Peace plans come and go. Obama may have to try a wholly new approach [View All]

Unless talks address the core, existential issues of 1948, optimism about a new Middle East effort is likely to fade fast

Jonathan Freedland
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 25 August 2009 20.45 BST

Surely the heart should give a cheer at the hints and signals that suggest Barack Obama will stand before the world next month, either at the UN general assembly or the G20 in Pittsburgh, and launch his own bid for Middle East peace. We have told ourselves for so long that a solution is possible – that everyone knows the contours of an eventual agreement between Israelis and Palestinians – that the urge is almost overwhelming to believe it is within reach.

After all, here is a president who is internationally admired where his predecessor was reviled; a president apparently alive to the nuances and complexities of this deeply troubled region; above all a president who believes in diplomacy. Surely, if anyone was destined to play the role of Middle East peacemaker, it is Obama. What's more, the moment seems ripe. For once, large swaths of the Arab world share a common interest with Israel: Saudi Arabia and others fear Tehran more than they fear Tel Aviv, and might be prepared to bury their differences with Israel if that brings united, international action against Iran and its nuclear ambitions. Is it too much to hope that Obama is the right man and September 2009 the right time to bring peace to the Middle East?

I fear it might be. The holy land is haunted by the ghosts of men who believed they were uniquely able to succeed where others had failed. Several presidents reckoned they could make the difference – only to fail. What matters is not the special gifts Obama can boast, but the underlying landscape on which he stands. And, in the Middle East, that does not inspire hope.

So it looks encouraging, at first glance, that Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu is in London today for a long session of talks with George Mitchell, the man who brought balm to Northern Ireland and has been tasked by Obama with doing the same for Israelis and Palestinians. At his press conference alongside Gordon Brown yesterday, the Israeli prime minister made a good fist of suggesting he had narrowed the gap between himself and Obama's demand for a complete freeze on settlement building in the lands Israel gained in 1967. Of course there would have to be some building in existing settlements – settlers, explained Bibi, have children who need schools and kindergartens – but there would be no new ones. Using the language of Israel's sternest critics, he insisted: "This is very different from grabbing land ... We're not going to expropriate additional land."

Perhaps he and Mitchell will be able to construct a compromise formula out of that – agreeing, say, to a one-year building freeze with certain exceptions for "natural growth". But the Palestinians say they will not agree to any new talks unless Israel submits to a complete freeze. They may well buckle in the end, especially if Washington insists it still believes in the principle of a complete halt to settlement activity. But such an outcome will represent an inauspicious start to a new peace process. In a staring contest with Israel, Obama will be the one who blinked. He will be exposed as weak, unable to persuade a dependent ally to bend to his will. That represents a loss of face for the man who needs both sides to fear him if he is to get results.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/25/israel-palestinian-obama-peace-us