Israeli-Palestinian Direct Talks Will Lead Directly to Failure

David Solway
pajamasmedia.com
04 September '10

The “Israeli-Palestinian direct talks” are now underway in Washington in which, yet once again, the intractable dilemma that bedevils the region will be addressed and hopefully resolved, at least in part. All the parties have expressed a guarded optimism, to a greater or lesser degree, that this latest round of talks will bear some kind of fruit. Everything, apparently, is on the table — even, according to some reports, the division of Jerusalem. With clearly anti-Israeli figures like Barack Obama and Ban Ki-moon — let’s be honest about this — fanning the proceedings, it should be evident things will not go well for Israel, and that the country will be blamed for not offering sufficient giveback to the Palestinians and for the inevitable derelictions that will ensue.

Indeed, the UN secretary-general is on record urging that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas be “given full support” and international recognition. Nowhere does he extend the same counsel on behalf of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nor does Ban acknowledge that Abbas has no legal authority to participate in the peace conference since his term as president expired in January 2009 and he has not called new elections.

Netanyahu is obviously keeping his gaze fixed on the big picture: the so-called “peace process” which to date has been all process and no peace, envisioning the chimera of two states living side by side in sandaled amity; intense American pressure; the discriminatory media ready to pounce upon Israel for every pretext they can manufacture; and the international trend toward delegitimation of the Jewish state. But sometimes the smaller portraits are just as important, and sometimes even more important, than the larger picture that monopolizes the attention of the usual suspects: diplomats, officials, negotiators, and, of course, the usual cohort of “liberal” agitators both in the West and among Israel’s arguably treasonable left-wing academics.

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