THERE IS a whiff of talks in the air. Or that’s the consensus that emerged last week among observers – though not yet the principals – from the smoke and mirrors that is the world of Middle East diplomacy. All being well, on the fringes of the UN General Assembly next month, US president Barack Obama will be able to announce that Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas will sit down to talks.
Those seem to be signals emanating from last Wednesday’s London meeting between Mr Obama’s special Middle East envoy, senator George Mitchell, and Mr Netanyahu. Mr Mitchell is due to go to Jerusalem in a fortnight to finalise an agreement on both an Israeli settlement freeze and the consequent reigniting of direct peace talks.
The Palestinian Authority leadership has been refusing to talk to Mr Netanyahu ahead of a commitment to the suspension of settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Now Mr Netanyahu seems willing to commit himself to a temporary suspension of the building programme in the West Bank. The US State Department was anxious last week to distance itself from widely reported and credible suggestions that Mr Mitchell has accepted a nod-and-a-wink arrangement with Mr Netanyahu that would leave East Jerusalem out of any settlement freeze, and settle for a nine- to 12-month freeze in the West Bank that would also allow the completion of some 2,500 apartments on which building work has already begun.
The US is stressing that it is not setting preconditions and that it will be up to the parties to determine for themselves whether their own “thresholds” have been met. Mr Netanyahu is still publicly playing hard to get, not least to keep his hard-line coalition partners on side, but is thought amenable, particularly if he can secure a deal with Hamas ahead of New York to free imprisoned Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. There have been signs in Cairo talks that this may be possible. The Israeli prime minister is also trying to link any agreement to talks to a possible security council decision to step up sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme.
The energy and compromises required just to get Mr Netanyahu and Mr Abbas to the table do not bode well for what will happen when the two leaders actually meet, despite the former’s recent acknowledgment of the desirability of a two-state solution. At any talks the issue of not just freezing settlements but reversing the so-called “facts on the ground” will prove hugely difficult, not to mention the hoary old final status issues of borders, Jerusalem and the right of refugees to return.
The US seems to be committed, however, to the Palestinian insistence that talks immediately tackle those core issues. And it does not accept Mr Netanyahu’s precondition on such an agenda that requires that the Palestinians accept not only Israel’s right to exist, but its right to exist as a Jewish state.
Though still massively problematic, it is to be hoped that we are seeing a window of opportunity.