Who's benefiting from a never-ending Mideast peace 'process?'

The time has come to ask ourselves who the true stakeholders are in the Middle East peace 'process,' where their true interests lie and who the current status quo serves.


By Guy Rolnik | Jun. 28, 2014

“The peace process is about to be frozen for years,” I said with apprehension to my interlocutor, a senior Israeli diplomat who had been involved in Washington in some of the most important negotiations of the previous 20 years. “In the years ahead, President Obama will be occupied solely with the American economic crisis, and no one will take an interest in the Middle East process any longer,” I explained.

This conversation took place immediately after the new president took office in 2008, in the midst of the most severe economic crisis experienced by the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. I was certain, in that moment, that I had a good grasp of the administration’s order of priorities.

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My interlocutor laughed. “That’s not how it works,” he said. “With all due respect for economic problems, there are thousands of people in Washington who earn their living from the peace ‘process.’ Economic crisis or not, there’s a large group that is working on the peace process, working on the terror threats, working on Middle Eastern affairs – and will always work on the ‘process.’”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-peace-conference/1.601471