Americans are still convinced today that if they continue pressuring the Palestinian and Arab negotiators --- and not get Israel angry --- they can reach some breakthrough through this process. The time is coming when they will reach a dead-end because the Palestinian people will simply not agree to any solution which will not provide for all their legitimate rights.

SN: Well some Palestinians would. It appears that the Palestinian Authority is prepared to strike a deal that does not address the Palestinian refugees' right of return. But could that be a real solution?

KM: I am talking about a majority of Palestinians --- not the few. The Palestinian Authority cannot reach a solution with the Israelis without the approval of the majority. Any rightful representatives of the people will advocate for, and not disregard, the Palestinian people's ambitions and legitimate rights. In short, the West will discover sooner or later that any solution that will not fulfill the rights of the Palestinian people will not be successful and will not be implemented. In that very particular instance, when they finally decide to respect the desires and ambitions of the Palestinian people, they will decide to engage with the Hamas movement.

To clarify... Though we are open to them, the key for the success of any solution is not through the West or the Americans --- we believe that the key to success will come through pursuing our national rights. The change will be made from within the region --- whether America is satisfied or not --- because anyone who is awaiting change from the West today will not get any change.

SN: There are rumors that Hamas has been secretly talking to US officials for about two years --- is there any truth to this?

KM: We don't have any interest in concealing official meetings if they take place. Essentially speaking, there are no official or direct talks with the US administration, except for some meetings that happened at the side of some conference in Doha with low-profile individuals, and we do not consider these direct or official talks with the administration.

But we do consider some of these meetings as indirect talks --- we know very well that some non-US officials we meet with report to the administration. And yes, we have met some former Democrat and Republican officials, and we know that they too report to the administration. We are interested in meeting with the Americans and the West, but we do not beg for these meetings and we are not in a hurry.

Israel-Palestine Video & Transcript: Clinton-Abbas-Netanyahu Statements and Meeting (3 September)

Video 1: US Secretary of Statement Hillary Clinton

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NEW Israel-Palestine Analysis: “Security” Moves to the Front in Direct Talks (Yenidunya)
Israel-Palestine Transcript: George Mitchell on the Direct Talks (3 September)
Israel-Palestine Video & Transcript: Clinton-Abbas-Netanyahu Statements and Meeting (3 September)

Video 2: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

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Video 3: Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Good morning and welcome to the State Department here in the Benjamin Franklin Room. I want to thank all of you for joining us today to re-launch negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I know the decision to sit at this table was not easy. We understand the suspicion and skepticism that so many feel, born out of years of conflict and frustrated hopes. The tragic act of terror on Tuesday and the terrorist shooting yesterday are yet additional reminders of the human costs of this conflict. But by being here today, you each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change, and moving toward a future of peace and dignity that only you can create. So, thank you. Thank you for your courage and your commitment.

I also want to recognize the support of Egypt and Jordan, which have long been crucial partners for peace. And we appreciate the support of the Arab League for the vision of a comprehensive peace embodied in these talks.

I also wish to thank former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the special representative of the Quartet, for his leadership and efforts. Mr. Blair’s work in support of the institutional and economic development of the Palestinian people is critical to the success of these peace efforts. As we’ve said all along, progress on this track must go hand-in-hand with progress in negotiations.

And let me also, as represented by this overwhelming turnout of representatives of the press from across the world, express our gratitude to many friends and allies who have worked so hard for progress toward our shared goals. To those who criticize this process, who stand on the sidelines and say no, I ask you to join us in this effort. As President Obama said yesterday, we hear often from those voices in the region who insist that this is a top priority and yet do very little to support the work that would actually bring about a Palestinian state. Now is the opportunity to start contributing to progress.

For our part, the United States has pledged its full support for these talks, and we will be an active and sustained partner. We believe, Prime Minister and President, that you can succeed, and we understand that this is in the national security interests of the United States that you do so. But we cannot and we will not impose a solution. Only you can make the decisions necessary to reach an agreement and secure a peaceful future for the Israeli and Palestinian people.

