Looking Ahead at U.S.-Israel and "Peace Process" Issues

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
13 August '10

What will be the next developments regarding U.S.-Israel relations and the Israel-Palestinian “peace process,” and Israeli politics. It’s possible to make some good predictions, or at least to present the most likely scenarios.

On September 26, Israel’s one-year freeze on building inside West Bank settlements will end. Last October, the original commitment was extended to any construction in Jerusalem outside the pre-1967 ceasefire lines. The Palestinian Authority (PA) now demands this freeze be extended as a precondition for it entering direct talks with Israel. The PA also insists that Israel accept the 1967 borders as defining the boundary between itself and a Palestinian state and an international force to patrol them.

The PA's goal is to use the bait of direct talks to get the United States to accept these and other preconditions and force them on Israel or, just as good, to blame Israel for not giving in and creating a rift in U.S.-Israel relations. Israel does not have a similar option since whatever happens this U.S. government won't publicly criticize the PA.

Even if Israel were to meet these conditions, it is not entirely clear that the PA would then talk directly, and either way it would still not have made any compromises of its own on issues vital to Israel. This is, then, the old Palestinian leadership's game of demanding Israeli concessions, yielding nothing even if it won them, and then insisting that what Israel has given up is now the irreversible basis for future talks during which even more unilateral Israeli concessions are demanded.

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