Biden’s humiliation shows futility of US peace talks

[grassfed]

‘To wipe the spit off his face,” the Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar wrote on Friday, “Biden had to say it was only rain.” That, said Eldar, was why the US vice president Joe Biden ended up commending the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “handling” of what had been universally interpreted as his public humiliation at the hands of the Israeli government.

Washington’s latest peace effort was mocked by the announcement of plans for new Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem on the same day that Mr Biden had publicly expressed Washington’s unswerving support for Israel and announced a plan for “indirect” negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Even before the Israeli announcement, the “proximity” talks – in which the two sides, no longer able to find their way to a negotiating table, would now discuss a two-state solution via American go-betweens – had been widely recognised as of limited value.

The Israelis had successfully resisted the Obama administration’s demand that they demonstrate their seriousness by halting construction on land conquered in 1967; their purpose in indulging the “proximity” process, one senior Israeli official said, was simply to create an atmosphere more conducive to challenging Iran.

The Arab League gave conditional backing to the talks, with a deadline of just four months, despite what the secretary general Amr Moussa called the league’s “lack of conviction in the seriousness of the Israeli side”.

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