Now, for many of us in this room, this is not the first trip to the negotiating table. I look around and I see veterans from all three of us. We’ve been here before and we know how difficult the road ahead will be. There undoubtedly will be obstacles and setbacks. Those who oppose the cause of peace will try in every way possible to sabotage this process, as we have already seen this week.

But those of you here today, especially the veterans who are here today, you have returned because you have seen the cost of continued conflict. You know that your people deserve the benefits of peace. The core issues at the center of these negotiations – territory, security, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, and others – will get no easier if we wait. Nor will they resolve themselves.

Success will take patience, persistence, and leadership. The true test of these negotiations will not be their first day and it will not be their last day. It will be all those long days in the middle, when the path toward peace seems hidden, and the enemies of peace work to keep it obscured. But we are convinced that if you move forward in good faith and do not waver in your commitment to succeed on behalf of your people, we can resolve all of the core issues within one year.

You have taken the first steps. You have both embraced the idea of a two-state solution, which is the only path toward a just, lasting peace that ensures security and dignity for both Israelis and Palestinians. I fervently believe that the two men sitting on either side of me, that you are the leaders who can make this long, cherished dream a reality. And we will do everything possible to help you. This is a time for bold leadership and a time for statesmen who have the courage to make difficult decisions.

Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. President, you have the opportunity to end this conflict and the decades of enmity between your peoples once and for all.

And I want to conclude by just saying a few words directly to the people of the region. Your leaders may be sitting at the negotiating table, but you are the ones who will ultimately decide the future. You hold the future of your families, your communities, your people, this region, in your hands. For the efforts here to succeed, we need your support and your patience. Today, as ever, people have to rally to the cause of peace, and peace needs champions on every street corner and around every kitchen table. I understand very well the disappointments of the past. I share them. But I also know we have it within our power today to move forward into a different kind of future, and we cannot do this without you.

So now let me turn to the prime minister, who will make his remarks, followed by the president.

PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU: Thank you, Madam Secretary. I want to thank you and President Obama for the many efforts that you have invested to bring us to this moment. My friend, Senator Mitchell, thank you for your consistent effort, for you and your staff’s efforts to bring a lasting and durable peace to our region.

President Abbas, as I said yesterday in our meeting at the White House with the President of the United States, the President of Egypt and the King of Jordan, I see in you a partner for peace. Together, we can lead our people to a historic future that can put an end to claims and to conflict.

Now, this will not be easy. A true peace, a lasting peace, would be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides – from the Israeli side, from the Palestinian side, from my side, and from your side. But the people of Israel, and I as their prime minister, are prepared to walk this road and to go a long way, a long way in a short time, to achieve a genuine peace that will bring our people security, prosperity, and good neighbors – good neighbors, to shape a different reality between us. That’s going to involve serious negotiations, because there are many issues in contention. The core issues that you outlined, Madam Secretary, are things that we have disagreements on, but we have to get from disagreement to agreement – a big task.

Now, two years ago, or rather, a year ago, in a speech I gave in Bar-Ilan University in Israel, I tried to outline the two pillars of peace that I think will enable us to resolve all the outstanding issues. And these are legitimacy and security. Just as you expect us to be ready to recognize a Palestinian state as the nation-state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. There are more than a million non-Jews living in Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people, who have full civil rights. There is no contradiction between a nation-state that guarantees the national rights of the majority and guaranteeing the civil rights, the full civil equality, of the minority.

I think this mutual recognition between us is indispensible to clarifying to our two people – our two peoples that the conflict between us is over. I said, too, yesterday that a real peace must take into account the genuine security needs of Israel that have changed. They have changed since I was last here. You spoke about the veterans who are gathered here at this table. We’ve been here before. We fashioned the Hebron agreement and the Wye agreement. This was 12 years ago. In these 12 years, new forces have risen in our region, and we’ve had the rise of Iran and its proxies and the rise of missile warfare. And so a peace agreement must take into account a security arrangement against these real threats that have been directed against my country, threats that have been realized with 12,000 rockets that have been fired on our territory, and terrorist attacks that go unabated.

