Newsletter: Vol. 10. Iss. 1
September 2010
Negotiations Under False
Pretenses
Gershon Baskin
Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are likely to begin in the near future. The international community under the conductor’s wand of the Obama Administration has applied considerable pressure to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to withdraw from all of his demands for setting the conditions for his participation in the negotiations.
Abbas’s demands were not without logic. His main concern is that negotiations are not the problem – decision making is. After so many years of Israeli-Palestinian bilateral negotiations it is quite clear where the gaps are, or more correctly, where they were each time the negotiations reached their breaking point. The only way, according to Abbas, to ensure that there would be a chance of progress is to make sure that the talks begin from the point they arrived to in the last round. Why should the talks have to begin from the zero point, as if nothing has happened in the past 20 years?
In times gone by this would have been called “constructive ambiguity,” a diplomatic term devised by Henry Kissinger which enabled previous Israeli-Arab talks and understandings. Since that time, much water has flowed in the Jordan and one of the lessons learned from the Oslo process is that there is no such thing – there is no such thing as constructive ambiguity in the Israeli-Palestinian process; it often has had deadly consequences.
The main point of concern of the Palestinians remains the continued building of settlements and their expansion. During the Oslo process the number of settlers more than doubled in the same territory that the Palestinians believe must be part of their state, so how can Israel be negotiating in good faith if the settlement drive continues? This point is shared by the international community. However, no one has been able to apply significant pressure on the Israeli government to continue the full settlement building freeze beyond the initial 10 months. It appears that it is much easier to apply pressure on the Palestinian side.
The apparent compromise or “fudging” that the international community has connived is the issuing of a statement by the Quartet which will indicate the basic parameters of the negotiations without Israel having to state out loud that it accepts them. This, it is believed, will satisfy Abbas’s need to turn to his people with a victory before he sits at the very table that he has refused to sit at since the election of the Netanyahu government. The main problem with this is that both parties are essentially entering into negotiations under false pretenses.
Abbas probably didn’t have a choice. He was surely told that the only way that the international community could persuade Netanyahu into continuing the settlement freeze, even partially, is if real negotiations were taking place. But soon the reality will sink in when the two sides are sitting at the table and there is no agreed starting point.
