"Yes We Can" Meets "No We Won't"

Obama's attempts to broker Middle East peace are doomed to fail—for now.
By Shmuel Rosner
http://www.slate.com/id/2228581/

President Shimon Peres of Israel and former Sen. George Mitchell. Click image to expand.George Mitchell and Israeli President Shimon Peres Between them, President Shimon Peres of Israel and former Sen. George Mitchell share 162 years of experience in high-flying diplomacy. Peres was born Aug. 2, 1923; Special Envoy Mitchell—President Barack Obama's peace-process handyman—was born exactly 10 years and 18 days later, on Aug. 20, 1933. Last Sunday evening, the two of them sat down together to talk about Washington's Middle East peace initiative. So much experience—and so little opportunity to put it to proper use. "We must not let the month of September pass without a new beginning and starting negotiations," Peres said. As if September had some special significance. Everyone involved had let August pass, July pass, and June and May and April pass without "a new beginning." Why not September?

Last week, Peres met—secretly, because meetings don't matter anymore unless they are secret—with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and told him pretty much the same thing. But the Palestinians seem unconvinced. They've made a resumption of peace negotiations with Israel conditional on a construction freeze in the settlements. That might be a problem, considering what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday, just hours before his first meeting of the week with Mitchell. "I told the Americans that we will consider scaling down construction," the prime minister confided. Scaling down is less than freezing. If Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wants an excuse to avoid Netanyahu, he will not have to sweat over it. The excuse has been provided for him.

President Obama was planning a trilateral meeting with Netanyahu and Abbas on the sidelines of next week's U.N. General Assembly, and Mitchell worked overtime this week to make it happen. But, suddenly, even getting the parties to a meeting is a challenge. Not to mention the difficulty of getting other Arab countries to make some kind of gesture to show they will be supportive of the relaunched peace process: Obama's request was rebuffed by the likeliest—and most important—candidate to make such a gesture, Saudi Arabia. It was rebuffed privately—and later also publicly. The Saudis will "refuse to engage Israel until it ends its illegal occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights as well as Shabaa Farms in Lebanon," Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

So even if there is a meeting next week or in the following weeks—even if the parties grudgingly agree to "negotiate"—it is clear to everyone involved, except for the overeager Americans, that success is unlikely. Because while Obama is running as fast as he can, all the Middle Eastern players are convinced that they had better move slowly. When he said, "After me," they all replied, "After you, and him, and him, too."

Netanyahu has no desire to make political or strategic sacrifices before he sees some progress on the Iranian nuclear front. Abbas and the Palestinians—and some other Arab leaders—are still hoping that if they wait, Obama might be drawn into pressuring Israel a little more. Arab states are reluctant to move before the Palestinians do. The Syrians want to make sure that they bet on the right horse—and will not abandon their Iranian card while it is still valuable. In short, the Obama administration had hoped that by showing enthusiasm and dynamism it would ignite positive momentum. Instead, it had raised false expectations and now faces a credibility gap.