President Abbas, I am fully aware and I respect your people’s desire for sovereignty. I am convinced that it’s possible to reconcile that desire with Israel’s need for security. We anticipate difficult days before we achieve the much-desired peace. The last two days have been difficult. They were exceedingly difficult for my people and for me. Blood has been shed, the blood of innocents: four innocent Israelis gunned down brutally, two people wounded, seven new orphans. President Abbas, you condemned this killing. That’s important. No less important is to find the killers, and equally to make sure that we can stop other killers. They seek to kill our people, kill our state, kill our peace. And so achieving security is a must. Security is the foundation of peace. Without it, peace will unravel. With it, peace can be stable and enduring.

President Abbas, history has given us a rare opportunity to end the conflict between our peoples, a conflict that has been lasting for almost a century. It’s an unprecedented opportunity to end a century conflict. Well, there have been some examples in history, but not many. But we face such a task to end the bloodshed and to secure a future of promise and hope for our children and grandchildren.

In the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis, there is a story of how two brothers in conflict – brothers, Isaac and Ishmael – joined together to bury their father Abraham, our father, the father of our two peoples. Isaac, the father of the Hebrew nation, Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation, joined together at a moment of pain and mutual respect to bury Abraham in Hebron.

I can only pray, and I know that millions around the world, millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians and many other millions around the world, pray that the pain that we have experienced – you and us – in the last hundred years of conflict will unite us not only in a moment of peace around a table of peace here in Washington, but will enable us to leave from here and to forge a durable, lasting peace for generations. Shalom. Salaam. Peace.

PRESIDENT ABBAS: (Via interpreter) In the name of God, Madam Secretary Hillary Clinton, Mr. Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, ladies and gentlemen, let me, in the first place, once again, extend my thanks to President Barack Obama and to Secretary Clinton and Senator George Mitchell and their teams for the unrelenting effort they exerted during the last month in order to re-launch the negotiation on the final status between the PLO and the Israeli Government.

Ladies and gentlemen, now that you are launching these negotiations today, we do know how hard are the hurdles and obstacles we are facing and we will face during these negotiations, negotiations that should, within a year, lead to an agreement that will bring the peace – the just peace of international law – international legality between our two people, the Israelis and the Palestinians. What’s encouraging as well and what’s giving us confidence is that the road is clear in front of us in order to reach peace. The road of international law is represented by the National Security Council and the General Assembly of United Nations, the Quartet, and the positions of the European Union, of the Arab Follow-up Committee. And all these position clearly for us represent international unanimity on the references, the bases, and the goals of the negotiations.

Ladies and gentlemen, also we’re not starting from scratch, because we had many rounds of negotiations between the PLO and the Israeli Government, and we studied all horizons and we also defined and determined all the pending issues. We will work on all the final status issues – Jerusalem, the settlements, the borders, security, water, and also releasing the detainees – in order to end the occupation that started 1967, the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and in order to create the state of Palestine that lives side by side with the state of Israel, in order to end the conflict and end the historic demands in the Middle East, and to bring peace and security for the two people and all the peoples of the region.

Once again, we want to state our commitment to follow on all our engagement, including security and ending incitement. And we call on the Israeli Government to move forward with its commitment to end all settlement activities and completely lift the embargo over the Gaza Strip and end all form of incitement.

Also, with respect to security, you do know, ladies and gentlemen, that we have security apparatuses that are still being built, that are still young, but that are doing everything that is expected from them. Yesterday, we condemned the operations that were carried. We did not only condemn them, but we also followed on the perpetrators and we were able to find the car that was used and to arrest those who sold and bought the car. And we will continue all our effort to take security measures in order to find the perpetrators. We consider that security is of essence, is vital for both of us, and we cannot allow for anyone to do anything that would undermine your security and our security. And we therefore do not only condemn, but we keep on working seriously. Security is fundamental and very sensitive.

