Vacation Is Over: Back to Obama’s School

Today, Israeli schoolchildren are starting the new school year and tomorrow, direct talks with the Palestinians are to take place. In a special column, Udi Segal explains a different point of view on the renewed talks between the two “students,” Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Mazen. Is there the prospect for a momentous process of settlement and termination of the conflict in the near future, despite nobody believing that it is occurring? Or is this yet another fake peace production?

Udi Segal, Channel 2 News

Good morning, first grade or vice versa: first-grade morning! This is what the president wants. This is what is being restarted here in Washington for who knows how many times. It is symbolic that the process of launching the direct talks is getting underway on the first of September.

The rebellious students made optimal use of their time off, “skipped classes” over the last years and took advantage of the teachers’ strike between administration shifts. The transition from Bush to Obama could be seen as the arrival of an inexperienced substitute teacher who tried, to no avail, to impose her authority on the troubled class of the Middle East, a class of students with special needs. And here they are again. Showing up in the familiar classroom in Washington, the same students who are done with their studies — however, not in our school.

Abu Mazen and Netanyahu on the School Bench

Abu Mazen is a graduate of the Beilin-Abu Mazen Agreement of 1995, an agreement that never matured into a real and binding document — it was originally meant to reroute the Oslo process from a twisting and disappointing path of intermediate agreements in an effort to achieve rulings on permanent agreement issues. Abu Mazen has also unsuccessfully finished the Camp David summit in 2000 in the role of a wild student pressing the “king” of the class at that time, Yasser Arafat, to show no flexibility on the refugee subject.

The chairman of the Palestinian Authority is also a graduate of a theater course at the Aqaba Summit in 2003, where he impersonated an acting prime minister, the Palestinian PM exercising authority under Arafat in order to evade confiscations by Ariel Sharon. At the time, he was speaking out bravely and explicitly against use of terror — but despite a convincing appearance, failed to obtain the school’s certificate in dispute closure and conflict resolution.

In addition, Abu Mazen also graduated from Annapolis. Although he took no Special Warfare course at the U.S. Naval Academy, he did take part in one more promising peace production involving enlistment of the Saudi foreign minister and the Syrian deputy foreign minister to the abortive attempt at meaningful talks, and he is a graduate of the Olmert talks as well.

And next to him in the classroom is Benjamin Netanyahu. A graduate of the Madrid Agreement, as a deputy foreign minister at the time, he took the side of Shamir in the decision to forcibly open comprehensive negotiations with e-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y. A graduate of the Rabin assassination; of the Oslo adoption; of the Hebron Agreement, which he signed and implemented; of the Third Phase [of the Further Redeployment Process] that was never put into effect; and of the Wye Agreement, this expert in the field of nature resources (because of his creative solution for a transfer of territory that was not realized) registered an interesting learning experiment in the Kotel Tunnel Incident. Attached to “my good friend Arafat” under duress, Netanyahu started but did not complete the process of disengagement — and now he comes back to the beginning again.

The Grad Students: Mubarak and Abdullah

Good morning, first grade. This coming year we’re going to learn about partnership, responsibility, leadership, twist and probability. There is actually a year to conclude the sobering-up process — what does everyone want, what can everyone do, what is the chance to possibly find a common denominator for this fraction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This time, the president brings over two advanced-class grads: King Abdullah and President Mubarak. Both of them passed the elementary school of maintaining the peace they inherited from their predecessors. This is their chance to win themselves a certificate of transition to the Department of Leaders who did it. They are tutors for Abu Mazen; they are the guarantee for Netanyahu. They have come together because, in the collateral class of nuclear physics and the Middle East mess, there is a bothersome bully — Ahmadinejad. The only way for this class to free themselves of his threats is to finally finish the first grade.

On the Way to the Summit Yesterday, the Terrorist Attack Was a Bullet in the Knee on the First Step

So, starting again from the very outset. In light of the numerous failures of the past two decades, it is easy to prophesy that nothing is going to happen; that again, it is going to end in bitter disappointment; that once more, they are not going to move up a class. Expectations are low. Estimations are gloomy. Reports are limited. No wing clips and no wings. There is only a sad and bloody history.

On the way to the summit yesterday, the terrorist attack was a bullet in the knee on the first step. It did not blow up the process, but it does undermine it and adds sour taste and skepticism. The human tragedy shrinks the stomach and toughens the hand, already tightly clenched. But there is a chance.

Netanyahu will tell Americans he wants a solution and not excuses, and that it is possible to arrive at an agreement that would form a bridge between the Palestinian demand for sovereignty and the Israeli demand for security and recognition. Abu Mazen has a choice: to bet on the next prime minster (and they have an understanding of Israeli politics just as we do — that it’s nothing), or to try to gnash his teeth and push Netanyahu to be Begin in his being Sadat.

And there is the issue of the freeze. Netanyahu is about to tell Washington that this is a peripheral matter. He is back at Livni’s formula — all or nothing. Why waste political fortune for a fight with the right wing about the freeze on settlements when you can check if there is an opening for a big and significant move? The degree of the Palestinians’ obstinacy on this standpoint will be an indicator of the degree of seriousness in the next weeks’ sessions. Should they waver, it would mean something huge is going on inside; should they be stubborn, it would be a sign that nothing is happening. Morning, first grade — trying to begin afresh.

An apt revelation: The writer of these lines has missed, with pain, for the sake of this trip, his third daughter entering the first grade. What am I going to say to her in several months or years? Didn’t make it, but it was worthy — an important process of settling and bringing the conflict to a close began, despite no one putting any stock in it? Or that it’s a pity, I traveled to another phony peace production — one of many that I’ve already been to?