Barack Obama had great aspirations for change during his election campaign, ever since he was elected a year ago and also ever since he was inaugurated in the beginning of this year. These aspirations were then translated in our region into hopes that the peace process might be now resumed, on the basis of an assortment of ideas, and of the direct interest shown in the peace process [by the United States] through appointing personal envoy and through an unrelenting diplomatic endeavouring.
However, all these aspirations about change and those hopes about peace collided with the stubborn reality on the ground in our region, and with the limits that a U.S President reaches at the beginning of his first term. As such, the talk now is that there is a stalemate in the peace process, and that there are sentiments of disappointment along with setbacks and the absence of any prospects for peace.
While the issue of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories may not entirely sum up the complexities of finding a solution and of the Palestinian rights, it was an effective test of the will of the United States in its quest to jumpstart and then sponsor the peace process, and a test of it as a mediator that pledges a fair and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution.
When Obama called for a total freeze of settlements last January, he believed that to be the logical key to any return to the roadmap, as a mechanism that paves the way for negotiations regarding the establishment of the Palestinian state. But by September, and months after the repeated visits by his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and his personal envoy George Mitchell to the Middle East, this same U.S demand had changed from one for a complete freeze of settlement building, to now calling for limiting them, and then changed again and became almost identical to the Israeli stance which considers that continuing the construction of settlements should not hamper the resumption of negotiations.
Consequently, the U.S administration has thus rendered itself unable to sponsor a just and comprehensive peace that leads to the establishment of the Palestinian state, in the manner that it had set out to do.
While it is true that the Palestinians have negotiated in the past amidst Israel’s non-objection to a commitment to a settlement suspension, the new mechanism put in place by the Obama administration, in addition to the radical changes that occurred on the Palestinian scene, these no longer allow for similar negotiations to take place in light of the ongoing settlement activities. This is especially so when we are on the eve of Palestinian legislative and presidential elections. For instance, since the declared stances of the leaders in the Palestinian Authority demand a freeze on settlements prior to negotiations, any compromise in this regard will have disastrous results to those who offer it, both politically and on the popular level.
In other words, the American administration is now under siege, in what regards its vision for peace, not only because of the Israeli intransigence and inflexibility, but also because of the inability of the Palestinian side to make any concessions, especially since this latter is the weakest link in the equation. Even if the U.S pressures succeed again in forcing the Palestinian Authority to go back to the negotiation table, similarly to what happened in holding the tripartite meeting, this will not result in serious negotiations; rather, it will be yet another move to discredit the Palestinian negotiator as being unable to guarantee the minimum amounts of Palestinian rights.
Moreover, the reasons that prompted the U.S administration to renege the conditions it has set for the road map for peace are as concerned with internal American considerations, the administration’s unwillingness to go against the Zionist lobby during the first term of the president who aspires for a second term, and the international crises that the United States is facing, as much as they are related to Israeli and Middle Eastern factors.
In this context, neither the clarifications offered by Hillary Clinton regarding her country’s stance toward settlements nor her meetings with Arab ministers and her planned visit to Cairo will matter in anything, as long as the Arab peace initiative comprises the minimum set of rights that can be accepted by the Arabs.
In such circumstances, the Obama administration cannot do much to push the peace forward, in light of the Israeli intransigence and inflexibility, and in light of the inability of Arabs to forfeit the minimum acceptable set of rights and demands. As such, the only thing left for the Obama administration to do is manage the peace process in the Middle East, in lieu of seeing through its hitherto big aspirations to re-launch it.
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