This piece was first posted at TPM Cafe.
The Arab Foreign Ministers meeting today in Cairo gave a begrudging nod to the Palestinians to resume indirect peace negotiations with Israel, suggesting that they were willing to give US efforts another chance but that the talks should initially be limited to four months.
PLO Leader Abbas has been calling for clear steps to be taken in advance of resumed talks in order to avoid the pitfalls of the past, including a comprehensive settlement freeze, clear terms of reference for the talks, and a timeline for their completion. Having been rebuffed on these points, the Arab Foreign Ministers’ decision offered a way of providing political cover for PLO Leader Abbas to say ‘yes’ to the US-proposal of beginning indirect talks.
The Fatah/PLO leadership will undoubtedly though face further domestic political fallout for resuming any kinds of talks under these conditions, especially in light of recent Israeli government announcements regarding religious sites in Hebron and Bethlehem, and building expansion in East Jerusalem. Hamas has already seized on this latest PR gift.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has been expressing his support for resuming negotiations without any conditions for several months. He has though in parallel seemed to shrink the potential, substantive content of those negotiations through a number of policy statements, including by declaring Israel would retain the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank, by ruling out any Palestinian political status in East Jerusalem (which has been a mainstay of all official and unofficial peace plans), and by insisting on continued settlement expansion.
Although the original US aim was to convene direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, the indirect or proximity format is worth embracing as a blessing in disguise. It makes the talks less susceptible to daily Palestinian-Israeli tensions as it will be the US that is sitting with the respective parties and that will have a far greater role in guiding and defining the contours of those talks as they take shape.
In any case, progress will likely be a product of the influence America and other third parties can bring to bear on the Israelis and Palestinians respectively rather than any direct Israeli-Palestinian meeting of minds.
If the talks don’t immediately go down in flames, then the challenge for Special Envoy Mitchell and the Obama administration will be how to advance the substance of the negotiations as and when they encounter entrenched positions (notably Israel’s addiction to settlements and its continued presence in the Palestinian territories), whether the US advances its own bridging proposals, the quality of those proposals, and how it responds to anticipated foot-dragging or nay-saying by either party.
In addition, the US will need to take a new look at how it related to Gaza, Palestinian divisions, and broader regional tensions, as my colleague Amjad Atallah and myself explain in this American Prospect piece.
When the US called for a full settlement freeze, including East Jerusalem, and was met with an Israeli ‘no,’ there was no indication of having gamed out what to do next. As talks resume, the Mitchell team will this time have to be planning several steps ahead.
