Paul Arhewe, Online/Foreign Editor
(With agency reports)
A new phase in the Middle East hostility is beginning to unfold as Israel, with the support of its old ally, The United States, is pushing for peace. Israel has declared its intension through its leader Benjamin Netanyahu that it is set to embark on direct peace talks with Palestinians.
Israel in May drew the irk of many in Middle East and other parts of the world when its forces killed Nine activists in an attempt to stop a flotilla of ships with humanitarian goods meant for the suffering Palestinians whose import and export routs have been cut off by the Israeli blockade in Gaza. This act has not only made Egypt to open its blockade of its own end of the Gaza border, but invokes and heightens the call for the lifting of Gaza blockade by Israel. In another vein, the only Israeli ally in the Middle East, Turkey, threatened to completely call off its relations with Tel-Aviv. In implementing this threat, Ankara has since stopped Israeli military aircraft from flying through its airspace.
Another thorny issue is the call for Israel to freeze constructions in West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, which the Israelis maintain a stand that it wont secede any portion to its neighbours. This is a major obstacle to establishing a concrete platform for peace in the nearly 60-year conflict since the creation of Israel.
Last Tuesday in the Oval office with President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu talked about his country’s readiness to commence direct talk with its warring neighbours.
Obama, like his predecessors is known to have soft spot and an unbreakable relationship with the Israelis. But playing the good world police, Obama seems to welcome this new initiated move of Netanyahu to embrace peace.
Yet, the hard-liners in Netanyahu's coalition government will probably not be won over. They have no interest in answering Palestinian demands for a freeze on settlement building in return for direct peace talks.
And that's still the critical issue between the U.S. and Israel, one neither Netanyahu nor Obama addressed after their fifth meeting since Obama took office 17 months ago.
Netanyuhu sidestepped that question again Wednesday in an interview broadcast on ABC's "Good Morning America."
"The simplest way to advance peace is to put aside all the grievances and all the preconditions," he said, asserting he's "ready to sit down" with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to discuss peace "without preconditions."
Asked what concrete steps he was willing to take to set the framework for new talks, Netanyahu said his government already had relaxed "hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints" in addition to its decision to ease the Gaza Strip blockade.
But he also told a foreign media that "we have to have very strong security arrangements so that the areas that we vacate do not turn into Iranian strongholds. We have some very clear requirements. ... The Palestinians will have very clear requirements."
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office last Tuesday, both Netanyahu and Obama had ducked a question about the Israeli leader's plans for extending a limited freeze on West Bank settlements. The moratorium expires in September.
While stark differences remain, the tone was far warmer than it was when Obama and Netanyahu were last together. That was in the spring and Obama was upset over Israeli policies in disputed East Jerusalem. He had Netanyahu to the White House in the evening, out of sight of reporters.
After this meeting, however, the leaders' Oval Office remarks were expansive, but — when carefully studied — held little or nothing new.
Obama praised Israel for easing its Gaza blockade, allowing in consumer goods, after heated international criticism for the deadly interception of a Turkish aid flotilla.
The president said he believed Netanyahu "was willing to take risks for peace," and heatedly rejected the premise of a question about having given the Israeli leader the cold shoulder in recent months.
Netanyahu said he was "committed" to peace with the Palestinians and said it was "high time to begin direct talks." He praised Obama for leading the U.N. Security Council to a new round of sanctions against Iran over its suspected nuclear arms program.
He was fulsome in thanking Obama "for reaffirming to me in private and now in public as you did the long-standing U.S. commitments to Israel on matters of vital strategic importance."
"To paraphrase Mark Twain," the Israeli leader said, "reports about the demise of the special U.S.-Israel ... relationship aren't just premature, they're just flat wrong."
The two leaders had gotten off on the wrong foot right from the start when Netanyahu — in their first White House meeting soon after Obama was sworn in — publicly rebuffed the new president's call for a freeze on settlements.
The Netanyahu government compounded that negative start when it announced, during a fence-mending visit to Israel by Vice President Joe Biden, plans for a large settlement expansion in east Jerusalem.
Regardless of that history, Netanyahu and Obama were emphatic that relations had never gone sour. What's more, they agreed, it was time for the Palestinians to come to the table again for yet another try at face-to-face peace talks.
The challenge in this new drive for peace is how Netanyahu would convince the Israeli hard-liners to accept it, and secure positive responses from Palestinian to see reasons to let the war end. The Palestinians mission in Washington and its officials are already trying to put spanner at the wheel of progress in the new found peace, as they say there would be no response for at least a day. They are demanding the halt in activities in West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements before it would embrace any direct talks.
Some analysts are of the view s that Obama and Netanyahu might have reached a private understanding that Israel would extend the construction moratorium in return for direct talks.
“This enables Israel to say it didn’t pay for direct talks, but there’s an understanding that once the expiration date rolls around, the moratorium will be extended,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Among the other “concrete steps” Israel is expected to take toward the Palestinians, analysts said, is greater cooperation with the Palestinian Authority on security matters and increased economic aid for the West Bank. Netanyahu has suggested to aides that he has other steps in mind, Israeli officials said, but he has not yet disclosed them.
Obama’s stance reflected domestic political pressures on both men. Netanyahu, who is struggling to keep his fractious right-wing coalition together, has been under pressure at home not to appear to pay an additional price to lure the Palestinians to the negotiating table.
And with Democrats facing a tough time in the midterm elections in November, Obama has reasons for softening his public stance on Israel. Republican candidates have been courting Jewish voters, who ordinarily back Democrats, by trying to portray the president as anti-Israel.
Some analysts say last week’s session reflects what Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator, calls a “false calm” in the relationship. Miller predicts fissures in the relationship, the result of a “fundamental expectations gap” in which Obama expects more from the peace talks than Netanyahu will be able to deliver.
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