Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has made abundantly clear in the last few days that he has “red lines” where building in Jerusalem is concerned, and he’s not going to cross them. … At the same time, the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly insisted that it won’t resume what Mahmoud Abbas at the weekend called “real negotiations” with Israel on final-status issues unless or until there is a halt to building beyond the green line, emphatically including Jerusalem. So how is it that U.S. special envoy George Mitchell left the region on Sunday ostensibly hopeful that, when he returns in a week or so, he will finally be able to get at least indirect “proximity” talks moving?
One possibility is that the two mutually mistrustful sides … are prepared to at least enter the proximity framework despite their differences. …
The latest Mitchell visit has produced several frenzied and, in some cases, inaccurate headlines and dispatches. It featured no discussion of the possibility of a Palestinian state being established within temporary borders. Neither was there talk of the U.S. imposing a peace accord. … The prosaic reality is that the indefatigable Mitchell might, just possibly, be close to persuading the two sides to, separately, set out their positions for the benefit of themselves and the Americans, with the ambition of actually getting them to talk directly to each other in a few months’ time.
This would not constitute the kind of progress likely to set the champagne corks popping and galvanize serious optimism—especially as each side may only be tentatively entering the unpromising framework in the hope that it will be able to blame the other for inevitable failure down the road. What it would constitute, however, is something that has been lacking for a year: a start. Access the full article>>
