The recent Abbas-Obama meeting in Washington yielded no tangible progress in the negotiation process that US Secretary of State John Kerry initiated five months ago. The stated purpose of the latest round of talks was to encourage the two sides “to take some tough decisions and risks” so that they could make progress towards a lasting settlement. As a first step, Washington is trying to push the two sides to strike a framework agreement that could lay the foundations for final status negotiations. While Abbas was in Washington, the Palestinian political arena continued its descent into one of its tensest moments. This applies to both relations between the de facto government in Gaza led by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, and internal relations within the factions. Divisions and acrimony are aggravated by the haziness surrounding the future of Arab support for the negotiations at a time when the Arab region is preoccupied with the various repercussions of the Arab Spring. Obama's meeting with PA President Mahmoud Abbas took place two weeks after a similar meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who remained adamant in his insistence that the Palestinians recognise the Jewishness of the Israeli state. Soon after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, Kerry triggered an outpouring of Israeli rage by having suggested that Netanyahu “drop” that condition. At the Monday meeting in the White House, Obama urged the two sides to take advantage of the current opportunity to make peace. “We remain convinced there is an opportunity,” Obama said. “It's very hard. It's very challenging. We're going to have to make some tough political decisions and risks if we're able to move it forward.” While Abbas has continued to rule out Netanyahu's condition, PA official Nabil Shaath was reported by Israeli radio Tuesday to have said that the Palestinians might be open to recognising Israel as a Jewish state, but only at the end of peace talks, after having resolved all the other outstanding issues. “Had this come at the end, after having resolved all these issues, it would have become an issue that we could settle by simply asking practical questions,” Shaath said. The Palestinian official, who sits on the Fatah Central Committee and is a former negotiator, went on to state that Israel's decision to raise this point now, before all the other sticking points are resolved, raises suspicion. It gives the impression that “Israel intends to undermine all possibility of reaching a peace agreement.” Shaath's statement triggered renewed controversy in Palestine. His colleagues in Fatah said his remarks, if he did indeed say them, were only an expression of his personal opinion. Shaath's fellow Fatah Central Committee member Sakhr Basisu said: “The statement by Dr Nabil Shaath does not reflect the position of the Palestinian leadership, inclusive of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) Executive Committee and the Fatah Central Committee or the Revolutionary Council of the Fatah Movement. [Nor does it reflect the views of] the Arab League, which has taken an Arab position. This position was based on a thorough study, not on some arbitrary Palestinian and Arab attitude. Nabil Shaath's remarks reflect only his personal view.” Obama called on Abbas to permanently renounce violence and continue to strive for a peaceful diplomatic solution that will give rise to “two states living side-by-side in peace and security.” This goal is certainly difficult to achieve, which is why “it has taken decades to get where we are today,” he said. Although the current phase of talks was set to close at the end of April, observers believe that it may be extended. Abbas helped feed such speculations when he said, “Israel's release of the fourth contingent of Palestinian prisoners, scheduled for 29 April, will demonstrate how serious Netanyahu is with regard to extending peace talks.” Israel Radio, which had relayed this statement, cited an official described as a “senior politician in Jerusalem” as saying: “Israel will reconsider the matter of the release of the fourth and last instalment of Palestinian security prisoners if it becomes clear that talks with the Palestinians have reached a dead end. It is in the interests of both sides to extend the period for holding talks for another year, even if they do not reach an agreement on the document elaborated by US Secretary of State John Kerry.” The question of the recognition of the Jewish character of Israel is not the only obstacle Israel poses. As senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat put it shortly after the Obama-Abbas meeting ended Monday, “the Israeli government must choose between settlements and peace.” He said that the question of extending the negotiating period had not arisen during that meeting and that the talks would end, as scheduled, on 29 April. “There is no need to extend them. There is a need to take decisions,” he said. There have been leaks to the effect that Kerry presented the framework agreement document to the Palestinian president. Tareq Fahmi who heads the Israeli Affairs Unit in the National Centre for Middle East Studies, told Al-Ahram Weekly that even if he had, the current period is clearly insufficient for Abbas to prepare the groundwork for the document in the Palestinian arena and to bring it to discussion at the Arab level. In all events, Erekat denies that the Palestinian delegation received any document. He did not mention whether or not the US had agreed merely to present the document to the two sides. According to the agenda for the talks, the document is to be open to both sides to express their views and to agree on possible additions or amendments. Hassan Asfour, a former Palestinian minister, holds that the talks with the Palestinian president were part of “an American manoeuvre to trap Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiating team.” In an interview with the Weekly, Asfour, who had been a member of the Oslo negotiating team, said that Washington was trying to toss the ball into the Palestinian camp with regard to the question of the Jewishness of the Israeli state. “Washington is pretending that it has relinquished this condition and is not imposing it. At the same time, it is putting forward a handful of points for negotiation through which Abbas can say to those with whom he discusses the details of the negotiations that he will come away with some tangibles in his hand immediately.” In Asfour's opinion, what is happening behind the scenes today is similar to what occurred in 2006 when a wedge was driven into Palestinian ranks by a conspiracy masterminded by the US and aiming to push the Palestinians into a corner so as to spread chaos throughout the Palestinian territories. At the same time, he said, US tactics also include disseminating the impression that the Palestinian state in the West Bank will be created on 60-80 per cent of the territory and that there will be security control, perhaps by stationing international forces in the Jordan River Valley, in tandem with the gradual Israeli withdrawal. Yet, this plan is being marketed “against a backdrop of ongoing Judaicisation and settlement expansion and with the exclusion of Old Jerusalem [from the planned state] and the continued rupture between the West Bank and Gaza, and in the absence of any satisfactory solutions to the other crucial issues, such as the refugees and security”. In short, “it seems that we're looking at a temporary settlement, not a lasting one,” Asfour said, adding that some in the current Palestinian negotiating delegation were trying to promote this plan. He described them as the “Palestinian cell in the conspiracy”. In his opinion, the best route for the Palestinians at this time would be “to declare a halt to negotiations for three years until the regional situation settles down and then to resume them again.” This would be preferable to “pushing through the Obama project to eliminate the Palestinian cause through the ideas that are currently on the table and that will produce no breakthrough worth mentioning”. In the opinion of the Israeli affairs expert Said Okasha, the idea of calling a halt to negotiations for three years would be “an exercise in futility” if, indeed, Asfour and the parallel negotiating team were to propose it. “It is not a real alternative to the negotiations, even given internal Palestinian divisions and shrinking Arab support. The real alternative is chaos. The Palestinian Authority would be left without a real role and this would turn the Palestinian street against it more than it already is.” Okasha adds that if Fatah suspends the negotiating project and Hamas abandons it, what can be expected is “uprisings in the street, conflicts between centres of influence, political chaos and a state of total impotence whose message will be that the cause has died”.
