Indirect Talks Work to Obama’s Advantage

There are reasons to hope, and also reasons to not believe in it. The moments are numerous, obvious, inscribed in two decades of deception, but the first glimpse of optimism is still the fact that the Israelis and Palestinians will soon resume, after next week no doubt, their peace talks, which were interrupted by the war in Gaza 14 months ago.

They will not be face to face. It is George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, who will be the shuttle between them, because the Palestinians didn’t want to resume direct talks as long as the Israelis would not definitively halt the colonization of occupied territories, meaning East Jerusalem. There is here a certain regression, like a return to the time when the other did not exist, when they didn’t want to converse, but at the same time the recourse of that device proves that neither one nor the other could have envisioned going with the status quo.

For the Palestinians, it would have quickly implicated a rapid Third Intifada that would only have led them to a new defeat. Regardless of what they say, even the Islamists of Hamas didn’t wish it and, on the Israeli side, that perspective was no more enthusiastic, not only because their international image had again been harmed but also especially because minds have considerably evolved in Israel.

All the big parties accept it; however, the idea of the two-state solution to which Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likoud finally rallied itself to last July is now a bit different. For one, Israel is now less worried about the birth of a Palestinian state than the Iranian threat and therefore does not want to let their relationship with Washington deteriorate. For another, the major party of the Israeli people and of its elites has finally seen that, in the absence of a state, the Palestinians would one day demand to become citizens of Israel, where they would soon be the majority.

Even under this government, the most right that it has ever been. Israel has never been as close to envisioning a coexistence with a Palestinian state and — last grounds for optimism — it is the credibility of the United States that Barack Obama stakes in these indirect talks. Not only does this president persist in wanting to reach a decision, not only did he not let himself be disheartened by these first failures, but (so as to persuade the Palestinian leadership and the Arab League to appeal to the artifice that he was proposing to them) he gave them two guarantees, written and fairly solid for carrying out their decision.

The first is that, before a blockade, the United States would say publicly who was to blame for it, and the second that their objective is the creation of a “viable Palestinian state, independent and sovereign, enjoying territorial continuity and putting an end to the occupation begun in 1967.” There is a message there to the Israeli government about an obligation from the U.S. for a result, which makes failing not an option and does not allow Benjamin Netanyahu to halt these negotiations.

All of this matters. It would be an error to not recognize this change in the deal, but the pessimists could, of course, respond that the Palestinians and the Arab League have only consented to indirect talks to save Barack Obama from losing face, and that they will not budge on anything since the Israeli right will not want to accept a division of Jerusalem.

Both arguments defend themselves, but the certainty is that there is thawing.