US President Donald Trump has made no secret of his ambition to help the Palestinians and Israelis reach a peace accord. He has met with Israeli and Arab leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas, chair of the Palestinian Authority, and he travelled to the Middle East last May to attend an Arab-Muslim-US Summit meeting in Riyadh. During his stay he went to Israel and the Palestinian Territories to advance peace prospects and to demonstrate his commitment to the cause of peace between the Palestinians and Israelis. However, even after eight months in office there is still no outline of an American initiative to restart peace talks between the two sides that were derailed in April 2014. Two weeks ago, a high-level American delegation headed by senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner and including special assistant Jason Greenblatt and US deputy national security advisor Dina Powell visited the Middle East and held talks in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Israel and Palestine. The announced objective of the talks was to find common ground to bring the Palestinians and Israelis to the negotiating table. But this time round US efforts adopted a new “outside-in” strategy that aims at providing a regional framework for peace negotiations that will be arranged with the help of Arab states and folded into the Palestinian-Israeli process. One of the questions facing the new approach is how to “incentivise” the Arab states to second and promote the strategy. It goes without saying that the Riyadh Summit provided the background needed to involve Arab governments in such an untried approach. US diplomat Martin Indyk, who served as special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under former US president Barack Obama, commented that “maybe something will break eventually,” adding that the new American approach was “much more realisticÖ than attempting to reinvent the wheel or imagining there is a quick fix. The outside-in approach is not going to work unless there is something moving between the Israelis and Palestinians.” The Trump administration is also trying to link its peace efforts with its diplomacy in the Gulf. Washington would like nothing more than a quick solution to the crisis between the Arab quartet and Qatar. Ultimately, the Trump administration wants to bring together the leaders of the major Arab states with the Israelis and the Palestinians for a peace conference. Prince Khaled bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, commented on the talks the American delegation had with his brother Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman by saying that the latter was “very optimistic in the light of the commitment of Donald Trump to achieving a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians”. The US newspaper The Washington Post also asked whether the trip to the Middle East could prove to be a game-changer. According to an editorial, the American delegation “came away hopeful that the new generation of Arab leaders is a potential game-changer”, it said. The fact of the matter is that Arab governments, especially Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Qatar and others are no longer hesitant about cooperating in the open in a triangle that includes the Americans, the Israelis, and the Arabs including the Palestinians, in order to deal with a host of challenges and regional threats as long as the peace process gets moving again. Where it will be heading is another question. One thing at least is sure for the time being. The American administration is working on two fronts. The first is maximalist and more regional in approach, and the second is minimalist and more economic in nature aiming at goading the Palestinians, the Jordanians and the Israelis to work together on small-scale economic projects that would better the lives of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and usher in regional cooperation that would allow the integration of Israel in the Middle East. Another aspect of this minimalist approach, this time political in nature, is to encourage reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas movement that could open the way towards easing the Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip and keeping Hamas away from Iranian influence. Egypt is playing a prominent role in this regard. Over the last three months, various Hamas delegations have visited Cairo to talk to Egyptian officials, and it seems that the two sides have reached certain understandings that would contribute to the betterment of living conditions. Among these measures would be the opening of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. For the American strategy to succeed, Washington will have to keep up the momentum regardless of the domestic situation in Israel where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be facing charges and a possible indictment in corruption cases that are both financial and political in nature. In order to shield himself from such charges, Netanyahu has resorted to a classic tactic, namely hardening his position on the Palestinian question. Three weeks ago, he expressed his objections to the establishment of a Palestinian state and to any Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. However, his office then went on to publish a communique after his talks with Kushner on 24 August in which it stressed that the “talks were effective and significant and the prime minister expects them to continue in the coming weeks.” The chairman of the Palestinian Authority is not in a much better position. Under the present circumstances in the Occupied Territories and Gaza, and with the absence of any kind of rapprochement with Hamas, he is in no position to enter into peace talks with Netanyahu unless he has a firm and public commitment from the US administration that the United States supports the two-state solution and makes a public statement that the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal. Short of that, he would be committing political suicide if he agreed to sit down again with the Israelis to negotiate a peace accord. Thus far, neither Trump nor officials in his administration have endorsed the two-state solution. Nor have they publicly called the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories illegal. However, Palestinian officials have said that the American officials they have met have admitted this in discussions behind closed doors. The Americans will have to find a diplomatic formula to end the present guessing game in order to make their “outside-in” strategy achievable and workable, not only for the Palestinians, but also for Arab governments that are interested in going along with American diplomacy in the Middle East if Trump does not allow Netanyahu and the extreme right in Israel to have the final say. However, the Arabs and the Palestinians should be prepared to come forward with a Plan B if the Trump administration for whatever reason decides to disengage from peace efforts similar to those that the former Obama administration adopted in April 2014. No one back then, neither the Arabs nor the Americans, had a Plan B. If there had been such a plan, perhaps the situation would not have been as complicated between the Palestinians and the Israelis as it is today. The writer is former assistant to the foreign minister.
