All what the Palestinian cause, its tragedies and deadlocks needed was the virtual battle between Qatar and Egypt, with what each one of them represents in Arab politics, a battle over what the Arabs ask President Barack Obama's administration for, and who was entrusted with conveying these demands. While this virtual battle comes in the framework of role competition and media attention, it reveals at the same time the Arab predicament before the Arab diplomatic movement. In every Arab capital, the US presidential envoy George Mitchell will hear a different talk. Hence, the issue has turned from a question of how to make the United States give the Arabs binding guarantees to establish an independent Palestinian State and how to make the peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict succeed, to a conflict among the Arab capitals over the goals that serve their direct interests and a competition on their feelings towards the besieged people in Gaza.
It is not the first time that Arab countries seek to manipulate the Palestinian cause to serve their direct interests. But the new thing this time is that the extremist rightwing Israeli Government exploits the reality on the ground in East Jerusalem and the West Bank to topple the two-state solution to which the administration of Barack Obama was committed, and to topple the possible mechanisms to implement this solution. The new predicament is that Israel obtains its security guarantees and legitimacy for its Jewish nature, whereas the Arabs are still fighting over who offered more for the cause and who obtains guarantees from the United States, while the Palestinians lose every chance to obtain guarantees to establish their independent state. This is at a time competition rises regarding the Palestinian reconciliation and how to manipulate the possibilities and circumstances for signing it. This renders this reconciliation more and more unlikely, and deepens the Palestinian schism to a point of no-return.
In the midst of the Arab visits to Washington, which mirrored the Arab infighting, and on the eve of Mitchell's tour in the region, during which he will reveal the type of required American guarantees, Henry Siegman, former executive director of the American Jewish Congress and an expert on the American foreign policy, addressed a call to President Obama on his perception of how to re-launch the frozen peace process.
Siegman notices that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "succeeded in locking the irreversibility of its colonial project." He adds that "the capitulation of President Barack Obama to Netanyahu on the settlement freeze led to the collapse of the latest hope for the achievement of a two-state solution." He concludes that the likelihood of restoring hope to implement the two-state solution is contingent upon the US Administration and its abandonment of the sterile idea of a neutral role in the peace process, as well as its conviction that the establishment of the Palestinian State requires a foreign and binding intervention for Israel.
Indeed, Siegman believes that this binding American intervention is a strategic interest for Israel, which should maintain its Jewish and democratic ideals, and an American strategic interest that should not be at the service of the current Israeli government. But what he proposes regarding the need for a direct American forceful intervention to make Israel stop the settlement activities - in what creates a reality that allows the arise of the Palestinian State - can represent the foundation of the guarantees which the Arabs can request from Mitchell and his administration.
It is also unlikely at this time that the American Administration will listen to the advice of this Jew who is concerned about the "Jewish State’s" image and strategic interest. It is also unlikely that the Arabs will form together a force to put pressures on Obama's administration so as to prompt him to offer such guarantees, considering their current situation.
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