Region | Palestinian Territories
Israel seeks price for peace in Palestine
Israel will not move ahead on the core issues of peace talks with the Palestinians until it sees progress in US efforts to stop Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon and to limit Tehran's rising influence in the region, a top government officials familiar with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's still-nascent policy on the issue said.
- By Howard Schneider and Glenn Kessler, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
- Published: 23:04 April 22, 2009
Occupied Jerusalem: Israel will not move ahead on the core issues of peace talks with the Palestinians until it sees progress in US efforts to stop Iran's suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon and to limit Tehran's rising influence in the region, a top government officials familiar with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's still-nascent policy on the issue said.
"It's a crucial condition if we want to move forward," said Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, a member of the Israeli parliament and former ambassador to the United States. "If we want to have a real political process with the Palestinians, then you can't have the Iranians undermining and sabotaging."
The emerging Israeli position, a significant change from that of previous governments, presents a challenge for US President Barack Obama, who has made quick progress on Palestinian statehood a key foreign policy goal. Obama is also trying to begin engagement with Iran as part of a broad effort to slow its nuclear programme and curtail its growing strength in the Middle East.
US officials are wary of linking the two issues and, if anything, would like to do the reverse of what Israel has proposed, by using progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks to curb Iranian influence, which is wielded in the region through anti-Israeli organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
"We have to be pretty careful how you approach that kind of connection," said a senior US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly. "We are dealing with Iran because there are behaviours out there that are deeply troubling. We would be doing that regardless of other issues. By the same token, the Palestinian issue is an issue that obviously evokes a great deal in the region."
Obama and Netanyahu are expected to meet in Washington next month. In the intervening weeks, the Israeli Prime Minister, who took office late last month, is developing his proposals for how to proceed and appears to be bracing for a tough discussion with the president.
"Netanyahu is expecting that when he says, 'Iran, Iran, Iran,' Obama will say, 'Palestine, Palestine, Palestine' back," said Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and a former peace negotiator who keeps in close contact with US and Israeli officials. "Netanyahu expects Obama to say that in order to be effective with Iran, we need to manage the Palestinian track as well."
In an unusual confluence of interests, Netanyahu's insistence on the importance of Iran - and wariness of the American outreach to Tehran - is also shared in many Arab capitals, according to US, Israeli and Arab officials. Mitchell has told Jewish groups he was surprised at how often Arab leaders brought up Iran during his initial trip to the region after being named special envoy.
In recent days, Egypt has arrested a cell of the Iranian-funded Lebanese groupHezbollah that was suspected of planning attacks on Egyptian soil and smuggling weapons and attackers into Israel. During the war between Israel and Hamas this year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah called for the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after Egypt declined to open its border with Gaza to allow residents to flee the fighting.
Egypt has recently bolstered anti-smuggling operations along that border, where networks of tunnels serve as a key conduit for Hamas fighters, who are also supported by Iran.
Morocco has severed diplomatic ties with Iran, and Saudi Arabia has criticised Iran's efforts to influence the region - signs of a long-standing enmity between the Arab world and the seat of the former Persian empire. The mistrust has been magnified by Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Arab nations "see a profound Iranian threat. They see Iranian interventionism. They see the Iranian nuclear programme", the US official said. "They want to be certain that what we are doing will affect the Iranians and will not come at their expense."
But, unlike the Netanyahu government, Arab nations are demanding that progress be made on the Palestinian front as well. "Our issue is an issue on its own," said senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "We expect nothing short of a clear-cut statement supporting the two-state solution and to stop settlement activity."
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