Palestinian leadership accepts U.S. proposal for "indirect" talks with Israel via George Mitchell
Marian Houk
March 08, 2010
The top body, or Executive Committee, of what is left of the internationally-recognized Palestinian leadership -- the overall Palestine Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) -- agreed in a contentious four-hour meeting on Sunday in the Palestinian presidential headquarters, the British-Mandate era Muqata'a compound in Ramallah, to an American proposal to enter a four-month period of "indirect" negotiations with Israel, with the U.S. as active intermediary.
Almost simultaneously, U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem for four hours on Sunday, and the two will meet again on Monday before Mitchell heads to Ramallah for meetings with Palestinian officials. The U.S.-sponsored "Annapolis process" of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which began in late November 2007 were broken off by Palestinian leaders at the end of December 2008 when the Israeli Defense Forces began an unprecedented + massive military operation (that lasted three weeks) against Hamas in Gaza. The Annapolis process began with great fanfare and the declared intention to arrive at the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008 ... but without results.
U.S. President Obama, who made conflicting claims about his position concerning Jerusalem during his presidential elections campaign, then promised upon taking office to make this Israeli-Palestinian conflict his top priority. His first phone call in office was to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He said several times, including in a major speech in Cairo last June, that a two-state solution to this crisis was in the American national security interest. Obama, and his Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then made strong statements about the need for Israel to stop its settlement activities. But, after an outcry from much of the Israeli leadership and its supporters worldwide, the American administration has gone silent on this matter of such significance to the Palestinian position.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrives Monday for a three-day visit, mostly to Israel but with a stop in Ramallah.
As we reported here two days ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) took the proposal for "indirect" talks to a meeting of Arab League Foreign Ministers last week, which on Wednesday gave him the go-ahead, the green light, the fig leaf he felt he needed.
The Fatah leadership in the Central Committee approved the proposal for "indirect" talks in a meeting in the Muqata'a on Saturday.
At each step in this approval process, it has been made clear that these new "indirect" negotiations will last only four months, and will not move beyond that, unless there is major movement or progress.
Palestinian officials say, with a shrug of the shoulders, that they were under too much pressure from the Europeans and the Arabs to resist any longer an American proposal to undertake "indirect" or "proximity" talks with Israel.
There have been no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since December 2008, when Israel launched a massive three-week military operation against Hamas in Gaza, and Palestinian officials declared an end to official contacts during the fighting. The Israeli Operation Cast Lead ended by two separate cease-fires, one Israeli and one Hamas, just hours before Barack Obama was sworn into office on Capitol Hill.
The BBC World Service radio reported Sunday that Fatah Central Committee member Azzam al-Ahmad said: "We think it's unlikely that these indirect negotiations with the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government will succeed ... But we want to give an opportunity to the US administration to continue its efforts'."The BBC report is posted here
Ma'an News Agency reported that the P.L.O. Executive Committee had what it calls a "controversial" vote on the proposal for "indirect" talks, and that some members objected. Ma'an said that "Senior PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo [he is also Secretary of the Executive Committee] told reporters following the four-hour meeting ... [that] 'This decision of the Palestinian leadership was taken with the objection or disagreement of a number factions and members of the Executive Committee', he said, without divulging names". According to Ma'an, Abed Rabbo told journalists that "In light of the Arab stance and on the basis on its national responsibility, the Palestinian leadership decided to give the US proposal a chance, holding indirect talks between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, which will initially focus on the issues of borders and security." The Ma'an report also indicated that "The communist Palestinian People´s Party said in a statement following the meeting that it had voted against a return to negotiations. The group said the PLO was 'embarrassed' by Abbas´ decision to ask the Arab League to support a return to negotiations. 'The decision to resume talks should be only up to the organizations of the PLO with all of our appreciation and respect for the support of the Arabs to the Palestinians and their cause', the statement said". This report is published here.
Everybody knows, as Leonard Cohen has sung in one of his most famous songs, that the chances of a breakthrough as a result of these "indirect" talks is minimal. Everybody knows, as well, that failure will lead to a worsening of the situation here.
This is the drama of the present moment.
