Middle East Peace Talks

"On Passover, we should free ourselves from irrelevant concepts in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It became clear in recent months, unsurprisingly, that the Palestinian side is interested in getting, not in giving. They told us clearly over the past several months: 'I will not talk to you about the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, or giving up the Right of Return."
"I am not a doomsayer; I am a realist. Unfortunately, on these issues, I find myself repeating over and over again, 'I told you so.' I wish it could have been different. I learned that this was so when I was the head of intelligence and now I've been shouting it for the past 20 years. Every time, the Palestinians run away [from talks] and then blame us." 
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'Alon

Palestinians are prepared to indulge in a few more of their pressure tactics to force Israel to surrender yet more of their defined values as a Jewish state. So far, the onus, as usual, is on Israel to make sacrifices, none appear to be forthcoming from the Palestinians. No recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, brought to existence for that very purpose, though the 'State of Palestine' is one specifically designed to represent the interests and citizenship of the Palestinian Arabs.

An ongoing insistence on the 'right of return' of four million Palestinians representing the offspring of the original 760 Palestinian Arabs who fled the area in 1948 when a combined Arab-nation army marched to destroy the fledgling Jewish nation. And taking possession of east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, while leaving that portion of the ancient Jewish city minus its most sacred religious places of worship and heritage in the hands of the Muslim Waqf and the PA which will continue to deny Jews the right to worship there.

American Council on Foreign Relations working paper: Taking incremental steps is not an argument against seeking comprehensive peace negotiations. The renewal of peace negotiations is useful, if only to demonstrate that the ultimate goal of a comprehensive agreement has not been abandoned. But it is unlikely that new negotiations will make progress in the near future; the most any Israeli government seems able to offer is less than the least any Palestinian government seems able to accept.

• The United States should help the PA emerge from a state of financial crisis. The PA depends on foreign aid for survival, because it cannot pay salaries or provide public services on its meager tax revenues. This objective will require maintaining U.S. aid at current levels, pressing the EU to do the same, and pushing Arab oil-exporting countries to provide additional aid. It will also mean pressing Israel to transfer PA tax monies it has intermittently withheld since the Palestinian statehood initiative in the United Nations. A bankrupt PA that cannot pay salaries will not survive.

• The United States should encourage Israel to take further steps to improve the Palestinian economy. In the last four years, Israel has removed some barriers and checkpoints that interfere with mobility in the West Bank, granted permission for Israeli Arabs to shop there, and created more opportunities for residents there to work in Israel. In September 2013, with negotiations under way, Israel granted five thousand more work permits, and during Ramadan it permitted hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to enter Israel to shop, visit holy sites, and meet with family members. It should be a top priority of U.S. policy to seek the continuation and enlargement of these steps.

• Israel should limit construction in settlements to the major blocs that, in all previous negotiations, have been understood that Israel will keep. The logic is obvious: limiting construction to the major blocs would signal that Israel does intend ultimately to enter into an agreement that establishes a Palestinian state in the rest of the West Bank. Israeli coalition politics makes achieving these limits difficult, but the United States will have a better chance if it drops the politically impossible demand that Israel cease construction in Jerusalem and all the major blocs and focus instead on outlying settlements.

• Israel should minimize its incursions in Palestinian territory and undertake only those with significant security payoffs. In areas of the West Bank, Palestinians feel the Israeli presence outside of settlements through their interactions with Israeli security forces: the Israeli Defense Force, police, and Shin Bet (the Israel Security Agency). Raids in urban areas are particularly likely to result in violence, as they have on several occasions in 2013. Such incidents severely damage essential Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation. The United States should publicly ask for explanations by the government of Israel when such raids do occur.

• The United States should encourage Israeli security forces and courts to prevent and penalize settler violence against Palestinians, which has increased in recent years. The United States should seek investigations and prosecutions of such incidents.

The United States should be willing to criticize and sometimes penalize the PA whenever it glorifies violence or those who have committed acts of terror. This issue, known as preventing "incitement," goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship and the chances for peace. The U.S. government should publicly criticize actions that glorify violence and terror, and demand PA responses that address U.S. criticism. Financial penalties undermine U.S. efforts to help the West Bank economy but can drive home the message to the PA that this issue is viewed as serious. Given U.S. aid levels of over $400 million per year, penalties of several million dollars in the direct budget support portion (roughly $200 million) will not bankrupt the PA; conversely, the absence of them sends the message that such conduct does not matter or that U.S. complaints may be ignored.

The excerpt above places onus on Israel to commit to a number of exercises whose purpose is meant to persuade the Palestinian Authority that it must deal directly with Israel in negotiations meant to lead to a peace agreement that will delineate steps each side will take to meet the demands of the other in a manner acceptable to both sides. On each side there would be some measure of give, logically, but in any negotiations that Israel has ever undertaken with the Palestinians the give has always been on its side of the equation and the take has always benefited the Palestinians.

Even yet, this has never been persuasive enough, even when through a succession of administrations on both sides, Israel has offered to honour the vast majority of the demands laid upon it for settlement of the aged conflict. For reasons never fully disclosed, and even when it seems through response by the Palestinians, walking from the concluding negotiation table with success clutched in their hands, the end result has been rejection. A rejection that conventionally the Palestinians claim is Israel's, not theirs.

Through these negotiations the Palestinians have undergone a learning curve. They have learned that they only have to press to achieve most of their demands. They have learned that having had most of their demands met they can simply go forward and demand more; there is no end to the permutations and complications of demands, and all can be placed on the table for consideration. For even if they are all accepted in the hopes that a peace can be achieved and the two sides move on, they are not really meant to.

There is nothing less than the complete disintegration of the State of Israel that would fully satisfy Palestinian demands. Achieving that end would result in the four million 'refugees' returning to their ancestral places of residence, while those Jews who had always lived in their ancestral places of residence in the Palestinian Territories would simply be out of luck. Mohammed Ishtayeh, aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warns the PA is prepared to sign up for additional international agencies and treaties for the nascent "State of Palestine".

Israel has brought this upon itself by having balked at releasing the fourth tranche of prisoners from Israeli jails who serve time for attacks against Israel and the murder of its citizens. To Israeli Jews they represent murderous terrorists, to the Palestinians they represent heroes of the resistance. Under the terms of renewed talks championed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the PA was to have restrained itself from approaching UN agencies again for recognition and membership, while Israel in exchange was to release hundreds of prisoners.

The PA has its sights on the release of a thousand prisoners, as each round of talks bring new demands. It is the release of Palestinian Arab and Israeli Palestinian prisoners that lend credence to President Mahmoud Abbas's continued administration of the PA. To reunite the imprisoned with their families and thus gain the recognition and support he so badly needs. He also is quite aware that should he sign a peace agreement with Israel all support and recognition will be withdrawn.

Palestinians have been fed a steady diet of non-compromise with Israel, of incitement to violence.

According to Mr. Ishtayeh the Palestinians "are keeping the door open for any serious talks", until the April 29 deadline for completion of the negotiations is reached. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "we are ready to continue talks". Covertly between their intimates each speaks an entirely different language; the former awaiting the release of the Palestinian prisoners at which time they will invent a reason to once again walk away from the talks.

And the latter knowing exactly that this is what is meant to occur.