A Damper From the Three-Way Summit

The most noticeable aspect of the summit meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week in New York was the unenthusiastic atmosphere. Abbas attended reluctantly, and only because of American pressure. Netanyahu accepted the invitation only because he could successfully bypass Palestinian conditions as well as any American demands subsequent to Israel’s cessation of settlement expansion. Plus, Obama knew from the outset that nothing would come of the three-way summit.

These days, few in Israel or in the Palestinian areas expect the Americans to do much. Surveys show that 70 percent of Palestinians do not have any faith in Obama’s effectiveness.

This opinion is probably reflective of opinion across the entire Arab world, the world where Obama’s June 4 Cairo speech raised so much hope. After Netanyahu’s speech on June 14, in which he for the first time acknowledged a two-state solution, Obama tried to wrest additional concessions from Israel.

In order to facilitate these concessions, he asked the Arab world, above all Saudi Arabia, to make reciprocal gestures. Among them, he suggested they permit Israel to use Saudi airspace for flights to the Far East. He got no answer.

Israel’s right wing in Netanyahu’s coalition is celebrating a victory in that they have forced Netanyahu, the Palestinians and the American president to back down. Netanyahu attended the three-way summit without having to cease Israeli settlement expansion. Israel now believes that with the failure of the summit, no further concessions concerning the Palestinians will be made by Israel, and everything will be business as usual.

A peace process will certainly continue, but under the present circumstances and the Palestinians’ decreasing willingness to make concessions it will be as unfruitful as the tedious negotiations Olmert’s government undertook from the end of 2006 until the beginning of 2009. The current Israeli government sees itself as safe. Netanyahu now need fear neither his right wing coalition partners nor will he come under fire from his own party; in view of the eternal circus of negotiations on the horizon, they need do nothing meaningful.

Obama appears to have lost his vigor and clarity on all fronts. Most Americans do not understand his healthcare reform plans. It is not at all clear what his goals and intentions in Afghanistan are. At the three-way summit, he expressed a lot of pious wishes for the Near East instead of producing a clear strategy and implementing it. Has he given up on his own ability to affect change there? If that is the case, it is understandable that he has shifted the Near East conflict onto his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Her probable failure would doubtlessly put a damper on any of her future ambitions at the next presidential election.