After his major speeches in Turkey and Egypt, President Obama established his ownership of the Arab-Israeli issue. With countries in the region testing whether he has the wherewithal to deliver the goods, his challenge is to keep the momentum going forward on an almost daily basis with practical steps and leadership.
The President needs to create a "peace process momentum plan" leading to negotiations by mid-fall, which recent reports suggest he is trying to do through his Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, who is traveling to Israel again at the end of the week.
The President should prepare his next major Middle East speech and delineate specific actions Israelis, Palestinians and Arab states must take to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
For the Israelis, the administration should not put too many eggs in the well-worn settlements basket and not enough in the basket to improve Palestinian life, where Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has signaled flexibility. The President can say to Netanyahu: a better life for Palestinians and sincere negotiations with them can reduce pressure in the United States for immediate action on the settlements issue.
The administration should also pressure the Palestinians; without Palestinian steps, progress will be blocked. Palestinian incitement against Israelis needs to be addressed as vehemently in public as it is in private. And the vital training of new and effective Palestinian security forces under U.S. General Dayton's leadership must progress quickly.
As important as the Arab Peace Initiative is, Arab states must also take specific steps, and the administration should intensify efforts to gain Arab states' involvement in the new process. Examples include their direct engagement in fostering negotiations; providing funds to support the process, particularly to the Palestinians; and symbolic practical measures such as eliminating visa and passport restrictions based on religion or nationality, opening lines of trade with Israel, establishing or resuming Israeli trade offices in Arab countries.
An Arab public relations program through Arab media directed toward Israel as well as Arab countries would constitute an important confidence-building measure. It would emphasize the desirability of peace and the benefits that can accrue to the entire region from an end to verbal and physical hostilities. That will gain positive Israeli and American attention.
These are important steps. But the administration has to move quickly to actual Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The Hamas-Palestinian Authority split is a major stumbling block. The administration should explore new diplomatic possibilities regarding Hamas through secret talks, third parties or the Arab quartet. The United States may have to pursue negotiations focused only on the PA initially. But if the Palestinian split is not overcome, talks of some kind with Hamas will have to be conducted.
The three-phase road map, which offers a series of steps to advance Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, should be revived. Many of the confidence-building measures demanded of both sides in phase one - such as an end to Palestinian violence against Israelis, Palestinian reform, an end to illegal settlements in the West Bank and an Israeli settlement freeze -- have either been taken or are being pursued.
The Obama administration should therefore guide the parties directly to the third phase - an international conference. Negotiations should seek to establish permanent borders, except for Jerusalem, which involves issues that go beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An outside advisory committee would ease the process of dealing with Jerusalem, which will be difficult and painful under any circumstances. The administration should reconvene the phase three conference only when the parties are ready to hammer out the rest of the issues.
Though we have stressed the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, Syria should not be ignored. Problems separating Israel and Syria are deep, involving both the Golan and Syria's new role in the region after a peace treaty. And in the background looms the Iran factor. The Obama administration has already begun engaging Syria on the Israeli-Syrian issue, Iraq and the overall US-Syrian relationship. That process should be continued and Syria and Israel brought back into negotiations.
The new vitality in the Obama administration's approach to the Arab-Israeli dispute is to be applauded. The momentum toward peace, stability and security must now be strengthened and serious negotiations begun by mid-fall, if not sooner. This requires that the administration actively and simultaneously implement the road map and conduct secret talks on the Palestinian front, and pursue the Syrian channel.
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