This week's policy statement by Hillary Clinton creates room for Palestinian manoeuvre, writes Emad Gad In her 10 December address to the Brookings Institute's Saban Centre for Middle East Policy US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the Obama administration had given up its efforts to persuade Israel to freeze construction of Jewish settlements. She stressed that Washington was still committed to comprehensive peace in the Middle East, towards which end it would refocus efforts on fostering indirect negotiations on the core issues of the conflict -- borders, Jerusalem, refugees, water and security. She added that the US special envoy for the Middle East would soon be heading to the region to meet with Palestinian and Israeli officials. Clinton's policy statement elicited diverse reactions. Israel initially welcomed the address, with some circles hailing it as a victory for the Netanyahu government, not least because of Clinton's direct criticism of the Brazilian and Argentinian governments' decision to recognise an independent Palestinian state within the pre-June 1967 borders. Soon however, Israelis began to discern more nuanced messages in the speech. If it thought Washington was going to relax its attention on the peace process in order to concentrate on other international or domestic priorities, the announcement Mitchell was being despatched to the region dispelled any impression that Washington's resolve to push the peace process forward was dwindling. There were passages in the speech that after a close reading Israeli officials found disturbing. While Clinton praised the efforts of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad at length she had nothing positive to say about Binyamin Netanyahu. In addition to stressing that Washington would help Palestinian leaders in the process of building the institutions of a Palestinian state, she contextualised this process within a framework of ending Israeli occupation. "Palestinian leaders must be able to show their people that the occupation will be over," she said. Some in Israel took this statement as an implicit rejection of Israeli demands its army continue to control the Jordan Rift Valley under a peace agreement. Nor will it have given comfort to the current Israeli government that Clinton met with Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni for more than an hour. This meeting, the first since Netanyahu came to power, may well have been intended as a snub against Netanyahu, whose name she mentioned only once, virtually in passing, in her speech. Some Israeli sources regard the Livni meeting as a sign of Washington's anger against Labour Party leader and current Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak for having misled it to believe that Netanyahu was now serious about pursuing a genuine political settlement. The Palestinian and Arab response to the Clinton speech was pragmatic and practical. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, underlining his position that he would not negotiate as long as Israeli settlement construction continued, convened a meeting of the Fatah Central Committee followed by the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee. He then called for an international drive to salvage the peace process, appealing to the Quartet to hold an urgent meeting to find ways to kick-start the negotiating process. The Palestinians are demanding credible guarantees that any forthcoming negotiating process take place against certain conditions. The Arab League Follow-Up Committee called a meeting -- scheduled for yesterday -- to discuss possible courses of action following the shift in the US position. In scrapping efforts to secure a halt to Israeli settlement construction as a precondition for the resumption of direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations the Obama administration has made a concession that reinforces the Israeli government's view that Obama has been seriously weakened by the mid-term congressional elections in which the Democrats lost their majority in the House of Representatives and retained only a narrow majority in the Senate. The administration has proved unable to counter Israel's contention that the Palestinians never made a construction freeze a precondition for talks before and that there is no reason why Obama should insist on one. By compelling the Obama administration to cave in on this issue the Netanyahu government aimed to embarrass Obama and undermine his credibility with the Palestinians and Arabs. That Washington understands the Netanyahu government sees the Clinton announcement signalling an end to Washington's attempts to press for a construction freeze as the first stage in a battle to destroy Obama's credibility helps account for Clinton's praise of Abbas and Fayyad and the commitment to fund Palestinian institution-building. Aware of the complexity of the situation the Palestinians preferred to wait before issuing a response, calling for a meeting of the Arab League Follow-Up Committee to provide necessary cover for the Palestinian position. Only then did they reaffirm their refusal to negotiate in the absence of a freeze to Israeli settlement construction, hinting at the alternatives that they have at their disposal. Prime among these is to unilaterally appeal for international recognition of an independent Palestinian state. As a preliminary step towards this end the PLO Executive Committee recently adopted a resolution calling for envoys to be dispatched to all Security Council members to lobby for their recognition of a Palestinian state within pre-June 1967 borders. The Palestinian-Arab approach now will most likely be to avoid courting American criticism by taking any initiatives that might jar with America's sponsorship of the negotiating process. Meanwhile, it will continue to canvass UN members to recognise an independent state, and wait until Washington finally concludes that it is the Israeli government that is the chief obstacle to concluding a comprehensive peace. Inevitably this will weaken the position of European countries holding out against an EU drive to collectively recognise an independent Palestinian state should negotiations reach a dead-end within a year. It is essential, therefore, that the Palestinians and Arabs come to some understanding with the Quartet, Washington, and with the EU in particular. They should make it clear that if negotiations do not lead to a Palestinian state within a year Palestinians and Arabs will pursue other avenues. They will pledge to adhere to Washington's negotiating course throughout this period and only if it fails to produce a settlement will they unilaterally seek collective recognition of Palestinian independence, either through statements issued independently by individual states or by means of a Security Council resolution. (see pp. 7-8)
