It is certainly true that the 1990s was characterized by a lot of talk and not enough action. At the end of the day the Israelis and Palestinians came very close to a final status solution when President Bill Clinton convened Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000. There are multiple narratives about what went wrong. The one that finds most resonance in Washington blames Arafat for not signing an agreement that would have created a Palestinian state on what constituted 95 percent of the West Bank. Lack of courage, vision, statesmanship and the endless hope that he could get a better deal are the common factors that critics of Arafat point out. The Palestinian side, of course, has a different version of the story. They focus on the fact that the territories given to them were not contiguous and that there were major problems in terms of establishing full sovereignty over them.The Camp David talks failed. The rest is history, a bloody history. The first ten years of the new century started with the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, followed by the invasion of Iraq and chaos in the Middle East. Israel waged two wars, one in 1996 in Lebanon and the last one in 2009/2010 against Gaza. Iran is now getting closer to nuclear capacity. The Arab world is as divided as ever. To the additional divisions, one now needs to add the Sunni-Shiite dimension. In short, we have witnessed a “lost decade” in the Middle East. Those who blamed the Oslo Peace Process for creating too much process and not enough peace, now know that having “no process and no peace” is even worse.
It is with such mixed sentiments that many in Washington will welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for a new round of direct talks. Hopes are not very high, but no one has the luxury to complain about the abundance of such opportunities to talk. In fact, this is the first time in the last two years that the two leaders will meet. There has been no process and no peace since 20008. Can we now declare a new peace process at work? It is too early to tell. But, as Winston Churchill famously said in defense of talking rather than fighting, “To jaw jaw is always better than to war war.”
Martin Indyk, former US Ambassador to Israel and my colleague at Brookings, recently argued that he is optimistic talks could succeed for four reasons. First, violence is down compared to the years of the intifada. This is especially true for the Israeli part of the equation. “The number of Israeli civilians killed has dropped from an intifada high of 452 in 2002 to six last year and only two so far this year.” Second, settlement activity is also down. The moratorium ends in September, but Netanyahu is expected to show restraint. Indyk argues that Netanyahu could confine settlements only to areas that will be absorbed into Israel in the final agreement, while offering changes that would make a real difference to West Bank Palestinians, such as stopping Israeli Army incursions into areas under Palestinian control and allowing the Palestinian police to patrol in most West Bank villages.
Third, the two sides are tired of fighting. Exhaustion is an important factor. In case his Likud and coalition partners drag their feet, Netanyahu could turn to the center-left in the Knesset to ratify a peace agreement. And finally, 17 years after the Oslo Peace Agreements were signed, there is not much to negotiate. “If an independent Palestinian state is to be established, the zone of agreement is clear and the necessary trade-offs are already known.”
In short, Indyk, who is not a naive person when it comes to chances of peace in the Middle East, sees a major window of opportunity. “The negotiating environment is better suited to peacemaking today than it has been at any point in the last decade. The prospects for peace depend now on the willpower of the leaders.” There is only one more problem: events that can derail the whole process. After all, the Middle East is very good at never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
