No reason for optimism over renewed Palestinian talks
This service has observed every attempt to negotiate a final settlement between Israel and the Arabs since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Every attempt to date has foundered, and there is no reason to suppose that the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians that resumed this week will be any different.
What is true is that right-wing politicians, and perhaps only right-wing politicians, are capable of making painful concessions and radical U-turns to achieve peace. Menachem Begin withdrew from Sinai to secure peace with Egypt, and Ariel Sharon withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, if he thought it right to do so, could make the U-turns necessary to achieve peace. It is not, therefore, the internal political constraints that concern us. Rather it is the external security environment. Israeli officials have been saying that they believe there will be turmoil in the Middle East for 10 years, and this almost certainly understates the case, for two reasons.
The first reason is that timescales are often far more elongated than people initially imagine. Who, for instance, could have predicted that the Iranian revolution would still not have modified itself, or been curtailed by a counter-revolution, nearly 35 years on from the fall of the Shah?
The second reason is the fact that the current Middle Eastern turmoil is so complex and multi-faceted. It will not begin to settle down until at least the contest for power between Islamists and secularists (of both the liberal and conservative persuasion) has been decided in North Africa, most particularly in Egypt, or until the three-way contest for power between Sunni, Shia, and secularists in Syria has been decided.
With regard to North Africa, the effects of events in Egypt on the wider region have steadily grown during July, with the escalation of violence in neighbouring Libya; with increasing calls for the dissolution of Tunisia’s National Constituent Assembly (NCA) and the replacement of the Islamist Ennahda-led government with a national salvation administration; and with suggestions that in Morocco King Mohamed has engineered the weakening of Islamist Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane’s government through the withdrawal from the coalition of five ministers from the conservative Istiqlal party.
In Libya, car bombings and assassinations have become virtually daily occurrences, particularly in Benghazi, Tripoli, and Darnah. There is evidence that members of Egypt’s ousted Muslim Brotherhood are seeking refuge in Libya; and the idea that the escalation of violence in Libya might be related to events in Egypt was tacitly admitted by the government of Prime Minister Ali Zaydan when it closed the crossing points with Egypt on 27 July. Zaydan has also appointed a new armed forces chief of staff, on 29 July, and promised a government reshuffle, but it is hard to see how these essentially cosmetic changes will halt the tide of violence.
Meanwhile, in Syria, the fall of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has weakened the Sunni cause against President Bashar al-Assad, in part because it has broken the solidarity between Egypt and the strongly anti-Assad Turkish government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In turn, this has strengthened Iran, which continues to fight to maintain the Shia crescent, so feared by Jordan’s King Abdallah, which stretches from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. And the fall of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has also brought the Palestinian group Hamas scurrying back to Tehran. Last month a delegation of Hamas leaders met with officials from Tehran in the Iranian embassy in Beirut to try to mend fences - and to secure renewed Iranian funding for Hamas.
Iran openly admits that a bargaining process is under way, with a foreign ministry spokesman in Tehran saying in recent days: “Iran and Hamas are engaged in a process of resolving outstanding issues and ideological differences. The sides are engaged in intense dialogue to achieve these goals.” That “intense dialogue”, we are told, includes using a reinvigorated struggle against Israel as the best way to restore mutual trust. That alone does not bode well for the renewed peace process.
Nor is there much evidence to support the contention that Iran’s incoming president, Hasan Rowhani, will be notably more moderate on crucial issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. According to a pro-reform source in Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei rejected four of Rowhani’s suggestions for cabinet posts after Rowhani presented his proposals last week. They were all former ministers in reformist president Mohammad Khatami’s government. One of those rejected was Ali Yunesi, who headed Khatami’s Intelligence Ministry for five years. Rowhani had proposed him as the new minister of intelligence.
In parallel with all this, it is clear that events in Egypt, coupled with the rallying effects of the civil war in Syria, are providing a new lease of life to radical jihadist Islam. For many observers, the Arab Spring was initially seen as the antidote to jihadism, but it has not worked out that way. The undemocratic ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood from power in Egypt is already proving to be a powerful recruiting sergeant for the jihadists, with al-Qaeda arguing (plausibly) that it proves that democracy is not for Islamists because even if Islamists acquire power they are prevented from exercising it.
Other issues contributing to regional instability include, as we have repeatedly emphasized in recent months, the future of the Kurdish regions, which cannot, as so often in the past, be brushed aside; then there is the political future of the conservative Arab monarchies, which may seem more secure with the collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood’s dreams of regional hegemony but is by no means completely secure; and there is the unresolved issue of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
On the Iranian nuclear question, high-ranking Israeli intelligence officials have held a series of meetings with their European counterparts in recent weeks and come away believing that the Europeans are preparing to lift some sanctions against Iran following the election of Rowhani. Even more worrying for Israel is the possibility that any such European action could be mirrored by the United States.
Furthermore, as we have reported previously, Iran does not seem to be taking Israeli threats of military action against its nuclear facilities seriously. And Iran’s feeling of invulnerability can only have been increased by the news that the US’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, is strongly opposed to military intervention in Syria on the grounds that the US cannot afford another Middle East war. Retired US Central Commander General James Mattis has also said publicly that any attack on Iran would not achieve its goal and would only cause an insignificant delay.
All in all, it would be hard to envisage a less propitious climate for the restarting of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The Israelis know that they will very soon have to reach a definitive conclusion about how to deal with Iran, and that however they do decide to deal with it is likely to exacerbate regional tensions, not diminish them.
The one positive for Israel is that it does not now face the immediate likelihood of united, powerful, and threatening neighbours under a post-Arab Spring Muslim Brotherhood hegemony, as once seemed possible. But a decade or more of multiple uncertainties is the only certainty, and that prospect will make Israel as cautious as ever about making the concessions that would be necessary to secure a lasting peace with the Palestinians. We do not see it happening. JdeC.
NOTE: We are not the only pessimists. On Monday (29 July) US Secretary of State John Kerry officially appointed former US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, as envoy to the resumed talks. Kerry also urged the parties to reach reasonable compromises on tough issues. In an interview early last year with Israel’s Army Radio, Indyk expressed pessimism over the chances of reaching a lasting peace accord between the two sides. He said: “I'm not particularly optimistic because I think that the heart of the matter is that the maximum concessions that this government of Israel would be prepared to make fall far short of the minimum requirements that [Palestinian leader] Abu Mazin will insist on. Though it may be possible to keep the talks going, which is a good thing; I find it very hard to believe that they will reach an agreement.”