The arrival of George Mitchell to the region is being greeted with both relief and dispassion, report Khaled Amayreh in Ramallah and Sherine Bahaa in Cairo Despite an air of optimism in some regional capitals about the recent appointment by US President Barack Obama of Senator George Mitchell as his Middle East envoy, there are serious doubts in many quarters as to whether the veteran diplomat will be able to work the miracles the region so badly needs. Sceptics, and they are legion, argue that getting Israel to end once and for all its 40-year-old colonialist occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip (for many the foremost miracle needed) necessitates a transformation, if not revolution of strategic thinking in Washington. The US is Israel's guardian-ally. Absent meaningful US pressure on Tel Aviv, the Jewish state will continue to behave and act as it has always, namely defying international law, savaging the Palestinians, and building more Jewish colonies on occupied Arab land. Mitchell, a half-Arab half-Irish diplomat, is credited with resolving the 800-year-old conflict in Northern Ireland. This "asset" induces optimists, and they are many, to give Mitchell the benefit of the doubt, at least for the time being. According to Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi, Mitchell's promise is his refusal to "put preconditions on the weaker party, as the Americans and the Israelis have been in a habit of doing... [meaning] preconditions on the Palestinians always." Mitchell's visit to the region comes in the aftermath of the Israeli blitzkrieg on the Gaza Strip that left thousands killed or maimed, transforming the coastal enclave into a carbon copy of Dresden during World War II. What he says and does is going to be watched very carefully, not only by political leaders, but also by hundreds of millions of frustrated Arabs and Muslims in this region and beyond, long fed up with America's blind embrace of Israel's criminality, insolence and territorial aggrandisement. Mitchell arrived in Cairo Tuesday on the first leg of a tour that will also take him to Ramallah, occupied Jerusalem, Amman and Riyadh. However, the old-new American envoy will not visit Gaza or Damascus, an ominous sign suggesting that the Obama administration will uphold the previous administration's policy of classifying the Arab-Islamic Middle East into "moderates" and "extremists". Mitchell held "exploratory talks" with Egyptian leaders, including President Hosni Mubarak and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul-Gheit, who reportedly told him that the Obama administration would have to adopt "new effective tools" to resolve the festering Palestinian problem because the "old tools" have proven inadequate and ineffective. Mitchell will also be meeting with Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan's King Abdullah, as well as the Saudi King Abdullah, who are likely to communicate more or less the same message. Mitchell has the full confidence of President Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. "So when he speaks, he will be speaking for us," Obama said. Ashrawi affirmed in interview with Al-Ahram Weekly : "He will have a serious mandate that is substantive, and that means he will have credibility when he comes here. Mitchell knows what is needed and he knows the situation on the ground and he knows the players -- he is not a newcomer." President Obama this week told Al-Arabiya TV that, "What I told [Mitchell] is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating... and we don't always know all the factors that are involved." Nonetheless, Mitchell doesn't plan to listen to Hamas, not even indirectly via Egypt, as US State Department Spokesman Robert Wood confirmed in a briefing in Washington ahead of Mitchell's visit "Hamas is a key player in the area, and it is inconceivable that there can be peace between Israel and the Palestinians without involving Hamas," said Ahmed Youssef, chief political advisor to Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Gaza-based Hamas government. Youssef, while acknowledging that it is premature to pass judgement on the Obama administration and its ability -- especially its sincerity -- to achieve peace in the Middle East, argued forcefully that US reluctance to speak with Hamas was like "sending a letter to the wrong address". "It is time the new US administration realise that efforts to neutralise Hamas can't succeed. They [Israel and the US] tried the criminal blockade of Gaza and failed; and then they tried this holocaust and failed. They must talk with Hamas, or else there will be no peace in Palestine." Apart from exploring the prospects of reviving the manifestly moribund "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, Mitchell will try to boost a fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. That ceasefire suffered a serious setback Monday when Israeli warplanes bombed the Philadelphi Corridor along the border with Egypt. Israel said the strikes were in retaliation against the killing of an Israeli soldier by suspected Palestinian fighters. In Ramallah, Mitchell will be presented with graphic evidence by his Palestinian hosts of how Israel has been effectively killing the chances of peace by continuing to expand Jewish settlements -- settlements that a growing number of reasonable observers believe render the two-state solution unrealistic if not impossible. On Tuesday, 27 January, the Israeli group Peace Now released a study showing that the number of newly built settler units in the West Bank increased by 69 per cent in 2008 compared to 2007. The report also showed that the settler population in the West Bank grew from 270,000 at the end of 2007 to 285,000 at the end of 2008. The figures don't include about a quarter of a million settlers living in East Jerusalem and its environs. Israel's relentless settlement expansion, along with numerous other expressions of Israeli colonialism, is leaving the PA leadership thoroughly despairing and embittered. This week, Abbas voiced his exasperation with Israel, saying he would tell Mitchell that Israel simply didn't want peace. "We need to understand this and tell it to those coming from Europe and America. Israel wants to waste time to strengthen facts on the ground with settlements and the wall." Nonetheless, some PA officials are optimistic about Mitchell's entry to the scene. "I think the Obama administration is treating the situation in Palestine with a sense of urgency. They seem to be serious, and we should give them the benefit of the doubt," said Abdullah Abdullah, a prominent Fatah MP and former director-general of the Palestinian Foreign Ministry. Abdullah added, however, that the PA had no choice but to engage the new US administration because "the US is the only state in this world that is capable of pressuring Israel." He added: "If our optimism is vindicated, then this will be good for us, so let us wait and see." In Israel too Obama will be watching and listening. Mitchell, of whom Israeli leaders are not particularly fond, will likely be confronted in Tel Aviv with talk about the "Iranian threat", "terror", and the "rearmament" and "weapons smuggling" of Hamas, though how these perceived threats prevent Israel from ending its occupation of Palestinian land is unclear. Given the proximity of Israeli elections, Mitchell is unlikely to indulge in serious talks with his Israeli interlocutors. On 10 February, nearly four million Israelis will go to the ballot box to elect a new government that most observers expect will be formed by the right-wing Likud whose leader Benyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly expressed his firm opposition to ending the Israeli occupation. For sure, Mitchell would then need to invoke all his inherited Irish ingenuity and Arab imagination. In selecting Mitchell, the new US president has chosen a man who believes that all problems have solutions -- that no problem is intractable. Further, Mitchell believes in conflict resolution, not merely conflict management that -- to a large degree -- was the default setting of the Bush administration and the Sharon and Olmert governments. Up against Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, both of Jewish origin and who served as envoys to the Middle East with presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, who believe in granting Israel's security the highest priority, Obama made "the right choice" in choosing Mitchell, according to Egyptian columnist Salama Ahmed Salama. Mitchell favours bringing antagonists to the negotiating table without preconditions, but this diplomatic strategy can fail if the protagonists themselves are divided. As Salama affirmed, "he needs to explore the new givens on the ground: reinforce efforts exerted for inter-Palestinian reconciliation, and maintaining the Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire, before delving into the details of a new peace process." For Ashrawi, the timing of Mitchell's appointment is prescient, coming after the Bush administration largely destroyed the US's reputation in the region. Relative to Israel in particular, "he has to tell Israel that there are limits. People do not want negotiations to proceed at one level and Israel to create facts on the ground at another level, destroying the chances of peace. We need a new modus operandi; we need a multilateral agreement and we need implementation. We don't need any more talks," Ashrawi said.
