What will the new administration do now it is faced with an intransigent Israel? Sadly, writes Hassan Nafaa*, it may well find backtracking the easiest option After a five-year hiatus in his annual official visits to Washington President Mubarak has resurrected the custom against a regional and international backdrop radically different to that which prevailed during his last US trip. In the intervening years the collapse of the neoconservative project for "a new American century" set into motion a peaceful revolution that ushered a young Afro-American intellectual with Muslim roots into the White House. This young man, still at the beginning of his term in office with the future ahead of him, undoubtedly entertains ambitious dreams of changing the US and the world. Cairo, too, has changed. A grassroots movement for political reform has been checked, putting to an end, for now at least, any dreams for change. As President Hosni Mubarak is advanced in age, with many years in office behind him, it is only natural that one of his foremost concerns should be the question of succession. The world order has changed as well. The failure of the neoconservative's enterprise exposed American weaknesses and the limits of American might. The global financial and economic crisis threatened to sweep the carpet from beneath the capitalist system, and powers such as Russia and China have begun to assert their political and economic will. Finally, as we know, the Middle East has undergone a total upheaval, witnessing a conflagration of wars and conflicts that has led to an unprecedented polarisation of Israeli and Iranian projects for regional dominance. Against this backdrop President Mubarak's visit to Washington marks not only a new phase in Egyptian-US bilateral relations following a period of tension, but also the culmination of a long series of meetings that Obama has held with regional leaders in order to hear their points of view on the Arab-Israeli conflict before announcing his administration's plans to steer that conflict towards a resolution. That the new administration is determined to achieve an acceptable settlement to the Middle East conflict is beyond doubt. For the first time a US president has begun his term in office by making Middle East peace a priority, taking concrete measures that have placed his administration at seeming loggerheads with the government of Israel. His appointment of George Mitchell as his special envoy to the Middle East, his harsh criticism of Israel's settlement policies, and his demand for an immediate and total halt to settlement construction all speak of a new approach in Washington's handling of this issue. Intentions are one thing, translating them into reality another. Obama may have succeeded in demonstrating his good intentions, but the general impression is that he has so far failed to demonstrate his ability to alter realities on the ground. Indeed, recent developments suggest that Netanyahu has succeeded not only in stymieing Obama's drive for a final and comprehensive peace and in obstructing efforts to generate the conditions for a more constructive negotiating process, but also in steering Obama's energies down more dangerous paths. Netanyahu has refused point blank to respond to Obama's demand for a halt in settlement activity and has rallied pro- Israeli forces in the US -- in Congress, the media and pro-Zionist research centres -- behind a drive to bully the new administration into exerting any pressure on Israel. These same forces, in the US and elsewhere, are simultaneously pushing to obfuscate the problem, seeking to divert attention to secondary issues by endlessly claiming that inter-Palestinian and inter-Arab quarrels represent a greater obstacle to peace than illegal settlements, and that the greatest threat facing the region is, in any case, Iran. By out-sourcing spoiling tactics to pro-Israeli forces Netanyahu has avoided any direct facedown with Obama. Instead he has feigned flexibility in the form of an agreement to halt settlement activity, though one rendered empty by his proviso "natural growth" be accommodated. Even then he expects the Arabs to make enormous concessions for this, normalising relations with Israel in advance of any peace agreement being concluded. Obama realises it is not wise for him to lock horns with the powerful Zionist lobby this early in his term. Clearly he has decided to bow his head before the storm and to buy a little more time to allow the various parties concerned to adjust their positions. But he also knows that time is not really in his favour and that if he cannot achieve tangible progress towards a comprehensive solution to the Middle East conflict within a reasonable time -- by the end of next year, say -- then the opportunity will have slipped out of his hands and his prospects for re-election will be severely jeopardised. Political reports and analyses coming out of the US recently have predicted that Obama will face the same fate as president Carter. Begin never forgave Carter for the pressures he exerted during Camp David and, according to many recently published accounts, threw all his weight against Carter's re-election for a second term. The former Israeli prime minister was certain that if re-elected Carter would up the pressure on Israel to reach agreements similar to Camp David on the other tracks, something Begin was unwilling to entertain under any circumstances. Given that Israel today seems more intransigent than ever, Obama's quest for an acceptable solution is no easy task. If anything is to be learned from the so-called "peace process" in progress now for more than a third of a century, it is that true peace is contingent upon a comprehensive settlement and that partial progress on any track is not automatically a step in the right direction. If Obama is to avoid the same fate as Carter he must choose between two courses of action. The first is to press forward, as quickly as possible, towards a comprehensive peace, even if that means imposing an American conception of a peace on all parties. The second is to slow down, opt for caution and, inevitably, cave into the pressures from the Zionist lobby which will campaign to oust him in the next election. Perhaps Obama will go for a middle road. After Mitchell began the search for a new "political process", starting with confidence-building measures linking the halt to settlement expansion with normalisation, a course which many in the US believe will lead only to a new maze of complications, others have begun to advocate the formulation of an American solution to be imposed, with the backing of the international community, on all parties. Indeed, the "committee of wise men", consisting of Jimmy Carter, James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, have apparently applied the finishing touches to an American proposal founded upon four major points: the creation of an unarmed Palestinian state within borders that do not necessarily coincide with the pre-June 1967 borders; the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of both the Israeli and Palestinian states; a resolution to the Palestinian refugee problem on the basis of compensation and naturalisation, as opposed to the right of return, and the annexing of larger settlements adjacent to Israel's pre-1967 borders to Israel under a land-exchange agreement with the Palestinians. This proposal is clearly the furthest the Americans can go as a basis for a settlement. Moreover, even presuming that the Obama administration adopts it officially and that it works assiduously with the UN and other international powers to bring it into effect, I doubt very much that it can succeed. The reason for this is quite simple: it does not provide a viable and just solution to the core problem of the Palestinian cause, which is the plight of the refugees. If Washington truly seeks a viable peace plan that can be imposed on all sides it should derive one inspired by principles of international law and UN resolutions, and not by religious beliefs taken from the Old Testament and that Washington believes are more marketable in Israel. Any plan that grants Israel the right to annex large settlements in the West Bank, and that rejects the Palestinian refugees right to return, clearly has a strong religious bias. Such bias obviates a just solution. Any solution to a conflict as protracted and complex as the Palestinian-Israeli one must be based on clear legal and political foundations. A two-state solution to this conflict can only succeed when Israel is convinced that it has only two alternatives: either to accept the 1967 borders as its final borders and grant the Palestinian refugees the right to return, or to resign itself to the borders stipulated under the UN partition agreement with the Palestinian right to return, in this case, restricted to the areas designated for a Palestinian state under that resolution. Any other alternative will encounter vehement opposition from religious forces on both sides. The Obama administration will soon discover that practical conditions are not yet ripe for a comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. I expect it will not be long before we see the signs of a great escape, not from proposals and the like but from the actual work of pushing for a just and comprehensive solution. I only pray my suspicions are wrong. * The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
