Visitors to the West Wing are greeted by a series of ‘jumbos’ – giant photos of Barack Obama’s latest events and visits, carefully selected to show the power and personality of the US president.
There’s no doubting that his first trip to the Middle East in office – which concluded in the stunning surroundings of Petra at the weekend – will have generated some amazing images.
But it will take some time to see if any results develop.
As someone who spent nearly five years travelling to the region, working for Tony Blair in his role as Quartet representative, it was fascinating to watch the statecraft before, during and after the visit.
From carefully planned warm-up interviews on Israeli TV to symbolic visits to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Yad Vashem and the grave of Theodor Herzl, this was a visit that the White House wanted to leave Israelis with a clear message: don’t take it personally I didn’t come in my first term, I promise you I’ve got your back.
But behind all the bonhomie for the cameras with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US president still managed to deliver a very sharp message about the importance of getting moving with the Middle East peace process.
In his keynote speech to ‘the people of Israel’ – going for the Clinton–Blair tactic of reaching over the head of the deadlocked politicians to a wider audience – he combined a strong endorsement of Zionism with a powerful call for the justice and dignity of Palestinian statehood.
‘It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own,’ Obama said to applause, ‘living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements not just of those young people but their parents, their grandparents, every single day.’
He went further, saying, ‘It’s not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It’s not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; or restricting a student’s ability to move around the West Bank; or displace Palestinian families from their homes. Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land.’
All good stuff and sincerely meant. But what now?
For too long both the Palestinian and Israeli politicians have been stuck in a narrative of: ‘I’m serious about peace, it’s just the other side isn’t.’
For the Palestinians, their primary evidence is ongoing settlement construction; for Israelis it is the refusal of the Palestinians to sit down without preconditions. For these reasons and more, it has become fashionable to dismiss any reference to the peace process by saying there is no peace and there is no process. Both sides allege they have no partner on the other side.
However, whatever frustrations there are along the way, and there are plenty to choose from at the moment, the only way this question is going to be resolved is through face to face negotiations between the parties themselves.
The fact is that there will only be a deal when the parties themselves want one, or feel enough heat from their people to achieve one. But that doesn’t mean simply crossing our fingers leaving them to it. Otherwise they would have got a deal already. All analogies are flawed, but, as we saw in Northern Ireland, it requires intensive work, patience, creativity, time and ingenuity.
If Obama’s trip is to bear fruit, the heavy-lifting will fall to someone who was a close student of that process, US secretary of state John Kerry, as well as one of its key participants, Tony Blair.
The former prime minister has been serving as Quartet representative to the Middle East since 2007, racking up around 100 visits to the region in that time. His responsibility has been Palestinian state building and economic development, while the US retains the lead on the political negotiations.
Of course, they are two sides of the same coin: as long as the political horizon looks like it is faltering, the on-the-ground changes that should be happening regardless falter. Yet, unless things are changing on the ground that benefit both sides, neither sides’ negotiators feel empowered or incentivised to reach a deal.
I know from the conversations Tony Blair has already had with Kerry that they are both engaged in thinking about how the politics and the facts on the ground can combine to get things moving again. I believe we are going to see another push in the next few months.
But there remains one structural problem, which was part of the reason for the failure of the Annapolis processes during Condoleezza Rice’s time in office, and that is there is only one secretary of state but a multitude of issues for them to get drawn into – from Syria just next door, to the whole post-Arab Spring landscape, or the pivot to Asia and a Korean peninsula that looks increasing unstable, to name just a couple.
That’s why one of the main objectives for this recent trip will have been for Obama and Kerry in their meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to see if they are serious this time, so the issue is seen as worth prioritising in a busy in-tray.
The Quartet set out a reasonable timetable for how talks could proceed, starting with borders and security, in September 2011. No one is suggesting this is easy. The international community doesn’t expect the Israelis to agree to the creation of a Palestinian state tomorrow, given there are genuine questions that need resolving in negotiations.
