Nick Autiello, Contributor
Ideology: Moderate Republican | Writing from: Orlando, Florida
In a conversation with Israeli ambassador Michael Oren right before Christmas, I asked when we could expect something, anything, to happen that would move the Middle East peace process along in the coming year. According to Oren, Egypt is a country of great prestige in the Arab world and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has a leading role to play in the peace process. Oren’s response to me was echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today when he called for a peace summit in Egypt with President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas. Netanyahu has won praise from senior members of the Egyptian government in recent days, and there seems to be an all around feeling that the peace process may finally be moving forward.
On the American side, President Obama promised it would be one of his top foreign policy priorities, and indeed he made a small effort upon his inauguration. But most of the first year of the Obama White House has been spend chiding the Israelis for procreating. According to reports, the administration is working closely with the Egyptians to move the peace process forward. US Mideast envoy George Mitchell will be on his way to the region on January 7th to begin to set the groundwork for what will hopefully be the last and ultimately successful effort to establish a Palestinian state.
Over the last several months, the issue of settlements has been a point of contentions between Israel and the United States. With a growing and increasingly prosperous population, Israelis living in the West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, have had to build more homes. This has caused expected and not unreasonable ire among the Palestinians, and the United States under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have sided with the Palestinians, calling on the Israeli’s to stop building settlements in the West Bank. The Israelis have largely refused.
To overcome this impasse, Mitchell is poised to offer the Palestinians a two-year plan that will lead to a final status determination for the Palestinian state in an effort to bring Abbas back to the table. But will this be enough? More importantly, how can the international community ignore the reality that Palestinian society is deeply divided? The PLO is the legitimate government in the West Bank, but in Gaza, the heart of most of the tensions as of late, is ruled by Hamas. Yet it would be utterly irresponsible for the United States to negotiate peace with terrorists.
Therein lies the primary difficulty with negotiating peace with the Palestinians. Once the borders have been scaled back to their pre-1967 locations, and once the status of Jerusalem has been determined and even after concessions on settlements have been won, fundamental divisions within Palestinian society may doom the final decision. It will be the hallmark of a successful peace process if these issues are addressed early and often. Naturally, the simplest solution would be to have Hamas lose the next election in Gaza. But from a myriad of sources, Gaza and the West Bank are quickly becoming two different societies.
What looms on the horizon is still largely uncertain. What is for sure, however, is that the first issue American and Egyptian negotiations plan to tackle is the borders of the new state. According to Mubarak, resolving where the borders between the two states will be placed will dispel the ambiguity currently surrounding the settlement issue. But before any of this, Abbas needs to be brought back to the negotiating table. The Palestinian President is scheduled to be in Egypt next week, coming right on the cusp of his declaration that the signing of an Egyptian authored settlement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority would have to take place in Egypt, despite Hamas’ refusal to do so.
Only time will tell how attitudes will unfold over the next few weeks and months. Hamas could back out of a settlement with Fatah, Abbas could refuse to come back to the negotiating table, and the status of Jerusalem, always so elusive to negotiators, may yet again prove to be the breaking point. There’s a story that’s told about the scorpion and the turtle. The turtle is reluctant to ferry the scorpion across a river, fearful that he will sting him along the way. The scorpion gives his word that he will not, but stings the turtle mid-river, and both drown. We can only hope that the peace process breaks away from its eerie parallel to this fable.