AMERICA:Barack Obama is about to embark on a series of meetings with key Middle East leaders, writes DENIS STAUNTON
NEXT MONDAY’S visit to Washington by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is the first of a series of events that will move the Middle East peace process to the top of President Barack Obama’s agenda. Within days of Netanyahu’s visit, Obama will host Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and two days after that, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.
Next month, Obama will travel to Cairo to deliver his long-awaited address to the Muslim world and shortly afterwards, the president is expected to outline his strategy for promoting peace in the Middle East.
Few in Washington doubt Obama’s commitment to a peace settlement and many Middle East experts believe his administration represents the last chance for a two-state solution.
The administration has made clear that any settlement must produce a viable state for the Palestinians, although Netanyahu has yet to express support for a two-state solution.
Obama sees the peace process within the context of a broader reshaping of US foreign policy that includes engagement with Iran and Syria. Israel rejects any linkage of the peace process with other issues and Netanyahu has shown little interest in a comprehensive approach that involves agreements with Syria and Lebanon as well as with the Palestinians.
For Netanyahu, the threat to Israel from a nuclear-armed Iran is more urgent than the need for a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel this week promised CIA chief Leon Panetta that it would not attack Iran without first informing Washington. Netanyahu will, however, be seeking assurances from Obama that the US will press for tougher sanctions if Iran does not agree to halt its uranium enrichment programme by the autumn.
Some of Israel’s supporters in the US are nervous about Netanyahu’s visit but Daniel Levy, a former advisor to Ehud Barak, believes the Israeli prime minister has successfully lowered expectations to the point where he cannot disappoint.
“I think he will find a formula for embracing the two-state solution,” he told a forum at the New America Foundation this week.
“It may not be a formula that is in as many words but he will try to suggest to the president that he is coming with a set of very significant actions on the ground and he will ask to be judged by what happens on the ground.”
Levy believes that Obama will have more success with Netanyahu by adopting a dramatic, comprehensive approach rather than settling for incremental progress.
“I believe you can get a two-state solution from Netanyahu,” he said.
“I may be proved wrong but we’ll only find out if we get a serious implementation plan – not a statement of principles – and crucially one that is not predicated on building Palestinian capacity.”
Robert Malley, a former Middle East adviser to Bill Clinton, told the same forum that, after 16 years of US failure in the region, Obama needed to make a fundamental review of the US approach.
“We really have an opportunity and an obligation to rethink some of the basic premises of the US role, about what it needs to do, how it articulates its solution and how it deals with actors on the ground,” he said.
“The Bush administration did the wrong things poorly, which creates the illusion that somehow you could do them well. You can’t. We’re going to have to find a different approach.”
If Obama is to succeed in the Middle East, he needs to persuade the American people that a comprehensive settlement is in their national interest. A successful peace process would not only mean investing diplomatic resources in the region but could ultimately involve a US military presence similar to that in former Yugoslavia.
American public opinion is overwhelmingly in favour of a two-state solution and opposed to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
But when Hillary Clinton hinted recently that the US could talk to a Palestinian unity government that included Hamas, the blowback from Congress was immediate and emphatic.
Levy acknowledges that Washington will not talk to Hamas any time soon but suggests that other members of the Middle East Quartet – the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, should be more flexible. “I don’t think the US necessarily needs to engage directly with Hamas but it’s not smart that others are not doing it,” he said.
“I think there can be a division of labour inside the quartet that was not done previously and I would think the Europeans have a role here.”