Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Clinton's speech

Secty. of State Hillary Clinton gave a much-awaited speech last Friday at the Saban Forum in the Brookings Intitute in Washington. Since the US has admitted that its previous approach to Mid-East strategy, focussing on the building moratorium on the West Bank, has been a failure, people were waiting to hear her explain what the US intends to do next? Clinton of course stressed that this is only a set-back in the US drive for peace. She did not admit that the whole approach favored by Pres. Obama, namely that solving the Israel-Palestine dispute would somehow resolve all other conflicts in the Middle East and make the US a favorite of all Muslims, is deeply flawed. Clearly from the Wikileaks papers this is not something believed by the Arabs themselves. Nevertheless, the US will press on regardless, with indirect talks between the parties.

Clinton stated that the US could not itself solve the problem, this requires the two sides to compromise. Nor can the US impose a solution, something that infuriated the PA leadership and resulted in threats of future violence. The US may offer "bridging proposals" and may ask PM Netanyahu to come to the talks with a map showing the desired borders between Israel and Palestine preferred by the Israeli Government. In exchange it seems that the Palestinians need do nothing except provide their reaction to Netanyahu's map, not exactly an unexpected response (expect rejection and more threats of violence). It seems that pretending there is a peace partner when there is none simply does not work, yet some clever leaders seem not to understand this.

The issues to be attempted first are the "core" issues of borders, security, and refugees. Regarding refugees, in a recent interview Saeb Erakat stated that there are now 7 million Palestinian refugees and they all have the "right of return" to Israel. He also stated that Israel caused the refugee problem, thus completely ignoring history, since it was the invasion by the five Arab States of the new Israeli State that caused the refugee problem in the first place. The Israeli Government is concerned that once again the US will cause the peace process to become hung up on an issue where the two sides have irreconcilable differences. Israel should itself advance its solution to the refugee problem, agreeing only to consider the repatriation of Palestinians who were actual refugees themselves in 1948, according to international law, but not their descendents. Sixty two years later this would cut the numbers down to a few thousand at most. At least this could provide a basis for the US to try to bridge the huge gap between the two sides on this difficult issue. So Sen. Mitchell is now here again, making the usual rounds, talking to the usual suspects, but its not much of a mystery what will happen in the end.

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