Will New Israel-Palestinian Peace Talks Work?

WASHINGTON (Aug. 20) -- Why are these Middle East peace talks different from all other peace talks? Good question.

After a nearly two-year hiatus in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the peace process was on yet again. Like many of her predecessors who have tried to reach a "final status" in the troubled region, she is under no illusion this will be easy.

"There have been difficulties in the past; there will be difficulties ahead," Clinton said. "Without a doubt, we will hit more obstacles. The enemies of peace will keep trying to defeat us and to derail these talks. But I ask the parties to persevere, to keep moving forward even through difficult times, and to continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region."

This latest round of direct talks will open Sept. 1 with a cozy White House dinner hosted by President Barack Obama for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. As in past meetings, the leaders of Egypt and Jordan will be there. So will former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the special envoy of the "Quartet" of the U.S., the United Nations, the European Union and Russia.

The next morning, the two sides will gather to decide on their next meetings back in the Middle East. They have one year to get the deal done. One year to agree on borders, the status of Jerusalem, whether Palestinian refugees have a right of return and security guarantees for Israel. One year to do what no other U.S. president has been able to do in decades.

If expectations are high, so are mistrust and hostility between the two sides.

"It is true nobody has ever gone broke being a pessimist about the Middle East," said David Makovsky, co-author of "Myths, Illusions and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East" and senior director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "But I think there is a possibility -- with U.S. involvement -- that these two sides can make serious progress."

Makovsky expects the talks to center on security and borders, which are likely to change from pre-1967 lines through land swaps. Progress on Jerusalem and refugees will be tougher because public opinion on both sides has been virtually immovable, he said.

Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, who spent five years brokering a peace deal in Northern Ireland and most of the last year shuttling between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, said he thought his new task could be completed within a year with "patience, perseverance and determination."

He said the U.S. would be an "active and sustained participant" in the talks, offering "bridging proposals" when appropriate. But he said the heavy lifting will have to be done by the two parties.

Edward Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said one difference between the new talks and previous ones is "the amount of time and effort it took to get them off the ground. There can be no unwarranted expectations. In this sense they are better grounded than the 2000 Clinton Summit."

Scott Lasensky of the U.S. Institute of Peace, co-author of a book on Arab-Israeli negotiations, said the administration's willingness to "put bridging proposals on the table, when the time is right," is a stark contrast to the talks in Annapolis, Md., in 2007 under President George W. Bush, who took a more hands-off approach.

Still, other observers were split on how involved Obama -- who set a deadline that coincides with the start of the 2012 election campaign -- will be in the talks.

"Obama is putting not only a finger into this but his whole hand by hosting a dinner the night before with the leaders," said Stephen Cohen, a veteran peace negotiator and author of the just-published "Beyond America's Grasp, A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East. "He's willing to commit his own political bona fides for this and that means a lot. [Netanyahu] is being told that if the president is willing to commit his political future for this, then how can he not?"

Former Bush administration official Elliot Abrams, now a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it is "hard to be optimistic" about the talks given the lack of confidence in Obama among Israelis. By personalizing the process the president may gain leverage, he said, but in the long run "a failure becomes his rather than theirs."

The Obama administration pressed hard to get Palestinian leaders to the table. Last month, the president and Netanyahu agreed to jump-start the peace process in a display of warmth at the White House that followed the Israeli prime minister's distinctly chilly reception in March. That meeting followed an embarrassing incident in which the Israeli government green-lighted new settlements in disputed east Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden.

Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator under six secretaries of state, said Obama is the latest convert to the "peace process religion" that for the last 40 years has compelled American presidents to involve themselves in the Arab-Israeli issue.

He said it is a "myth" that direct negotiations like those announced today are the preferred route to peace, noting that only the peace treaty signed by Israel and Jordan in 1994 came about that way. Every other breakthrough, including the Camp David peace treaty with Egypt brokered by President Jimmy Carter, resulted from third-party mediation, he said.

"Is the Obama administration willing to be a tough, fair and reassuring mediator?" Miller asked. If it is and the two sides can come close on the four key issues, "Then the president not only gets a chance to earn his Nobel Prize, but if he doesn't you can hang a 'closed for the season sign' on any further chances of getting any agreements."

Lasensky was more optimistic. Unlike Bill Clinton's negotiations, which lasted almost to the last moment of his time in office, Obama is still early in his presidency and has time to bring the sides together. It also helps that developments on the ground "are in sync," he said. Security cooperation is improving, Palestinians are freer to move around and a freeze on Jewish settlements remains in effect.

"The setting is different than last time around," Lasensky said. "The U.S. is defining a role for itself that is different from the role Bush and [former Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice assumed, perhaps more in line with the traditional American mediation role."

'A Change of the Wind'

Hamas rejected the talks and won't be at the table. The militant group views renewed negotiations as a way for Israel to alleviate its growing isolation after a series of setbacks that included a critical U.N. report on its 2008 military incursion into Gaza and international condemnation of its raid on an aid flotilla this spring.

Those public relations nightmares just compounded growing nervousness in Israel over Hezbollah's rearmament in Lebanon and its sponsor Iran getting closer to building a nuclear weapon. While a few months ago most Israelis couldn't have been less interested, nearly three-quarters now favor peace talks with the Palestinians

"There's been a change of the wind in Israel," said Cohen. "There is a sense that Israel is facing rapid delegitimization of its place in the international community and ... they had pushed as far as it could go and had to do something."

Facing an existential threat from Iran, Netanyahu had no choice but to agree to talks, Cohen argued, to preserve Israel's strategic relationship with its most important ally.

Whether the Israeli leader can get his right-leaning coalition government to go along is another matter.

"There's plenty of interest in Israel on not being seen as obstructionist so they're happy to go along with talking, but it's not clear they would get to an agreement," said Nathan Brown, an expert on Arab politics at George Washington University.

Then there is the issue of whether Israel's Palestinian partner for peace has enough clout to convince his own people. The days when Yasser Arafat was the undisputed voice of the Palestinians are over. Abbas is president in name only of Gaza, where his Fatah party was ousted in bloody fighting with Hamas.

"Does Abbas have the capacity to make decisions, let alone to deliver them?" Miller asked.

"Gaza is a tremendous challenge. No question," said Hadar Susskind, vice president for policy and strategy at J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy group. "The best answer to weaken Hamas is to show progress in the West Bank."

But Walker said many of his Palestinian friends are deeply worried. "Failure, which they fully expect, will leave them no where to go in the face of Hamas calls for renewed violence," he said. "These talks have very little chance of success unless the parties, including the U.S., are willing to change course and creep up on the tough issues while building a stronger Palestinian Authority that has credibility with its people."

Brown also was pessimistic.

"The Americans wanted talks and now they've got them," he said. "People have been talking about the window for the two-state solution closing for close to 30 years. I don't see any way to climb through that window right now."