Analysts criticize US effort
As Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made clear during her Middle East trip US officials are now promoting new tactics - what they called the "baby steps" of lower-level talks, to bring the "Israeli" and Palestinian leaders together for direct talks.
But the dynamics have changed since Obama named a special envoy to the region on his second day in office. "Israeli" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom the administration once would have been happy to see undermined, has been strengthened - while Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whom the administration had hoped to bolster, has been weakened.
"There was an excess of zeal at first," said Edward S. Walker Jr, who was assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs in the Clinton administration.
"It is a noble endeavour to try to hammer out peace. But you have to look at the relationships. You have to read the players. They got out in front of studying the problem and were anxious to show progress."
Daniel Levy, a veteran "Israeli" peace negotiator now at the Century Foundation in Washington, summed up the administration's efforts in recent days as "amateur night at the Apollo Theatre."
He said the administration did not game out the consequences of its demands on the parties - and then flinched.
"They just dug deeper and deeper their own grave," he said. "All of this talk of negotiations doesn't cut the mustard in the region."
Gaith Al Omari, a former Abbas aide who is advocacy director for the American Task Force on Palestine, said: "The situation is so complicated that no matter what approach the administration would have taken would have led to difficulties."
He said things have improved in the past nine months, including getting a reluctant "Israeli" government to embrace the idea of talks.
The administration's key error, many analysts say, was to insist Israel immediately freeze all colony growth in Palestinian-occupied territories. US officials say in the wake of the war in the Gaza Strip in the winter, they wanted to send a signal of toughness and push both sides to take positive steps to build an atmosphere for talks.
There has been some progress: Israelis and Palestinians have been deep in conversations trying to set the parameters for negotiations.
No negotiations
But Abbas announced he would not begin negotiations until colonies were frozen. Facing "Israeli" opposition, the administration appeared to back off the demand for a full colony freeze.
Meanwhile, Abbas got into political trouble at home when he succumbed to US pressure to delay UN consideration of a report accusing "Israel" of war crimes in Gaza; he later reversed himself. When Clinton met him Saturday and pressed him to accept the limited "Israeli" colony plan as a basis for talks, he refused.
Hours later, Clinton met with Netanyahu in occupied Jerusalem and pronounced the "Israeli" offer "unprecedented" - sparking Arab outrage.
Our policy has not changed, Clinton insisted on Wednesday. The "Israeli" proposal "is not what we prefer," she said, "because we would like to see everything ended forever. But it is something that shows at least a positive movement."
Elliott Abrams, a former White House aide who helped negotiate the unwritten agreement on colonies in the Bush years, said there is little difference between that agreement and what Clinton claimed as unprecedented.
Instead of demanding an unrealistic freeze, Abrams said, the administration could have made the Bush deal public, noted that "Israel" had not consistently lived up to it and declared that it would now be enforced. "Instead, we had nine months of nonsense," he said. "Palestinians and Israelis are not sure what the United States stands for."
Administration officials dispute that critique, saying the "Israeli" offer actually holds the key to a real colony freeze.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, mused Wednesday about the end of the dream of a Palestinian state and scoffed at the Obama administration's notion of baby steps to talks.
"We begun taking them in 1990-1991, and we have been crawling for 19 years."
Comments
