On and off, with nothing to show for

US President Barack Obama has been issuing contradictory statements about the prospect for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

Once the US president assures Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that he is committed to the creation of an independent Palestinian state, then, after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he says the prospects for peace in the region appear slim.

Some time before that, Obama had acknowledged that the search for peace in the Middle East is tantamount to walking among land-mines.

Admittedly this knotty problem - it shouldn’t be so, but in its long life, it managed to get so entangled in Israel’s web of deceit that the Gordian knot seems a child’s game compared to it - has been stubbornly defying attempts, serious or otherwise, to solve it. Yet the world’s superpower, which should have the clout to affect things, needs to be clearer about where it stands on the issue.

Conflicting assessments of the situation are confusing, to say the least, and raise disturbing questions about where the White House really stands on the peace process.

For the time being, and difficult to understand why since international law is clear and the mechanism is there, needing just to be implemented, negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, like the magicians’ trick of now you see it, now you don’t, are on and off, are being made indirect, direct or proximity, dragging on and on with no end in sight.

This state of affairs only helps Israel grab more land, destroy more Palestinian houses and continue to utterly disregard the rights of the people under its occupation, all under the fa?ade of talks, useless, but for the fact that they preserve some appearances and save the international community the embarrassment its inaction brings upon it.

US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell has been engaged in shuttle diplomacy which only ensures that talks do oscillate among the modes above. And now, as if progress had been registered in indirect talks, Palestinians are urged to enter direct negotiations. Haven’t the parties been there?

How much talk can there be before anything changes?

A more forthright US position on the stalled peace process might help, one wishes to believe. As long as the US wavers, like the talks, negotiations will not go anywhere.

Netanyahu, back from his recent US visit, having sensed the American administration’s indecisiveness, announced that the Israeli settlement programme will pick up where it left off a few months ago.

So much for serious intentions to arrive at peace.