It is the P.L.O. which entered negotiations with Israel in an agreement signed in a Live Event hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton on the White House lawn in September 1993. The "Oslo" process of negotiations, named after the Norwegian capital which sponsored secret Palestinian-Israeli contacts that led up to the September 1993 Declaration of Principal, led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a subsidiary body to manage day-to-day affairs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza during an "interim period" of "autonomy" that was supposed to last about five years, and end with agreement on "final status issues".
Now, however, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, backed by international donors and the Quartet of Middle East negotiators (the USA, Russia, European Union, and the United Nations), is treated as the hub of Palestinian power.
Most of the P.L.O. leadership-in-exile, and many of its exiled fighters and their immediate nuclear families, returned to the occupied Palestinian territory -- some 180,000 in all.
Millions of other Palestinian refugees from the fighting that surrounded the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948 continue to live in exile, in a "diaspora", in the occupied Palestinian territory, in neighboring countries, and around the world.
Palestinians, and many others, believed that the end goal of the "Oslo" process would be the creation of an independent Palestinian state. When this failed to materialize, the then-Palestinian leader, the late Yasser Arafat had to be stopped by Israel threats and American warnings from making a unilateral declaration of statehood in 1999, and again in the spring of 2000.
Arafat had, much earlier, proclaimed an independent Palestinian state within the June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital at a meeting of the P.L.O. in November 1988. That was a year into the first Palestinian Intifada (or uprising). What is known as the second Palestinian Intifada began in the autumn of 2000, after the failure of Camp David peace talks hosted by U.S. Bill Clinton.
U.S. President George W. Bush did not have his famous "vision" of a two-state solution which would involve the establishment of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel,
until 2002, when Israel's brutal military reoccupation of the major Palestinian cities throughout the West Bank and threats to kill Yasser Arafat under seige in the Muqata'a led to a global outcry about double standards in the Middle East at the same time as the U.S.-led confrontation with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was rising to a peak.
Now, the four-month timetable for these proposed new U.S.-led "indirect" talks brings us right up to Palestinian municipal elections
Is that the main point?
Are these proposed U.S.-led "indirect" talks between Israelis and Palestinians only intended to maintain an illusion, or keep a holding pattern, until the Palestinian local and municipal elections scheduled for 17 July?
Voter registration for these Palestinian elections began on Saturday 6 March, and will continue until 16 March.
While the local Palestinian elections are moving ahead, the major Palestinian Presidential and Legislative Council elections are not.
Presumably, the idea must be that if Fatah can win big in the local elections, Hamas will be less head-strong. Hamas is not banned from participation, but it has declared the announced July local elections as "illegal". This is probably an idication that Hamas will probably not participate ... Then what?
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a proclamation last 24 October ordering presidential and parliamentary elections for 24 January. A few days later, in early November, Abbas postponed these "national" elections for an "indefinite" period of time, explaining that he was endorsing the position of the Palestinian Independent Elections Commission that it would be impossible to hold elections under the "current conditions" - taken to mean the continuing split between a West Bank ruled by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (in which Fatah is the dominant political movement), and a Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas.
Talks on Fatah-Hamas reconciliation have not yet come to an end, or to any fruition. Hamas, which won a surprise victory of some 60 to 70 percent of the seats in the 2006 elections for the Palestinian Authority (PA) Legislative Council (PLC) elections, is still not yet integrated into the overarching Palestinian Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) despite a 2005 Cairo agreement -- Hamas wants a share of seats in the P.L.O.'s National Council in the same proportion to the seats it won in the 2006 Legislative Council elections, and Fatah is adamantly, bitterly opposed to that. Fatah officials have said privately that they would not concede any more than 25 percent of the seats in the Palestine National Council (PNC)
One Israeli media report today makes an interesting direct link between the impending local and municipal elections, and the proposed "indirect" Israeli-Palestinian talks. In today's SUMMARY OF OP-EDS FROM THE HEBREW PRESS, translated into English + sent out to journalists by email from the Israeli Government Press Office (part of the Israeli Prime Minister's office, is one item saying that a Yediot Ahronot op ed article written by Alex Fishman "asserts that 'Local [Palestinian] authority elections are a real test of strength of legitimacy for the Abu Mazen-Fayad duo. The Palestinian Authority cannot stand for elections with a record of concessions on the national issue. Therefore, until after the elections, nothing will come of the contacts with Israel."
