Both Palestinians and Israelis are expecting little from President Obama's visit to Israel-Palestine next week, with pundits on both sides arguing that realities on the ground are far beyond his ability to make a breakthrough in the decades-old conflict. Obama will meet with Israeli leaders, particularly Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres. Netanyahu is trying to wrap up the formation of a new cabinet following 22 January elections in which the right-wing alliance, led by Netanyahu's party, the Likud, failed to win a decisive victory. The three main issues Netanyahu and Obama will be discussing are the Iranian nuclear issue, the Syrian crisis and the conflict with the Palestinians. Israeli leaders will also press the visiting US president on a number of other issues, including the possibly of pardoning convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard and allocating more American funds for Israeli anti-missile systems such as the Iron Dome. Netanyahu will resist any possible American pressure on Israel to freeze Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Israeli premier will argue that “building houses for Jews” in “Judea and Samaria” (the Biblical names of the West Bank) enjoys a broad consensus among Israeli Jews and that Israel would be committing national suicide by freezing settlement building, which Israel believes would remain under Israeli sovereignty in the context of any prospective peace deal with the Palestinians. Others, including Israeli, Palestinian and international observers, already speak of reaching the “point of no return” as to the impossibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank, given the phenomenal proliferation of Jewish colonies across the occupied territories. Pundits argue that no prospective Israeli government would be willing or able to dismantle the Jewish settlement project. Moreover, it is argued that it is unlikely that any future US administration would be able, even if willing, to force the Hebrew state to end its military occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The reason for this assessment is the powerful Jewish lobby in the US, which has a stranglehold on American politics and policies, especially as far as the Middle East is concerned. To be sure, Netanyahu doesn't seem eager to confront Obama head on regarding the Palestinian issue, lest this exacerbate already bad chemistry with the American president. Reportedly strained relations between Netanyahu and Obama have led some Israeli commentators to argue that Obama will try to settle scores with the “ungrateful” Israeli leader. However, other voices argue that American domestic considerations, especially the massive support and backing Israel enjoys in Congress, would force any American president to swallow his pride and avoid entering a losing battle with the powerful US-based Zionist lobby. PALESTINIAN FRUSTRATION: For its part, the Palestinian leadership is preparing a “good diplomatic reception” for Obama who is scheduled to visit the city of Bethlehem where he is slated to hold a brief meeting with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is expected to press Obama to pressure Israel to release Palestinian prisoners on prolonged hunger strike in Israeli jails. The hunger strikers are protesting open-ended illegal detention, mistreatment by Israeli prison authorities, as well as Israeli failure to honour an Egyptian-brokered prisoner swap deal between Hamas and Israel reached a year and a half ago. However, from past experience, it is highly unlikely that Israel would agree to release a significant number of Palestinian prisoners. Abbas will also ask Obama to pressure Israel on the subject of Jewish settlement expansion. Palestinian sources told Al-Ahram Weekly they expected Obama to try to “pressure or cajole” the Palestinian leader to agree to resume negotiations with Israel, even without the often-repeated Palestinian precondition of freezing settlement expansion. Some quarters within the Palestinian political class are worried that Abbas might budge under US pressure and agree to return to the negotiations table, even without any guarantees that these negotiations would yield any results. In this case, Abbas would be swimming against the current, given the strong public opposition to making any further concessions to Israel. Nonetheless, Abbas, whose government is facing the hardest financial crisis since the conclusion of the Oslo Accords nearly 20 years ago, could argue that he feels he must travel the extra mile in order to prove to the international community, including the US, that Israeli intransigence and recalcitrance — not the Palestinians — are to blame for the protracted conflict.
WHAT'S NEXT? If indeed President Obama neglects to focus on resolving the Palestinian crisis, then it is quite likely that frustration will accumulate further among Palestinians. This could result in the outbreak of a new uprising among Palestinians. It is also likely in this case that more public pressure on Abbas to abandon the failed peace process with Israel will materialise in the wider Palestinian street, in addition to Hamas and even Fatah. The “point of no return” will manifest itself in such a way that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians would be able to revert to the status quo ante. According to Sergio Della Pergola, a Hebrew University professor and expert on Israeli population studies, “Right now, the total number of Jews and Arabs living under Israeli rule in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza is just under 12 million people. “At the moment, a shade under 50 per cent of the population is Jewish. In other words, right now — not in five or 10 years, but right now — only 50 per cent of the people living in the Jewish state and in the areas under its control are Jews. “The dreaded tipping point — which advocates of two-state solution have been warning about for years — has finally arrived.” It is unclear how the Zionist establishment will deal with this “existential” reality that threatens to dismantle the entire Zionist scheme. With the two-state solution losing steam and relevance due to Israeli settlement activity and its Judaising process, especially in occupied East Jerusalem, and with the international community unable to rein in Israeli arrogance, Israel will sooner rather later have to decide between apartheid and annexation as the “most expedient approach” towards the Palestinians. Apartheid, many observers argue, is both unviable and untenable, which leaves annexation as the only alternative before Israel. However, annexation has a huge catch-22 hanging on it, due to the demographic dimension that everyone agrees is working in the Palestinians' favour. This is the dilemma facing Israel. Some Palestinians argue that the Zionist establishment might be devising nefarious pans for the purpose of neutralising the “Arab demographic peril”. Israel could resort to expulsion and deportation of Palestinians, especially after establishing a “pretext”. Long-time observers of the conflict know from experience that Israel has no qualms in inventing the flimsiest of pretexts when striving to achieve long-held goals — principally the destruction of Palestine — even if that means destroying the Palestinians.