Ladies and gentlemen, once again, I want to state today what I said at the White House meeting yesterday in front of President Obama, President Mubarak, and King Abdullah. And we do believe that their participation was of essence and was very strong and represented the belief of Jordan and Egypt in peace. These two states alongside with other Arab states do believe that peace is a vital interest not only for the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also for all the peoples in the region and for the United States, as President Obama said when he said that the creation of a Palestinian state, or the two-state vision, is a vital national American interest.

The PLO participates in these negotiations with good intentions and seriousness and is adamant about bringing just peace that guarantees freedom and independence for the Palestinian people who is attached to his land and his rights, the fair solution of the problem of the refugees according to international resolutions. We are attached to the international resolutions. We do not want anything above and we do not want anything under. We want to have a new era in our region, an era that brings peace, justice, security, and prosperity for all.

And let me say here that in 1993, on the 9^th of September of this year, we signed, Mr. Prime Minister, what is called a document of mutual recognition between us and Israel, between former President Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and this document was signed. And in this document, we give enough so – to show that our intentions are good, our intentions with respect to recognizing the state of Israel. And you do know, sir, that in Camp David, also commitments were required from us. And when we came back with President Clinton, we carried on with all our commitments because we respect our commitments and our agreements.

Therefore, we stand from here to reach a peace that will end the conflict, that will meet all the demands, and start a new era between the Israeli and the Palestinian people.

Thank you, and peace be among you.

SECRETARY CLINTON: I want to thank both leaders for their statements. And I also want to thank the members of their respective teams who are here in both delegations. The people sitting here have worked very hard, some for many years, and they certainly have traveled a long way to be here and we’re grateful for their commitment as well.

Today, President Obama and I, Senator Mitchell and our entire team, are prepared to do whatever we can to help you succeed. And we believe in you and we support you. So again, let me thank you for being here, and now it’s time to get to work.

Thank you all very much.

Israel-Palestine Talks: Will Confidence-Building Measures for Ramallah Work? (Yenidunya)

Today brings the first meetings in Washington between US officials and Israeli and Palestinian delegations, with direct talks between the Israeli Government and Palestinian Authority starting Thursday. The preliminary talk has begun, however.

Having met with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak held a secret meeting with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas in Amman.

Jordan's King Abdullah is a key broker as the head of an Arab country which is at peace with Israel. He told Barak to be an honest partner, giving answers on central issues at the start of talks.

Gaza Latest: UN’s Flotilla Interviews Start, More Aid Ships?, Worry Over Hamas
Israel-Palestine: Were 4 Settlers Killed to Sabotage Talks? (Yenidunya)

But then the question: why Barak's secret discussion with Abbas? The Jerusalem Post says that two leaders discussed the further easing of security conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank as a confidence-building measure.

Haaretz has reported recently, from sources “close to the Obama Administration”, that Washington will urge Palestinians to soften their stance on an Israeli proposal for continued construction in large settlement blocs but not in isolated settlements. In response to this “concession”, land from Area C, which is both governed and controlled by Israel, will be transferred to Area B which is controlled by Israelis but governed by Palestinians.

Haaretz also reported in July that Netanyahu was thinking of some confidence-building measures such as enabling the Palestinian police to broaden its activities beyond Area A, which is under the Palestinian Authority's security control, setting up six new police stations in Area B, where the PA is currently responsible only for civilian affairs, and possibly having some authority over civilian matters in Area C.

However, Fatah spokesman Ahmed Assaf dismissed on Monday demands that the Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state. He said such a demand was in violation of international law and threatened to sabotage the peace talks.

So to Washington: will the “confidence-building measures” be discussed to get some Palestinian movement on the issue of Israeli settlements? Or is this an unrealistic plan given larger demands that may be on the table?