On Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will sit down at a table and launch direct talks toward a negotiated settlement of the long-running conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Although President Obama has been working to make this happen since the day he got into office, his success has been generally greeted with yawns by the overwhelming majority of observers (including this one). So what chances are there for these talks to be successful?
If by “successful” we mean that an agreement to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank will be reached within a year, the chances are slim to none. But if we define success as making progress and having the two parties on track for such an agreement farther down the line, the chances improve.
For the President, the launching of the talks and keeping them going through the mid-term elections in November is the initial goal. It’s already become obvious, in the wake of the terrorist attack near Hebron yesterday, that even that modest goal won’t be easy to attain.
But if the President can keep the talks going with reports of at least minor progress through Election Day, he can then proceed to take a more active role in the talks and perhaps move things along more quickly.
That won’t be easy. Hamas, which is determined to send a message that no peace agreement is worth paper it’s written on if they are left on the sidelines (a point that is probably correct these days) has promised that there will be more attacks like yesterday’s and each one will give the opponents of peace on both sides a fresh opportunity to scuttle the talks.
And that is where Obama will need to bring his personal force to bear. He needs to keep the parties at the table and engaged for the next ten weeks or so and then move to the next gear and get some tangible results in the ensuing months.
A bit of hope that there could be daylight in DC around these talks came from an unlikely source, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak today when he told the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz that Israel would be willing to split Jerusalem along the lines suggested by the Clinton Parameters, written by President Bill Clinton in 2000.
That could represent an impetus for the Palestinians to pursue talks with much more vigor, buoyed by the belief that they might get somewhere. It might also, if the Palestinian people become convinced Israel is sincere about such an offer, give Abu Mazen the support in the street that he sorely lacks right now as well as undermining Hamas’ efforts to derail the talks.
Those are a lot of ifs, and they depend entirely on Israel’s sincerity. Barak can say what he likes, but it is Netanyahu that leads a far-right coalition government, many of the members of which refuse any compromise on Jerusalem. So much remains to be seen, but if Barak was doing more than blowing smoke, there could be more reason to hope than many of us had thought.
Comments
It won't matter. Israel has given the Arab animals almost everything they have wanted. They always give in and give back land they legally won in wars the animals started. The animals will keep right on murdering innocent Israeli's regardless of what concessions they receive. That is their nature. They raise their children to be murderers and bombers and to kill as many Israeli's as possible. The killing will stop when the animals quit killing Jews.
you should not refer tp the palestiians as animals....animals only kill to eat....arabs kill out of hate,and by islams dictates...animals are far and away superior
you need to stop slandering animals
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