The stalemate in the Middle East peace process generated by the deepening divisions among the Palestinians, and most recently the diverging policy agendas of the Israeli government and the White House, is renewing calls by experts to the Obama administration to draft a "new comprehensive peace plan" to salvage the two-state solution.
The recent meetings of US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell with the Israeli leadership in Tel Aviv, underscored the differences between the American vision emphasizing the two state solution on the on hand and Netanyahu's plan focusing instead on the "economic peace" and building Palestinian institutions before any final status negotiations. Netanyahu refrained after his two hours meeting with Mitchell yesterday from committing, as his predecessors Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon had, to a two-state solution and simply stated that "Israel expects the Palestinians to recognize the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people". Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, for his part, and after having rejected the Roadmap and the principals of Annapolis meeting three weeks ago, asserted in a statement after his meeting with Mitchell that "the peace process has reached a dead end" and "the new government will have to formulate new ideas and approaches,"
Despite those differences, Nathan Brown, a senior associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, does not anticipate an "imminent clash" between Obama and Netanyahu. He points out that "the hurdles and dire conditions on the ground do not relate directly to the outcome of the peace process" but mostly to divisions among the Palestinians and the failure to achieve a unity government between Hamas and Fatah. Brown calls the disagreement between Obama and Netanyahu on the two state solution, a "preliminary political posturing" tactic and doesn't see it as threatening in the long term. The expert regards the settlement expansion as a "much larger threat to the relationship", and one that might lead to an early clash on between the US and Israel. Brown stresses that Netanyahu "gets lots of support from settler groups" and that "his foreign minister (Lieberman) was a resident of one". He adds that settlement expansion is a major and imminent hurdle to the peace efforts and risks the status of Jerusalem in any final status negotiations. Secretary Hillary Clinton, and in a departure from the previous administration of George Bush, criticized the settlement activity in her last trip to Jerusalem, describing it as "unhelpful and not keeping with the obligations entered into under the 'road map'".
This political stalemate and the absence of a clear vision from opposite sides, to move the peace process forward creates an "opportunity" for the Obama administration according to Daniel Levy, a Senior Fellow and Co-Director, Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation. Levy's advice for the Obama administration is to put "less emphasis on words" and rhetorical differences with both the Israeli government and Hamas, especially that "previous Israeli governments have committed to a two state solution, and yet they kept expanding settlements, and even went to war."Levy calls the Obama administration instead to focus on the "behavior and actions" of the actors in the process, and sees in the political vacuum in the Palestinian territories, and the absence of a clear policy for the Netanyahu government on the peace process, an "opportunity" for the US to come up with its own plan for resolving the conflict.
Such a plan should focus in Levy's opinion, on primarily ending the Israeli occupation and rather than focusing solely on economic peace or security building of the Palestinian Authority. He explains that the latter strategy " is exactly what has been happening for the past sixty years". Levy sees an opportunity for the United States to work with the Quartet members and the international community in drafting this plan, and opens the possibility of using the Arab Peace initiative, launched by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in 2002 and offers establishing normal relations between Israel and Arab League states in exchange for withdrawing from the occupied territories and establishing a Palestinian state based on 1967 border, as a launching pad for this idea.
A US official speaking on condition of anonymity asserts that the Arab Peace Initiative is "on the table" in discussions within the administration circles. Brown, however, is not as confident in the attempts to convince Netanyahu, "who has yet to accept the two state solution", to adopt the Arab peace initiative.
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