In Middle East, Kerry Wary of Any Haste

John Kerry wants to believe. After a three-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, the U.S. secretary of state is convinced that there is a solution to “the biggest, the longest, the most complicated and the most vexing” contemporary conflict.

“I believe we can,” Kerry said to U.S. diplomatic personnel in Jerusalem. “I really believe that, or I wouldn’t have taken on this job at the request of the president; I wouldn’t be back here for my multiple-whatever-umpteenth trip here as a senator and secretary, and for my third trip to the region as a secretary already.”

Following Barack Obama’s official visit, during which the U.S. president managed to restore cordial relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli public, Kerry is responsible for the most thankless part: reviving the peace process that has been on hold for four years. With a team of negotiators, Kerry plans to make regular visits to the region at a rate of two visits per month.

The new U.S. plan is to move the talks to Jordan and, rather than letting Israelis and Palestinians negotiate face to face, to conduct the negotiations with all four participants present.

Yet, despite his meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, which he described as “very constructive,” the U.S. secretary of state is still in the preliminary stages: He must start by negotiating to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

Abbas still refuses to resume talks without a freeze on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; he has repeated this demand for four years, and it is one of his main sticking points.

To complicate Kerry’s task even more, Abbas also requires a significant gesture of goodwill on the part of the Israelis, such as the release of Palestinian prisoners, especially those imprisoned since before the 1993 Oslo Accords. Abbas has added to his requests that the Israeli government produce a map of the areas that it is willing to cede to a future Palestinian state.

Israelis refuse to comply with the requests, which they call “preconditions.” Israeli Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni, who has been put in charge of talks, was the only one to give any sign of goodwill, renouncing recognition of Israel as a Jewish state as a precondition for negotiations. She was, in turn, criticized by several ministers.

Kerry’s task is not simple. The U.S. secretary of state, who represents a new, less head-on approach than Obama, does not want to force the hand of one side or the other. Instead — according to the analysis of diplomats — he should try to obtain discrete commitments, or even secret ones, from each party. Without announcing it, the Israelis could suspend new construction outside their large settlement blocs, and, in exchange, the Palestinians could abstain from new diplomatic initiatives in the U.N.

“Doing it right is more important than doing it quickly,” said Kerry.