And, at the end of the four-month period that is expected to start this week, the Israeli-announced unilateral ten-month settlement freeze (which even the Israeli Ministry of Defense, who rules the West Bank, says is being violated in a significant number of places) will be nearly over.
Haaretz journalist Zvi Bar'el wrote in an article published today that "The fact is that this result [the expected start of "indirect" talks] could have been achieved in November, when the building freeze, but the issue was allowed to drag on until March. It can be assumed that things will stall once again, at the same point, in July, when the time comes for direct negotiations. But then it will only be two months before the scheduled end of the settlement freeze, when will be able to breathe comfortably once more, to build and settle en masse ... Indirect talks are a good trick when the other side is an enemy with which there is no dialogue and agreement must be reached on the initial conditions for negotiating, or for entities that do not recognize each other. This was the case for the indirect talks between Israel and Syria that were meant to formulate preconditions and to summarize what had been agreed to that point, or for the indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas. With the Palestinians, however, the situation is fundamentally different. For many years now both parties have recognized one another. They have cooperated on security issues and have recognized each other's needs. They have signed agreements, and above all they both recognize the right of the existence of two states, side by side ... Israel and the Palestinians do not need any more confidence-building measures, the lifting of roadblocks or the razing of outposts. Each knows the other all too well, and knows that these are hollow steps that even if they are carried out will only contribute to the occupation's extension ... The Palestinian price tag for direct talks will not change in the indirect talks. A settlement freeze was and has remained a fundamental condition of the Palestinians. The view that East Jerusalem is the Palestinian capital does not match Jewish construction there. The territory of Palestine, which theoretically is the easy part of the negotiations, is also known, as is the territorial contiguity that is necessary in order to have a viable state. The settlements are contrary to these principles and removing a large portion of them is a necessary requirement. But the right-wing government, even when it is decorated with some symbols of Labor, is contrary to freezing settlements, and certainly opposed to their dismantling. The Palestinians' basic conditions are antithetical to the conditions for the existence of a Netanyahu government. Therefore, it does not matter what the format of the talks will be. Because in the balance between the government's survival and the conditions for the state's existence, the government is of course more important. The only encouraging sign we can draw from these talks is in the fact that the American mediator has become part of the actual price tag. Because he is the one who in the end will have to rule on who is to blame for the failure. This is the only element that can threaten Israel and the Palestinians. But if we are to judge by the degree by which the Americans have shown they are committed to a resolution of the conflict, we should not hold our breath. They softened their tough stance on the settlement freeze pretty fast"... This analysis is published here.
And, let's not forget the American elections: another report in Haaretz today, by Barak Raviv, says that "The U.S. administration will not put a lot of effort into the upcoming indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, opting instead to focus on the November Congressional elections, according to an internal Foreign Ministry report that was distributed to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad ... 'The recent American statements point to the adoption of wording in line, even if partially and cautiously, with Palestinian demands in regard to the framework and structure of negotiations', the report stated. 'Still, the [U.S.] administration is making sure to avoid commenting on its position on core issues' ... The report released recently by the Foreign Ministry's center for political research, which focuses on strategic foreign policy, is less optimistic about the chances for progress in the next round of peace talks. The document was delivered to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad several days ago. According to the report Washington is aware of the domestic political problems faced separately by both Netanyahu and Abbas and has decided to concentrate on achieving the limited goal of restarting the negotiations. The peace talks will not be at the top of the Obama administration's agenda, the report claims. 'In our assessment the administration will focus in the coming year on domestic issues that are expected to determine the results of the Congressional elections', the report's authors wrote. 'As such, and due to the difficulties to date in achieving significant gains in the peace process we can assume that the administration's focus on this issue will be limited and will predominantly remain in the hands of Mitchell's teams' ... The authors of the report also predict that the administration will avoid taking any position that suggests disagreement with Israel, because of the support that Israel enjoys among both parties in Congress ... A senior American official told Haaretz Saturday that the talks are expected to resume within days. 'We told the parties that our goal is to achieve two states for two peoples through negotiations', the U.S. official said. 'If there are obstacles we will try to help to overcome them and to propose our own ideas, and if we think one of the parties is not meeting its obligations we will say so'." This report can be read in full in Haaretz, here.
