Editorial

Thirty-two years ago, the most positive step in the history of the post-war Middle East took place when a most unlikely Israeli dove, the hawkish Menachem Begin, and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, later gunned down, signed a peace treaty they and the world hoped would usher in a climate of understanding throughout the region. It did not and it was another 14 years before Yasser Arafat and Yitzak Rabin shook hands at the White House after signing the Oslo peace accords in 1993. Mr Rabin was to be assassinated in 1995.

Seventeen years later, the answer to the Israeli-Palestinian question remains mired in intransigence and has been further complicated by regional players, like Iran, and by a Palestinian Authority that has lost control of Gaza, where the Hamas leadership has established an independent state within a state and ousted the Palestinian Authority from within its “borders”. This split in the Palestinian camp bodes ill.

President Barack Obama last week invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas to Washington for another stab at peace. Even as the three leaders met, four Isreali settlers were murdered in the West Bank and the military wing of Hamas claimed responsibility.

The leaders in Washington maintained an outward calm and pledged themselves to work out a draft peace treaty within a year. Mr Netanyahu and President Abbas will hold fortnightly meetings in which the US may or may not participate but will make itself available to both parties.

Hope may spring eternal but it is not easy to be optimistic. For all the brave talk – Mr Netanyahu’s readiness “to walk this long road and go a long way in a short time to achieve genuine peace” and his description of Mr Abbas as a “partner in peace”; President Obama’s warning that “This moment of opportunity may not soon come again” – there were ominous signs that, although everybody was prepared to talk the talk, neither Mr Netanyahu nor Mr Abbas would, ultimately, manage to walk the walk. Enemies within and without will see to that.

Take one example that could torpedo the negotiations. The Israeli leader has indicated that the freeze on settlements building in the West Bank would resume later this month. “It is impossible to take the issue of settlements… and deal with it separately at the beginning of direct talks”; continuing them, said a Palestinian spokesman, “will signal the end of the peace process”. Even a day, it seems, is a long time when it comes to securing permanent peace between two sides that have experienced the brunt of armed conflict for decades and are innately suspicious of one another.

And the elephants outside the room pose a greater threat to the outcome of these talks. Iran and Hamas have no intention of allowing them to succeed. Hamas has already acted; has sworn it will continue so to act. It is inconceivable the Israelis will fail to react.

Borders, settlements and refugees may be on the minds of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders but there are other factors militating against success: the Hamas leadership, the President of Iran and another Iran proxy, Hizbollah. “The negotiations”, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a Palestinian solidarity rally, “are doomed” to fail. And for good measure, “The negotiations are still-born”. Expect Hamas and Hizbollah to raise the ante to the stage where Israel, enraged, will have once more to take action – with the peace process hardly begun.