The peace process in the Middle East remains stalled after the meeting on Monday in Washington between President Obama and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonstrated that both leaders have radically different visions on the means to reach an always distant peace. Nevertheless, hopes were high following the commitment of the new tenant of the White House to act fast, after visits in the region by George Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Barack Obama considers the Palestinian question as one of his priorities. He is decidedly in favor of the creation of a Palestinian state, a solution officially supported by the United Nations, the international community, and Pope Benedict XVI during his recent visit to the Holy Land. The American president has finally decided not to indefinitely prolong the negotiations and to obtain quick concrete changes in the Palestinian territories, particularly by stopping the colonization of the West Bank.
For this purpose, to win Arabic support, he has already received the King of Jordan Abdullah II in Washington. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are expected to visit in the coming weeks. As for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he had his first official meeting with Obama on Monday in Washington. The peace process in the Middle East and the Iranian nuclear program were the centers of the discussion. As expected, this visit was more than a simple formal interview, because both allies had to clarify more and more divergent views on a certain number of subjects.
If Arabic leaders are ready to reopen negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state and to make a commitment towards the formal recognition of Israel, then Netanyahu, for whom “Palestinian state” is a taboo phrase, appears as the only one responsible for the holdup. His vague proposition of “economic peace” with the Palestinians did not satisfy the American president, who asked Netanyahu for specific concrete measures that he plans to implement in the coming months.
Points of View Diametrically Opposite
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s answer was for an approach combining economic development of the Palestinian Territories along with the intensification of security measures by Israel; in addition to this, Israel wants recognition by the Palestinians of the Jewish character of Israel. The latter is an unacceptable condition for the Palestinian Authority, which dreads the consequences of such recognition on the related matter of the return of the refugees of 1948. However, the two-state solution is the major point of disagreement between the United States and Israel. The goal of creating a Palestinian state had been reaffirmed at the end of 2007 by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, gathered in Annapolis, Maryland by former President George Bush.
Another point of difference: the subject of Iranian nuclear power. The Israelis worry about negotiations envisaged by Obama with Tehran. They are afraid that the question of their own nuclear strength – officially non-existent – will be raised during negotiations on a possible atomic disarmament of the Middle East. On this point, Barack Obama, who adopted an approach diametrically opposite to the one that the Bush administration followed, told his Israeli visitor he has no reason to fix an “artificial calendar” to the policy of commitment which he is trying to implement with Tehran. For the Obama Administration, the Israeli-Palestinian question is crucial in restoring the image of the United States and the relations between the United States and the Muslim world.
In spite of the failure of the meeting, President Obama, after having underscored that “the two-state solution” served the interests of both camps, left a note of hope by formulating his wish to witness progress on the issue before the end of the year.
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