However, if the most that can be expected out of these U.S.-led "indirect" negotiations -- even at the end of the four-month set period -- is a U.S. "report card" which, if precedent serves, will be deliberately "balanced" to criticized both sides, then how do both these political leaderships involved (or all of them) think they're going to be able keep a lid on this explosive situation?
Almost simultaneously, U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem for four hours on Sunday, and the two will meet again on Monday before Mitchell heads to Ramallah for meetings with Palestinian officials. The U.S.-sponsored "Annapolis process" of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations which began in late November 2007 were broken off by Palestinian leaders at the end of December 2008 when the Israeli Defense Forces began an unprecedented + massive military operation (that lasted three weeks) against Hamas in Gaza. The Annapolis process began with great fanfare and the declared intention to arrive at the creation of a Palestinian state by the end of 2008 ... but without results.
U.S. President Obama, who made conflicting claims about his position concerning Jerusalem during his presidential elections campaign, then promised upon taking office to make this Israeli-Palestinian conflict his top priority. His first phone call in office was to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He said several times, including in a major speech in Cairo last June, that a two-state solution to this crisis was in the American national security interest. Obama, and his Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, then made strong statements about the need for Israel to stop its settlement activities. But, after an outcry from much of the Israeli leadership and its supporters worldwide, the American administration has gone silent on this matter of such significance to the Palestinian position.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrives Monday for a three-day visit, mostly to Israel but with a stop in Ramallah.
As we reported here two days ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) took the proposal for "indirect" talks to a meeting of Arab League Foreign Ministers last week, which on Wednesday gave him the go-ahead, the green light, the fig leaf he felt he needed.
The Fatah leadership in the Central Committee approved the proposal for "indirect" talks in a meeting in the Muqata'a on Saturday.
At each step in this approval process, it has been made clear that these new "indirect" negotiations will last only four months, and will not move beyond that, unless there is major movement or progress.
Palestinian officials say, with a shrug of the shoulders, that they were under too much pressure from the Europeans and the Arabs to resist any longer an American proposal to undertake "indirect" or "proximity" talks with Israel.
There have been no Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since December 2008, when Israel launched a massive three-week military operation against Hamas in Gaza, and Palestinian officials declared an end to official contacts during the fighting. The Israeli Operation Cast Lead ended by two separate cease-fires, one Israeli and one Hamas, just hours before Barack Obama was sworn into office on Capitol Hill.
The BBC World Service radio reported Sunday that Fatah Central Committee member Azzam al-Ahmad said: "We think it's unlikely that these indirect negotiations with the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government will succeed ... But we want to give an opportunity to the US administration to continue its efforts'."The BBC report is posted here
Ma'an News Agency reported that the P.L.O. Executive Committee had what it calls a "controversial" vote on the proposal for "indirect" talks, and that some members objected. Ma'an said that "Senior PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo [he is also Secretary of the Executive Committee] told reporters following the four-hour meeting ... [that] 'This decision of the Palestinian leadership was taken with the objection or disagreement of a number factions and members of the Executive Committee', he said, without divulging names". According to Ma'an, Abed Rabbo told journalists that "In light of the Arab stance and on the basis on its national responsibility, the Palestinian leadership decided to give the US proposal a chance, holding indirect talks between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, which will initially focus on the issues of borders and security." The Ma'an report also indicated that "The communist Palestinian People´s Party said in a statement following the meeting that it had voted against a return to negotiations. The group said the PLO was 'embarrassed' by Abbas´ decision to ask the Arab League to support a return to negotiations. 'The decision to resume talks should be only up to the organizations of the PLO with all of our appreciation and respect for the support of the Arabs to the Palestinians and their cause', the statement said". This report is published here.
Everybody knows, as Leonard Cohen has sung in one of his most famous songs, that the chances of a breakthrough as a result of these "indirect" talks is minimal. Everybody knows, as well, that failure will lead to a worsening of the situation here.
This is the drama of the present moment.
It is the P.L.O. which entered negotiations with Israel in an agreement signed in a Live Event hosted by U.S. President Bill Clinton on the White House lawn in September 1993. The "Oslo" process of negotiations, named after the Norwegian capital which sponsored secret Palestinian-Israeli contacts that led up to the September 1993 Declaration of Principal, led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a subsidiary body to manage day-to-day affairs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza during an "interim period" of "autonomy" that was supposed to last about five years, and end with agreement on "final status issues".
