Obama to host Abbas, Netanyahu meeting

United States President Barack Obama will host the first meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday in the hope of relaunching peace negotiations.

Here is what it may mean for conflict in the Middle East:

• The greatest likelihood is it will do little to resolve a conflict that is six decades old. A peace process going on for nearly two decades will remain stalled unless one or both sides make sharp changes in their positions. Neither seems likely to.
• Perhaps most significantly, the meeting will throw a spotlight on Obama’s role in the Middle East, where he has said he will work to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It is part of a wider effort to stabilise the oil-producing region. That involves bolstering Arab allies who face deep popular opposition, notably from Islamists, and who are concerned about a challenge from non-Arab US foe Iran.
• After taking office in January, Obama was applauded by Palestinians and other Arabs for taking a tough public tone with Israel, notably in insisting Netanyahu freeze Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in line with the 2003 ”road map” peace plan. However, having earned scorn for that same stance among many Israelis and Israel’s supporters in the US, his apparent failure to force concessions from Israel has led the Palestinians and other Arabs to question the credibility of Obama’s peacemaking efforts.
• A Palestinian official saw Tuesday’s summit like this: ”The Americans have failed to convince the Israelis to halt settlement and now they want a photo opportunity. We’ll do this not to upset Obama. But it’s a victory for Netanyahu.”
• An Israeli official put it this way: ”There’ll … be some kind of handshake because this is what Obama wants. But it’s not going anywhere longer term. … With all due respect to Obama, this is not realistic. Everyone wants a process … but nobody actually wants peace — because peace, you have to pay for.”
• Officials and diplomats in the Middle East are loath to write off Obama’s envoy, George Mitchell, the former senator credited with helping bring peace to Northern Ireland. But even Mitchell’s reputation faces a major test and analysts question how far Obama will want to expend his personal political capital on the conflict, particularly if his domestic agenda remains difficult as mid-term and re-election battles start to loom.
• A key factor is also Netanyahu’s focus on Iran and its nuclear programme as the prime threat to Israel. In the absence of the kind of Palestinian attacks seen earlier this decade, that focus is widely accepted by the Israeli public, reducing any pressure from voters for compromise with the Palestinians.
• Netanyahu, with a strong new electoral mandate at the head of his right-wing coalition, has taken a different position from his predecessor. Unlike Ehud Olmert, he has resisted committing to negotiate a final settlement of ”core issues” — notably the fate of Palestinian refugees from 1948 and their descendants, the status of Jerusalem and borders. Under US pressure, Netanyahu has said he would accept a Palestinian state, but one very much circumscribed. First, though, he proposes interim discussions to improve security and prosperity, while ruling out any negotiation, ever, on sharing Jerusalem. While agreeing in principle not to set up new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, he says existing settlers must be allowed to build as families grow. Some of his allies oppose any limitation on settlers.
• Among Palestinians, Abbas’s authority is somewhat improved since elections last month in his Fatah faction, but his ability to make deals remains limited by pressure from Islamist Hamas. It controls the Gaza Strip and will seize on any concessions to Israel to portray Abbas as a sell-out. Hamas’s control in Gaza and presumed clandestine strength in the West Bank also gives Israel grounds for maintaining its military positions. At the same time, Abbas’s failure, with or without US support, to extract major concessions from Israel risks strengthening the appeal of those, from both Hamas and Fatah, who favour violence.
• Away from negotiating tables, a build-up of Western-backed Palestinian security forces under Abbas in the West Bank and some easing of occupation strictures by Israel is credited with lowering tensions. For many analysts, however, improvements are fragile without a negotiated final settlement of the conflict.
• For now, talks will focus on narrowing differences over a freeze in Jewish settlement and on the scope of negotiations. Netanyahu is opposing Abbas’s insistence on a final process that aims to set the parameters of a Palestinian state.
• On settlements, Israel has offered a nine-month freeze in the West Bank and says Washington wants at least a year. Abbas wants a halt to building that includes East Jerusalem and that would last until a final peace deal, at which point major settlements are expected to be annexed by Israel in a land swap. If Mitchell gets a better offer from Netanyahu, even if it is short of Palestinian demands, that may bring a resumption of negotiations closer. The issue of the scope of those talks may remain, but that may be more susceptible to an initial fudge that would let Obama declare a successful start to his peacemaking efforts. — Reuters