Israel Matzav

Lieberman is right: There won't be 'peace' in the next two years

In an interview to be broadcast on Bloomberg's Charlie Rose show on Thursday night, US Special Middle East envoy George Mitchell tells Rose that 'negotiations' between Israel and the 'Palestinians' should last no more than two years (Hat Tip: Michael F).

“We think that the negotiation should last no more than two years,;once begun, we think it can be done within that period of time," Mitchell tells Rose. "We hope the parties agree. Personally, I think it can be done in a shorter period of time.”

Mitchell is completely detached from reality, as Jennifer Rubin notes.

What is he talking about, really? He has a predetermined time frame for how long the negotiations should last, but there’s no one at the bargaining table and no Palestinian leader invested with the authority or political will to make a deal. And the Israeli government is, at best, wary of the Obama team, which spent a year trying to stuff a unilateral settlement freeze down its throat. Contrast Mitchell’s surreal obsession with conferences and time lines with what is really going on, as this report makes clear:

Tayeb Abdel Rahim, Director-General of the PA Presidency and member of the Fatah Central Council, claimed that Hamas had forged an alliance with Iran in a way that harms Arab national security and Palestinian interests. “Hamas has turned the Palestinian cause into a cheap card in the hands of Iran,” Abdel Rahim said in an interview with a local Palestinian radio station. “They have done this at the expense of the Palestinian issue and the unity of the Palestinian people and homeland.”

Doesn’t sound as though the Palestinians are ready for the bargaining table, does it? But Mitchell is not to be dissuaded by the lack of will or of bargaining parties. He’s got it down pat: the process has to include “political negotiations, security for both people, and what you call the bottom up, correctly, economic and institutional growth.” Earth-shaking and revolutionary! Well, if you’ve been dozing off for 20 years or so and missed the entire failed “peace process,” this would seem innovative.

How wrong is Mitchell? So wrong that even Haaretz's Aluf Benn - a 'peace processor' if there ever was one - gets it. Here's the first sentence of his Thursday column.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is right: During the next two years Israel will not reach a permanent status agreement with the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, as patently ridiculous as Mitchell is, there are five reasons why he cannot be dismissed. Here's Evelyn Gordon with four of them.

First, Palestinians and other Arabs routinely interpret such statements by U.S. officials as pledges to make Israel kowtow to Palestinian demands. When that doesn’t happen, it increases anti-American sentiment, entrenches disbelief in the possibility of peace (thus strengthening extremists like Hamas), and can even spark renewed anti-Israel terror, as the Camp David summit in 2000 showed.

Second, it further entrenches Israeli skepticism about peace.

Third, it will almost certainly increase anti-Israel hysteria in Europe. Unlike Israelis and Palestinians, Europeans largely share Mitchell’s conviction that peace is imminently achievable. Hence every time it fails to materialize, they seek a scapegoat. And so far, that scapegoat has always been Israel: while demanding ever more Israeli concessions, the EU has yet to publicly demand any Palestinian concessions.

[Fourth,] [t]here are things America could do to further peace — like finally telling the Palestinians that they, too, must compromise. [Those things are not being done].

And then there's a fifth reason Mitchell can't be dismissed. He's hinting at commitments to the 'Palestinians' that Israel cannot and will not make. This is from the interview with Charlie Rose.

Charlie Rose: It does not include East Jerusalem. There have been announcements in the last 48 hours of new settlement construction in east Jerusalem where the Palestinians want to make their capital.

George Mitchell: Yes.

Charlie Rose: And it's in the midst of Palestinians.

George Mitchell: If you go back over time and look at Camp David and the prior efforts, you will see that the single most difficult issue amidst an array of extremely difficult issues is Jerusalem and it is very complicated, difficult, emotional on all sides, Jerusalem is significant to the three monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, it's important to everybody, we recognize that, and we try to deal with it. But understand the different perspectives, Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1980.

Charlie Rose: Annexed is an important word.

George Mitchell: Annexed is a very important word. No other country and including the United States recognizes that annexation. And neither do the Palestinians or the Arabs of course but for the Israelis, what they're building in, is in part of Israel. Now, the others don't see it that way. So you have these widely divergent perspectives on the subject. Our view is, let's get into negotiations, let's deal with the issues and come up with a solution to all of them including Jerusalem which will be exceedingly difficult, but in my judgment, possible.

With all of the acrobatics that were attempted by Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001 and by Ehud Olmert in 2008, no Israeli Prime Minister ever even suggested that Israel would even consider rolling back the Jewish neighborhoods in 'east' Jerusalem. In fact, it's been published in the media here that Abu Mazen agreed with Olmert that at least some of the Jewish neighborhoods of 'east' Jerusalem (Ramot, Ramot Alon, Ramat Shlomo, Pisgat Ze'ev, Neve Ya'akov, Ma'alot Dafna, French Hill and Gilo) would remain part of Israel in any settlement. (There are other Jewish neighborhoods in 'east' Jerusalem that were not mentioned in that particular article; I don't know what, if anything, was agreed with respect to them). Agreed, that is, until the Obama administration came along and demanded a 'building freeze' in 'east' Jerusalem. And now, Mitchell is so caught up in his own rhetoric that he's actually doing it again by suggesting that Israel expel another 300,000 Jews in Jerusalem from their homes.

Has he gone mad?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:06 AM