Now, however, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, backed by international donors and the Quartet of Middle East negotiators (the USA, Russia, European Union, and the United Nations), is treated as the hub of Palestinian power.
Most of the P.L.O. leadership-in-exile, and many of its exiled fighters and their immediate nuclear families, returned to the occupied Palestinian territory -- some 180,000 in all.
Millions of other Palestinian refugees from the fighting that surrounded the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948 continue to live in exile, in a "diaspora", in the occupied Palestinian territory, in neighboring countries, and around the world.
Palestinians, and many others, believed that the end goal of the "Oslo" process would be the creation of an independent Palestinian state. When this failed to materialize, the then-Palestinian leader, the late Yasser Arafat had to be stopped by Israel threats and American warnings from making a unilateral declaration of statehood in 1999, and again in the spring of 2000.
Arafat had, much earlier, proclaimed an independent Palestinian state within the June 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital at a meeting of the P.L.O. in November 1988. That was a year into the first Palestinian Intifada (or uprising). What is known as the second Palestinian Intifada began in the autumn of 2000, after the failure of Camp David peace talks hosted by U.S. Bill Clinton.
U.S. President George W. Bush did not have his famous "vision" of a two-state solution which would involve the establishment of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel,
until 2002, when Israel's brutal military reoccupation of the major Palestinian cities throughout the West Bank and threats to kill Yasser Arafat under seige in the Muqata'a led to a global outcry about double standards in the Middle East at the same time as the U.S.-led confrontation with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was rising to a peak.
Now, the four-month timetable for these proposed new U.S.-led "indirect" talks brings us right up to Palestinian municipal elections
Is that the main point?
Are these proposed U.S.-led "indirect" talks between Israelis and Palestinians only intended to maintain an illusion, or keep a holding pattern, until the Palestinian local and municipal elections scheduled for 17 July?
Voter registration for these Palestinian elections began on Saturday 6 March, and will continue until 16 March.
While the local Palestinian elections are moving ahead, the major Palestinian Presidential and Legislative Council elections are not.
Presumably, the idea must be that if Fatah can win big in the local elections, Hamas will be less head-strong. Hamas is not banned from participation, but it has declared the announced July local elections as "illegal". This is probably an idication that Hamas will probably not participate ... Then what?
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a proclamation last 24 October ordering presidential and parliamentary elections for 24 January. A few days later, in early November, Abbas postponed these "national" elections for an "indefinite" period of time, explaining that he was endorsing the position of the Palestinian Independent Elections Commission that it would be impossible to hold elections under the "current conditions" - taken to mean the continuing split between a West Bank ruled by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (in which Fatah is the dominant political movement), and a Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas.
Talks on Fatah-Hamas reconciliation have not yet come to an end, or to any fruition. Hamas, which won a surprise victory of some 60 to 70 percent of the seats in the 2006 elections for the Palestinian Authority (PA) Legislative Council (PLC) elections, is still not yet integrated into the overarching Palestinian Liberation Organization (P.L.O.) despite a 2005 Cairo agreement -- Hamas wants a share of seats in the P.L.O.'s National Council in the same proportion to the seats it won in the 2006 Legislative Council elections, and Fatah is adamantly, bitterly opposed to that. Fatah officials have said privately that they would not concede any more than 25 percent of the seats in the Palestine National Council (PNC)
One Israeli media report today makes an interesting direct link between the impending local and municipal elections, and the proposed "indirect" Israeli-Palestinian talks. In today's SUMMARY OF OP-EDS FROM THE HEBREW PRESS, translated into English + sent out to journalists by email from the Israeli Government Press Office (part of the Israeli Prime Minister's office, is one item saying that a Yediot Ahronot op ed article written by Alex Fishman "asserts that 'Local [Palestinian] authority elections are a real test of strength of legitimacy for the Abu Mazen-Fayad duo. The Palestinian Authority cannot stand for elections with a record of concessions on the national issue. Therefore, until after the elections, nothing will come of the contacts with Israel."
And, at the end of the four-month period that is expected to start this week, the Israeli-announced unilateral ten-month settlement freeze (which even the Israeli Ministry of Defense, who rules the West Bank, says is being violated in a significant number of places) will be nearly over.
