Greeny News

The Palestinian president is too weak and compromised to accept any final settlement with which Netanyahu can live

Since its inception in OsloAlmost two decades ago, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to a standstill on the dysfunctional political systems of both sides. Can not be held hostage to the coalition and the settler movement freelance fanatics, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 'S leadership is seriously compromised. His Palestinian colleagues hardly in a better position.

Today, clicks, which surrounds the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, represents a bitter deception, that the peace process is for the Palestinians. In addition, the Palestinian authority has come not represent the majority of Palestinians, nor the rules of a democratic way.

Abbas's presidential term has expired, and elections are constantly being postponed. The PA's prime minister, Salam Fayyad, like his Hamas counterparts in Gaza, rules by decree, keeps parliament inactive, and silences the opposition. With no institutionalised democratic legitimacy, the PA is bound to rely on its security forces and on those of the occupier, Israel, to enforce its will.

Of course, throughout history, national liberation movements have had to marginalise their own radicals and fanatics in order to reach the Promised Land. This was true of Zionism, of the Italian Risorgimento, and most recently of the Catholics in Northern Ireland. But never did the outcast faction actually represent the democratically elected majority. A peace process conceived as a means to weaken and isolate the winners of an election â€" Hamas â€" is unlikely to gain much traction.

Like George W Bush, President Barack Obama confines his diplomatic engagement largely to friends rather than adversaries. This, more than anything else, explains the growing disconnection between Arab public opinion and the Obama administration.

The Palestinian negotiators' dangerous lack of legitimacy â€" and, indeed, the disorientation of the entire Palestinian national movement â€" is reflected in the return of the PLO to its pre-Arafat days, when it was the tool of Arab regimes instead of an autonomous movement. The green light was given to the current negotiators by the Arab League, not by the elected representatives of the Palestinian people.

Obama's endorsement of Netanyahu's claim that if Israel is recognised as a Jewish state and its security needs accepted, "I will surprise, and the sky is the limit," has made the current process possible. But maximal security â€" for example, an insufferably long timetable for withdrawal, unreasonable territorial demands wrapped up as security needs, an Israeli presence in the Jordan valley, and full control of Palestinian airspace and the electromagnetic spectrum â€" would inevitably clash with Palestinians' view of what sovereignty entails.

For Netanyahu, the creation of a Palestinian state means the end of conflict and the finality of claims. By reopening Israel's demand to be recognised as the state of the Jewish people, he is forcing the Palestinians to insist even more on the constituent issues of the conflict, first and foremost on the so-called "right of return" of Palestinians who fled or were driven out after Israeli independence in 1948.

Abbas is too weak and compromised to accept any final settlement with which Netanyahu can live. Arafat set the standard as to what is acceptable and what is not, and Abbas cannot allow himself the luxury of deviating from it. As he admitted in a recent interview with the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds, if pressured to concede on sacred Palestinian principles such as refugees, Jerusalem and borders, he would "pack his suitcase and go away".

It is not impossible that with Hamas in the picture, an agreement could end the occupation, if not the conflict. In other words, such a process would deal with the issues of 1967 â€" defining a border (including Jerusalem), withdrawing and dismantling settlements, putting in place security arrangements, and the Palestinians' assumption of full governance responsibility â€" while shelving for the future those of 1948.

Hamas is a far more convenient partner for such a settlement than the PLO. Oddly, Hamas and Israel might have more common ground than Israel and the PLO. Israel wants an end to the conflict but is incapable of paying the price, whereas Hamas can better reconcile its ideology with a peace agreement with Israel if it is not defined as final.

Whatever route is taken, the great question today concerns the enigma that is Bibi Netanyahu, a would-be Churchill who believes that his mission is to thwart the designs of Iran's evil new Shia empire, something that requires the goodwill of the international community, and particularly of the Obama administration. It is not entirely far-fetched to assume that Netanyahu finally calculated that if he wants more room to manoeuvre to deal with Iran, he must participate in the peace process with the Palestinians.

But, in that case, Iranian quiescence, not peaceful relations with an independent Palestine, might be Bibi's true objective.

• Copyright Project Syndicate, 2010

• Comments on this article are set to remain open for 24 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight

Greeny NEWS