The Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, which were restarted in Washington DC on 30 July 2013 after three years of little activity, have been limping along. The two sides failed to reach an agreement on “final status” issues by 29 April 2014, the deadline that had been set for the nine-month negotiation. But more damaging to the fraught peace process were the reactions to the intense US push to broker an agreement from both the Palestinians and Israelis in the last four months.
The peace talks ran aground in early April, when the Israelis refused to honor a previous agreement to release the last group of Palestinian detainees, and the Palestinians made the unilateral announcement to join 15 international treaties. On 23 April, the two opposing factions in Palestine, Hamas and Fatah, arrived at a reconciliation agreement aimed at ending internal Palestinian divisions. In response to this, Israel stated that it would not negotiate with a Palestinian authority that includes members of Hamas, which it views as a terrorist organisation with the destruction of Israel as its avowed goal.
The restart of the peace talks was quite an achievement in itself, due in large part to the tenacity of US Secretary of State John Kerry. After taking office in February 2013, Kerry included the leaders of Israel and Palestine as the first foreign dignitaries to call and Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as the destinations of his first overseas visit. After a period of intense shuttle diplomacy, he managed to bring the two sides back to the negotiating table.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is one of the most intractable conflicts in modern history, and the peace talks between them hold the key to the broader Middle East peace process. It is in the strategic interests of the United States – and therefore a key foreign policy priority of successive US administrations – to move the peace talks between the Arab world and Israel forward, and prevent conflict in the Middle East.
Recognising both the importance of the Palestinian-Israeli talks and the enormity of the task, many US presidents saw progress in the peace talks as a key part of his political legacy on the foreign policy front. If a US president could have a picture taken standing between the leaders of Israel and Palestine and shaking hands with both, it would be proof enough of his commitment to the cause. Yet with the only exception of President Jimmy Carter, who delivered the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in March 1979, all other efforts made by the United States have been in vain. Now President Obama, with a view to making his mark on US diplomacy, is looking again to “crack this hard nut”.
The restart of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks also came against the backdrop of a volatile Middle East and North Africa. Since the “Arab Spring” swept this region in early 2011, political strongmen in several Arab countries have gone down, Islamic forces have used the opportunity to expand their influence but also met strong resistance in countries like Egypt, and the future of the Syrian conflict still hangs in balance. On balance, Israel’s external environment has worsened as a result of the Arab Spring, as it has to deal with a growing number of security risks.
At the international level, Palestine has pocketed two important wins: its acceptance as a member state of UNESCO on 31 October 2011 and its elevation from “observer entity” to “observer state” at the United Nations on 29 November 2012. These two developments – an ominous one for Israel and an encouraging one for Palestine – coupled with sustained pressure from Washington, have prompted Israel to release some Palestinian detainees in exchange for a halt to Palestine’s efforts to upgrade its global profile.
But this was just an agreement of convenience to defuse an immediate crisis, hence the poor prospects of the peace talks from the start. In the nine-month-long negotiation, no substantial progress has been made on the many tricky issues –the expansion of Jewish settlements, border demarcation, the status of Jerusalem, Palestinian statehood, the return of refugees, etc. – that have long divided the two sides. In this context, the Israeli announcement to halt the peace talks in the wake of new-found reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas no doubt “poured cold water” on Kerry, who has made painstaking efforts over the past year. Kerry still maintains that the current deadlock is just a temporary phase to be expected as part of the peace process, but the disappointment in his tone is all too obvious.
To avoid repeating the ups and downs of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiation and Middle East peace process in the last 20 years and accomplish what seems to be “a mission impossible”, the parties must return to relevant UN resolutions and the principle of “land for peace.”
It is worth recalling the four-point proposal made by Chinese President Xi Jinping to visiting President Abbas in May 2013. According to Xi, China hopes that the parties will stick to the goal of an independent Palestinian state living in peace with Israel; and negotiation should be seen as the only way to achieve peace; “land for peace” should continue to be the guiding principle; the international community should play a key role in facilitating the peace process.
Put simply, international efforts can only facilitate and provide a more enabling environment for Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, which offer the only chance of achieving peace. “Land for peace” remains an unshakeable principle, which must lead to the goal of “an independent Palestinian state living in peace with Israel”. It is safe to say that if there is no breakthrough concerning the principle of negotiation, the prospects of the on-and-off peace talks won’t be too good.
He Wenping, Senior Researcher of The Chahar Institute & Researcher of The Institute of West Asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