But it does expect the Israeli government to at least look like it is interested in seeing the Palestinians achieve statehood, something the last Israeli administration has frankly failed to do. Adopting a renewed sort of settlement moratorium, and proving a time horizon lest negotiations be seen by the Palestinians as an open-ended discussion that allows Israel to develop more West Bank land, would be a welcome first step.
Similarly, I believe the Palestinian leadership made a mistake in not entering talks when the Israeli government announced an, albeit-limited and caveated, settlement freeze back in 2010. It wasn’t perfect, but it was an opportunity that the Americans were desperate for the Palestinians to take at that time, if for no other reason than to test the good faith of the Netanyahu government – something the Obama administration has taken some persuading on, to put it mildly.
There have been too many clichés used about windows closing because the fact is we have to keep working at this until it is done. But there is a new chance to move forward. Indeed, the president’s visit has already seen a very welcome rapprochement between Israel and Turkey given the wider regional tensions.
Now is the time to get negotiations started again and ensure we can take some new photos of Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in security and peace, because, in the words of Obama, ‘the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realisation of an independent and viable Palestine.’
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Matthew Doyle was an adviser to Tony Blair from 2005-12, including in his role as Quartet representative
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This is overall a good analysis but you have overlooked some recent history. You wrote:
“both the Palestinian and Israeli politicians have been stuck in a narrative of: ‘I’m serious about peace, it’s just the other side isn’t.’ For the Palestinians, their primary evidence is ongoing settlement construction; for Israelis it is the refusal of the Palestinians to sit down without preconditions.”
For the Israelis, the evidence goes well beyond a refusal to sit down without preconditions. The evidence includes Arafat’s 2000 refusal of an offer of statehood in over 90 of the WB and Gaza, with capital in E. Jerusalem, the failure of the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, which resulted in the rise of Hamas in Gaza, and Abbas’s failure in 2008 to accept Olmert’s offer of over 90% of the WB, with capital in E. Jerusalem. Add to that the 2010 failure to negotiate when the precondition of settlement freeze was substantially met, which you mentioned, and Abbas’s 2012 attempt to subvert negotiations by going directly to the UN to seek a state that includes East Jerusalem. ALL of these together paint a picture of a people and a leadership that does not want peace.
Obama also told the Ramallah audience that Israel is going nowhere, Israel is the Jewish state and it is time the Arabs dealt with reality [ie grow up – politics is the art of the practical here and now -though he did tell them talks were for bargaining not sewing up an already agreed bargain]. For this the Arab hosts and media well sulked him including The Guardian stuffing him onto an inside page. As Mira has already noted Arab politics as one state and ethnically cleansed goes back to the 1964 PLO Charter and their rejectionof Peel in 37 and UN181.
However hope springs eternal: See and publicise page 42 -43 in Alan Dershowitz “The Case for Peace” where he has extracted from think tanks the idea of a spinal railway from Jenin to Hebron then to Gaza-Rafah and airport. Western powers should now stop aid to PA and UNWRA and spend the money on the railway, roads and above all sewage plants for all the West Bank and Gaza towns to retrieve irrigation water for market gardening and cash crops.
Actually the rail link is easier than it looks because there should be no problem rebuilding the British railbed and line Rafah -Gaza -Ashkelon spur of Israel Rail then over IR to Kiryat Gat and a new branch to Taqumieh NW of Hebron. There are enough unemployed young Arabs in the area to build it even with spades and other hand tools this summer!
Stop the silly embassies in Tel Aviv sulk which only tells Arab governments and street that the West will not be bothered if Israel sinks. This conflict is viscerally in the street on both sides and not just blocking politicos as Obama blatantly conducted himself. Telling the constituency to chivvy its representatives will backfire because the Arab electorate is convinced it will return to pre -1947 lodgings and half acres and suddenly become immensly rich thereby – a syndrome which appears to motivate a voluble now American member of a refugee family from the Drecken Reich.