Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is eager to resume peace negotiations with Israel. So say a number of Palestinian sources who have had extensive discussions with him since the last round of failed negotiations. This willingness was translated into a paper that Abbas prepared in advance of a planned visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry that was later called off. Instead, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and the director of Palestinian Authority (PA) intelligence, Majed Faraj, flew to Washington to present Abbas's proposal. Before proceeding further on the new proposal it is important to draw attention to two new related processes. The first is embodied in the leaked minutes of a meeting between Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Al-Thani, Abbas and Khaled Meshal, head of the Hamas politburo, in Doha last month, during the ceasefire talks. The second is the political debate unfolding in Israel at the political, party and security levels. The leaked Qatari minutes allegedly record Abbas as complaining that the Arabs are not supporting the Palestinian cause and that he was “fed up” with it all — with Hamas, Fatah, the Arabs and Israel. It was also claimed that he had yielded to US pressure to hold elections in 2006, sure that Hamas would win, and that afterwards there were plans for a coup to be led by Mohamed Dahlan, then the head of internal security for the Palestinian Authority. Former Palestinian minister Hassan Asfour, a member of the Palestinian negotiating delegation in Oslo, told Al-Ahram Weekly that he is confident that the Doha transcript is not forged and that it reveals that Abbas is headed in the wrong direction. Abbas, however, has denied that any such meeting took place in Doha. “In late 2012 and early 2013, I sat with [Abbas] to work out a proposal for settlement to submit to the Americans. The first steps entailed declaring a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem, on the basis of US and Security Council resolutions, and then proposing a process for drawing up the boundaries of the state within those areas,” Asfour said. But how is it possible to declare a state given the reality of large tracts of Palestinian land consumed by Israeli settlements and on-going settlement expansion? Who would support this? Asfour responded without hesitation. International recognition and support was fully expected. In the event that Israel refused to recognise the state of Palestine, the next card would be to “substitute mutual recognition, in accordance with Oslo, with non-recognition of Israel.” He added, “This would move us to another situation.” In Asfour's opinion, the problem now is Abbas's apparent political strategy. “What Abbas is proposing is a process of trying to set borders and to resume negotiations on pretexts related to prisoner exchanges and other such questions, but without addressing the essential matters,” Asfour said. “It is a return to the policy of resuming negotiations at any cost.” As for the new Israeli process, it too involves minutes of a meeting. In this case, a cabinet meeting that took place at the same time as the abovementioned meeting in Doha, and that saw a debate over the aims of the military operations in Gaza. Evidently, opinion was divided over whether the aim was to eliminate Hamas, to only weaken it, or to reoccupy the Strip. But more important were the comments by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman regarding the peace process. He was not opposed to it, he said, as long as it provided for a land exchange and as long as the Palestinian state also included the 1948 Arabs. Lieberman was quoted as saying that Israel should go for the “Saudi initiative”, as opposed to the “Arab initiative”, on the grounds that the latter does not cover the refugee question. A number of sources say that his understanding of this is incorrect. Another important sign that the Israeli strategic outlook has begun to change can be found in a paper written by two scholars from the National Security Research Institute at Tel Aviv University: Shimon Stein, a diplomat, and Shlomo Brom, head of the Israeli-Palestinian relations programme. Their paper argues that Israel needs to make three crucial shifts in its strategic thinking. The first is to abandon the idea, which has proved a failure, that conflict management is an alternative to conflict resolution. Israel has to return to the concept of working to resolve the crisis. This is not to suggest that Israel should ignore political realities on both sides, which apparently do not permit for a solution within a short timeframe. In fact, Stein and Brom acknowledge that the process would be difficult and gradual. What is crucial, however, is to give new substance to the process in the form of a clear plan that can propel the process forward, and that would yield concrete steps that would eventually lead to a settlement. The authors added that such steps could take place alongside negotiations and consist of partial understandings or even unilateral steps. “It is worth mentioning in this regard that Hamas itself approved of the principle of a partial agreement with Israel in the form of a long-term truce,” the authors wrote. The second shift is to abandon the idea, which also failed, of separating Gaza from the West Bank. According to Stein and Brom, the two territories should be merged together again under the PA. The first step in this direction is to recognise the national unity government and to be prepared to work with it. In addition, Israel should work to ensure that efforts to reconstruct Gaza are carried out under the auspices of the PA. Towards this end, they said, the opening of the Gaza-Israel border crossings and facilitating procedures should be made contingent on the presence of PA security forces on the Gaza side. Thirdly, there is a need to promote an economic life that is as healthy as possible in Gaza. This extends to imports and exports, of course. There is no reason why Gaza should not export vegetables and other products to Israel, Stein and Brom argue. Efforts should be made to revive the economic climate that existed in the past. For example, Israeli factories should be put back into operation with the help of contractors from Gaza. They also stressed the need to expand the area in which Gaza fishermen are allowed to fish. According to political analyst Jack Khouri, Stein and Brom carry weight in the academic world, but their political weight is considerably less. Even so, he said, the importance of the ideas they proposed in their paper should not be underestimated. On the other hand, Khouri says that Israeli officials involved in the negotiation process do not appear particularly interested in negotiating. The government, in general, does not think negotiations are important at present. “Only a single voice sings a different tune to that of the rest of the flock,” says Khouri. “That is the voice of Tzipi Livni, minister of justice. As for the rest, they spout ideas that are never translated politically, as was the case with what Lieberman proposed in the cabinet meeting.” Khouri added: “The government and society in Israel are currently focused on the possibility that the former chief of staffs will be prosecuted because of the war on Gaza. As for the Erekat and Faraj visit to the US, so far the context does not extend beyond just talks with the US.”