Haaretz journalist Zvi Bar'el wrote in an article published today that "The fact is that this result [the expected start of "indirect" talks] could have been achieved in November, when the building freeze, but the issue was allowed to drag on until March. It can be assumed that things will stall once again, at the same point, in July, when the time comes for direct negotiations. But then it will only be two months before the scheduled end of the settlement freeze, when will be able to breathe comfortably once more, to build and settle en masse ... Indirect talks are a good trick when the other side is an enemy with which there is no dialogue and agreement must be reached on the initial conditions for negotiating, or for entities that do not recognize each other. This was the case for the indirect talks between Israel and Syria that were meant to formulate preconditions and to summarize what had been agreed to that point, or for the indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas. With the Palestinians, however, the situation is fundamentally different. For many years now both parties have recognized one another. They have cooperated on security issues and have recognized each other's needs. They have signed agreements, and above all they both recognize the right of the existence of two states, side by side ... Israel and the Palestinians do not need any more confidence-building measures, the lifting of roadblocks or the razing of outposts. Each knows the other all too well, and knows that these are hollow steps that even if they are carried out will only contribute to the occupation's extension ... The Palestinian price tag for direct talks will not change in the indirect talks. A settlement freeze was and has remained a fundamental condition of the Palestinians. The view that East Jerusalem is the Palestinian capital does not match Jewish construction there. The territory of Palestine, which theoretically is the easy part of the negotiations, is also known, as is the territorial contiguity that is necessary in order to have a viable state. The settlements are contrary to these principles and removing a large portion of them is a necessary requirement. But the right-wing government, even when it is decorated with some symbols of Labor, is contrary to freezing settlements, and certainly opposed to their dismantling. The Palestinians' basic conditions are antithetical to the conditions for the existence of a Netanyahu government. Therefore, it does not matter what the format of the talks will be. Because in the balance between the government's survival and the conditions for the state's existence, the government is of course more important. The only encouraging sign we can draw from these talks is in the fact that the American mediator has become part of the actual price tag. Because he is the one who in the end will have to rule on who is to blame for the failure. This is the only element that can threaten Israel and the Palestinians. But if we are to judge by the degree by which the Americans have shown they are committed to a resolution of the conflict, we should not hold our breath. They softened their tough stance on the settlement freeze pretty fast"... This analysis is published here.
And, let's not forget the American elections: another report in Haaretz today, by Barak Raviv, says that "The U.S. administration will not put a lot of effort into the upcoming indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, opting instead to focus on the November Congressional elections, according to an internal Foreign Ministry report that was distributed to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad ... 'The recent American statements point to the adoption of wording in line, even if partially and cautiously, with Palestinian demands in regard to the framework and structure of negotiations', the report stated. 'Still, the [U.S.] administration is making sure to avoid commenting on its position on core issues' ... The report released recently by the Foreign Ministry's center for political research, which focuses on strategic foreign policy, is less optimistic about the chances for progress in the next round of peace talks. The document was delivered to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and to Israeli diplomatic missions abroad several days ago. According to the report Washington is aware of the domestic political problems faced separately by both Netanyahu and Abbas and has decided to concentrate on achieving the limited goal of restarting the negotiations. The peace talks will not be at the top of the Obama administration's agenda, the report claims. 'In our assessment the administration will focus in the coming year on domestic issues that are expected to determine the results of the Congressional elections', the report's authors wrote. 'As such, and due to the difficulties to date in achieving significant gains in the peace process we can assume that the administration's focus on this issue will be limited and will predominantly remain in the hands of Mitchell's teams' ... The authors of the report also predict that the administration will avoid taking any position that suggests disagreement with Israel, because of the support that Israel enjoys among both parties in Congress ... A senior American official told Haaretz Saturday that the talks are expected to resume within days. 'We told the parties that our goal is to achieve two states for two peoples through negotiations', the U.S. official said. 'If there are obstacles we will try to help to overcome them and to propose our own ideas, and if we think one of the parties is not meeting its obligations we will say so'." This report can be read in full in Haaretz, here.
However, if the most that can be expected out of these U.S.-led "indirect" negotiations -- even at the end of the four-month set period -- is a U.S. "report card" which, if precedent serves, will be deliberately "balanced" to criticized both sides, then how do both these political leaderships involved (or all of them) think they're going to be able keep a lid on this explosive situation?
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