The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday that the Obama administration would be tabling its Middle East peace plan “in a matter of weeks,” quoting State Department spokesman Philip Crowley. The paper said the US is “seeking a complete freeze on Israeli settlements in exchange for Palestinian security reforms and Arab [normalisation] gestures towards Israel.” Once these items have been agreed, Washington will convene an international peace conference.

However, the paper - and clearly the Obama administration - did not take into account that Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs have their own agendas which do not coincide with the US agenda. Israel insists on completing another 2,500 housing units in the occupied territories to provide for what it calls “natural growth.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holds that there can be no negotiations until Israel halts all settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Therefore, according to Palestine Liberation Organisation secretary, Yasser Abed Rabbo, there will be no negotiations for some time.

Furthermore, key Arab players on the regional scene have rejected the notion that they will normalise without withdrawal. On Monday Kuwait’s ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, told US President Barack Obama that the Arabs will establish normal relations with Israel only after it “implements and fulfils its obligations” by withdrawing from Arab territory occupied in 1967.

On the same day, Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh informed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that only Israeli implementation of the terms of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative calling for full withdrawal from occupied territory, a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem, and the creation of a Palestinian state would produce normal relations between Israel and 57 Arab and Muslim states. The Arabs adopted the plan back in 2002, Judeh reminded Clinton, “it is time for Israel to reciprocate.” Judeh’s remarks are significant because Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994 and has diplomatic and trade relations with Israel.

Last Friday, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal delivered the initial Arab response to the bargain proposed by the Obama administration. He flatly dismissed phased normalisation. He said that “incrementalism and a step-by-step approach has not and - we believe - will not achieve peace.” Among the measures proposed by the administration are the opening of Arab airspace to Israeli civilian planes, cultural exchanges and the establishment of Israeli trade offices in Arab capitals.

Finally, Abed Rabbo said normalisation can be addressed only after Israel’s borders are delineated with Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Abed Rabbo is no hard case Palestinian rejectionist, but one of the authors of the “Geneva initiative,” a plan for the emergence of a circumscribed Palestinian state. Therefore, the Arab position is clear: no normalisation in exchange for the halting of Israeli settlement construction.

It appears that the Obama administration’s approach to the peace process has reached an impasse. Why? The main reason is, of course, that someone has persuaded the administration to adapt to the Arab-Israeli conflict the principle of “reciprocity” used by Israel to stall progress on the “roadmap” plan for the emergence of a Palestinian state. Israel has consistently said it will not halt settlement activity or lift checkpoints and roadblocks until the Palestinians reform their administration and provide security for Israelis. Well, as one commentator remarked last week, the Palestinians have largely honoured their commitments to the roadmap, but Israel has not even begun to do so. Indeed, Israel rejects many of the requirements of the roadmap.

By translating reciprocity onto the wider regional plane, Israel’s friend in the Obama administration has provided Israel with a host of new possibilities for reneging on its commitments and continuing its colonisation enterprise in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. US regional expert Helena Cobban identifies the culprit in her informative blog, www.justworldnews.com as Dennis Ross, the official who helped mismanage the Palestinian-Israeli conflict during the Clinton administration. She states, “The whole concept of [confidence-building-measures, or CBMs] has made an eerie come-back into Washington’s diplomacy… since the arrival of Dennis Ross in the White House at the end of June.”

There he took up the job of adviser on Middle East affairs to the National Security Council in spite of the fact that his previous employment as facilitator left Israel rapidly colonising the occupied territories and deadlock on the Palestinian-Israeli front. Cobban reveals that the administration sent seven letters to Arab rulers, urging them to adopt CBMs. They are now replying in public, to the discomfiture of the administration. Cobban also reports that this effort coincides with a drive by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Congress to “get US legislators to sign onto a letter ‘urging’ Obama to push Arab states to give up-front CBMs to Israel.” Ross was formerly employed as head of AIPAC’s research arm, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Having appointed independents George Mitchell as regional envoy and General James Jones as national security adviser, Obama has put Ross, a staunch supporter of Israel, in a position to scupper potential negotiations by bringing in never-ending “process” at the expense of peacemaking.

The Arabs’ sole “no” to normalisation without withdrawal must be compared to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s multiple negotiation-stopping “nos” on halting settlement activity, the creation of a Palestinian state, sharing of Jerusalem with the Palestinians, and withdrawal from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. The Arabs have come a long way since the Khartoum summit following the 1967 war where they declared no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel. They are ready for negotiations, peace and recognition, in this order, but not for creeping recognition without negotiations and peace.