The diplomatic process: There might be no Kerry proposal

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

http://972mag.com/the-diplomatic-process-there-might-be-no-kerry-proposal/87866/

So what happened to the Kerry process? Last week I spoke to a centrist Israeli politician who took part in the highest levels of a previous round of talks. While expressing admiration for Secretary Kerry’s efforts (“Kerry is indeed obsessive, but in the most positive way,” he said), the person to whom I spoke expressed deep concern that the Americans are “about to miss this moment [of opportunity].”

Kerry has tailored his offer to Netanyahu’s political needs in recent weeks, said the former official, instead of challenging him and the Israeli public with a far-reaching offer to which the Palestinians would have had to agree. By “far reaching,” he meant making clear references to 1:1 land swaps and East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. Such an offer would have forced Netanyahu to choose between the peace process and his right-wing coalition partners. In such a scenario, the government might eventually fall and we could have, for the first time, “an election on the issue,” as the official put it.

Instead, he said, Kerry has gotten all sorts of vague commitments from Bibi, which have created a sense of achievement but nothing concrete. The official estimated that the Americans are reluctant to confront Netanyahu on the Palestinian front after doing so on Iran, and to a lesser extent, on Syria. He wondered whether the attempt to prolong the negotiations might be intended to postpone the moment of decision until after the American mid-term congressional elections, when the administration will have more room for political maneuvering.

An analyst I spoke to, who also took part in a previous round of talks, agreed that the American side was overly sensitive to the political needs of the right-wing government in Jerusalem. “The Americans believed that they have Abu Mazen in their pocket and that Netanyahu is the problem. That has made them more flexible with Bibi. But now they are getting a lot of pushback from the Palestinians.” The analyst went ahead and named leading members of Kerry’s peace team, stating that while several of them are close to the Israeli side in their positions, “nobody was brought in to satisfy the Palestinians or to represent their needs.”

[Jefferson23]

1. Dreadful, but it reflects many other reports that have been in various media for weeks now.

Thanks for posting..it's informative.