By choice or coincidence, US President Barack Obama and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas find themselves this week in the same boat, thanks to the mischief of Benjamin Netanyahu.The two leaders have turned the other cheek helplessly, seemingly adopting the choice offered in the Christian doctrine, which favours a non-violent response to an aggressor.
One explanation of this doctrine, among many, is that to turn the other cheek is not humiliating, but rather aresponse of strength that says “I will not seek revenge because I am stronger than that”.

We will find out whether it is true in the next four months when, and if, the proximity talks, scheduled to start this month between the Palestinians and Israelis, end. They are supposed to launch direct peace negotiations after a hiatus of 18 months.

The consensus among Palestinians, Israelis and others is that the outlook is not very encouraging. In fact, it is pessimistic.

The forecasters of failure have increased significantly, as detailed last week by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, who co-authored with Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”, a shattering report.

Speaking to an overflowing audience at The Palestine Centre in Washington, marking the Hisham B. Sharabi Memorial Lecture, Mearsheimer sounded very pessimistic. He began: “Contrary to the wishes of the Obama administration and most Americans - to include many American Jews - Israel is not going to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own in Gaza and the West Bank. Regrettably, the two-state solution is now a fantasy.

“Instead, those territories will be incorporated into a ‘Greater Israel’, which will be an apartheid state bearing a marked resemblance to white-ruled South Africa.Nevertheless, a Jewish apartheid state is not politically viable over the long term. In the end, it will become a democratic binational state, whose politics will be dominated by its Palestinian citizens. In other words, it will cease being a Jewish state, which will mean the end of the Zionist dream.”

Neither did he think that Obama is “different from his predecessors”, as he found “little evidence to support that belief”, pointing out that the popular president was silent during the “Gaza massacre” when Israel launched a bloody assault on the Palestinian enclave.

However, he admitted that the two-state solution is the best of other alternatives at present, though it is not an ideal solution.

“It is by far the best outcome for both the Israelis and the Palestinians, as well as the United States,” he said in his lengthy remarks.

“That is why the Obama administration is intensely committed to pushing it.”

Mearsheimer’s thesis is that the key struggle that will determine the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be within the Jewish diaspora, or what he calls the “Righteous Jews”, who support universal human rights, and “the New Afrikaners”, the supremacist supporters of a “Greater Israel” where Palestinians are mistreated and that would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, the territory where Palestine existed under the British mandate until 1948.

Surprisingly, Professor Walt disagreed with a comment on Foreign Policy blog.

“I am not as pessimistic as John is on this front, that is, I think there is still a slim window open for a viable two-state solution, though the door is closing.”

He continued: “I hope his speech turns out to be a ‘self-denying prophecy’. In other words, if enough people are convinced by it, maybe they will act to head off the gloomy future that he foresees.”

Whatever the case, the proximity talks are expected to reveal, once and for all, the true position of Netanyahu’s hawkish government, which includes ultra-right groups like the one led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, towards a final peace settlement. Otherwise, this may bring about either the resignation or the expansion of the Netanyahu government, which may then include Tzipi Livni’s Kadima Party, as suggested by Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Washington’s favourite Israeli Cabinet minister. But the presence of Livni in a new government is not a reassuring step, since she had once suggested that in the event of a settlement, all the Palestinians who live in the Galilee region of north Israel should resettle in the projected Palestinian state.

No wonder Henry Siegman, director of the US Middle East Project in