US PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell resigned yesterday after nearly 2½ years in a fruitless quest for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Mr Mitchell was a Democratic senator from Maine from 1980 until 1995, serving as Senate majority leader from 1989. He was the first US special envoy for Northern Ireland, under president Bill Clinton, from 1995 until 2000 and played a key role in the conclusion of the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
Mr Mitchell saw fostering peace in Northern Ireland as a precedent for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “We had 700 days of failure and one day of success,” he said when Mr Obama appointed him, the day after Mr Obama took office in January 2009. “For most of the time, progress was non-existent or very slow.”
Regarding the conflict in Northern Ireland, Mr Mitchell said he formed the conviction that there is no such thing as a conflict that can’t be ended. “Conflicts are created, conducted and sustained . . . they can be ended by human beings.” Mr Obama and Mr Mitchell, in his resignation letter, noted that when he assumed the role of special envoy, Mr Mitchell, now 77, intended to serve only two years.
In April 2001, the Mitchell report asked Israel to stop building settlements in the West Bank and Palestinians to stop firing on Israeli towns and cities. Ten years later, neither has been achieved. His resignation occurs at a time of apparent stalemate in Middle East peace talks. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu government has continued to seize Palestinian land. The recent accord between the ruling Palestinian faction Fatah and the Islamist Hamas further complicates matters because Israel refuses to negotiate with Hamas. Palestinian moves to seek a UN resolution recognising an independent Palestinian state have enraged Mr Netanyahu’s government. “The president’s commitment [to peace] remains as firm as when he took office,” Mr Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney said.