Moving beyond the settlement sticking point is what Egypt hopes the US envoy to the Middle East can deliver, Dina Ezzat reports Restarting Israeli-Palestinian talks with an eye to a final settlement negotiated within a year and implemented within a few years is the core concern of Egyptian diplomacy right now. Egypt, officials say, is disturbed at seeing the "whole prospects of the peace process entangled into the issue of [illegal Israeli] settlements. The settlements issue is crucial, but what is more crucial is to keep the process alive and not to allow it to die," said an Egyptian diplomat who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly from New York on condition of anonymity. According to this source, during his participation in the UN General Assembly earlier this week in New York, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit was keen to stress two things: first, to keep the peace process from being put on the backburner while the US engages in futile negotiation with the Binyamin Netanyahu government over a settlement freeze; second, to get the maximum possible on the settlement issue without expecting too much. In his speech before the UN General Assembly on Saturday, Abul-Gheit indicated that what counts is "the final settlement" that should be negotiated and condoned by the international community. The top Egyptian diplomat resoundly condemned Israeli settlements, calling them "illegal" and "a violation of the international law". However, and contrary to other Arab positions, including that voiced in New York by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, Abul-Gheit did not make the full freeze of Israeli settlement construction a pre-condition to the resumption of peace talks. Rather, Abul-Gheit suggested that the resumption of peace talks should not be hindered by "side issues". Egyptian diplomats told the Weekly that Egypt had initially been of the view that a temporary and almost full freeze on illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is required for the resumption of talks. However, with the "failure of the Americans" to deliver this freeze and "given that Americans are now telling us frankly -- as they do to the Palestinians -- that the freeze is unlikely, we have to think realistically," commented an Egyptian diplomat who spoke from Washington. Egypt is becoming increasingly concerned that Netanyahu, in the words of a long time peace process diplomat, is "using the settlement issue to avert getting into the peace process". He added, "in fact, I would not put it beyond Netanyahu that he is deliberately prompting the recent violations [of Al-Aqsa Mosque] to get the Palestinians into an Intifada mood to avert getting into the talks." Earlier this week a group of hardline Israelis forced entry into the holy Muslim shrine in a move that predictably prompted angry reactions from Muslims in attendance and ended in bloody confrontations with the Israeli police that left over 40 Palestinians wounded. "Netanyahu is not moving aggressively on settlement expansion and it is indeed our assessment that he has done little to advance the expansion of settlements beyond what [his predecessor Ehud] Olmert has done," an Egyptian diplomat suggested. And according to another diplomat, Egypt is not blind to the fact that, "it is not in the interest of Netanyahu to announce a settlements freeze" unless he gets full normalisation from Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia. During a meeting held in New York on the fringe of the UN General Assembly between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her counterparts from the Gulf Cooperation Council, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq, the issue of normalisation was pressed by the top US diplomat. Her assistants were open in telling the press that the US is now demanding "specific and concrete" normalisation measures from Arab countries, not mere gestures, as was the case originally. Arab diplomats in Cairo indicate unmistakable discrepancies in the lengths that Arab countries are willing to go to normalising relations with Israel. Bahrain, for example, "is very keen" on demonstrating full normalisation while Saudi Arabia is not ready for normalisation yet. In New York, Netanyahu was clear in qualifying any attempts to get him to deliver a settlements freeze "a waste of time". "Today the options are not too many, either we insist on the settlement freeze and go to the UN Security Council to get a resolution on the matter, or we proceed ahead with some form of negotiations that would be conducted in line with a significant slow down on settlements," said an Egyptian official. "The Palestinians do not have much to lose from the second option, but if they sit and wait for the settlements freeze to happen then they might lose the territories that are being eaten up by the settlements, and the interest of the international community -- especially the US -- that will go elsewhere, from Iraq to Afghanistan or the climate," he added. Egypt agreed with the US that the next visit of US Presidential Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, expected within days, would go beyond settlement talks. "He will talk to the Israelis on the settlements, but he will also explore avenues for final settlement parameters," said one Egyptian diplomat to the Weekly. As one US diplomat in Washington said, Mitchell cannot just keep on turning around the same point, especially as "it does not look likely" that Netanyahu will deliver.
