The key to Middle East peace

The Middle East will not find lasting security without a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli war. There will be no long term peace in the region if these two states do not agree on their borders and recognise each other.

There is a real danger in 2009 that other issues will distract from any efforts to find peace deal between Palestine and Israel, but regardless of whether it is ignored or not, a future peaceful Palestine will remain at the heart of any genuine wide-spread peace in the region.

The new American president will have to bear that in mind as he looks at his foreign policy priorities. Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran are all countries with very different issues that all need urgent attention, but this should not be at the expense of finding a way forward for Palestine.

When Prince Saud Al Faisal, the Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, spoke at the United Nations last week, he referred to what is happening in the Occupied Territories, saying that the fate of the Israeli colonies is a key test of peace.

He was repeating what many Arab leaders have said, and they are right to make clear again that if Israel has any genuine intention of building a new relationship with Palestine, it will have to stop building new colonies, and will have to remove the established ones.

If the colonies continue to be expanded, and new ones created, then no-one can rely on an Israeli commitment to peace.

However, it is true that the Palestinian leaders have not helped themselves. The disastrous split between Hamas and the rest of the Palestinians, leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza and the Palestinian National Authority in charge of the West Bank, means that the Palestinians are not able to come to any negotiations speaking with one voice.

In addition, the history of the Palestinian National Authority has not been a success. With a plethora of divided security organisations and continuing accusations of corruption (which at one stage surfaced in a formal reprimand from the Palestinian parliament which the government ignored), the Palestinian government not been able to make a good job of the limited power that it has under Israeli occupation.

The Israelis have been delighted by this. It means that they have been able to continue their occupation with little hindrance. Their own political stalemate has not given them any major problem in their day-to-day affairs, but it has made it very difficult for anyone to get a long term plan out of them.

When pressed on how they see a solution, every Israeli leader for the past few years has dodged the search for a genuine answer by trying to position Israel as part of the Bush war against terror.

They have all referred to the importance of the fight against extremism, linking Hamas to Iran, and making out that Israel is an important ally in this process.

Wrong

The Bush administration has labelled Hamas a terrorist organisation, which was wrong. Such a label ignores the fact that Hamas is a broad based political party which won a general election. Its refusal to accept Israeli occupation, and its willingness to resist, does not rule out talking to Hamas and working with them to find a way through.

Looking into 2009, there will be a range of new political leaders: Tzipi Livni will have formed her new government in Israel. It looks like being the usual narrowly balanced coalition, giving her little room for taking difficult decisions, although her uncompromising words on colonies give little immediate hope for a constructive attitude so far.

The Palestinians will be the same, and the only hope for change there is if a peace deal looks like becoming serious which might bring these former political partners back together. The real change will be in the White House, where a new president will re-make American foreign policy.

McCain has made clear that he will continue most of the Bush priorities, but Obama will change America's agenda back to a more global set of priorities which will include terror, but not at the expense of everything else.

Judging from their speeches and their campaign literature, both candidates will suffer from the same disability of focusing their efforts in the Middle East on Iran, and making the Iranian nuclear programme the touchstone of their foreign policy in the Middle East.

This narrow focus on one problem is destructive. They need to remember that there is more to the Middle East than just Iran and terror. There are emerging nations emerging into the global world, ready to play a wider role in world affairs.

This will happen much faster and with much more confidence when the Palestinians have their own state, and violence as an instrument of policy is reduced.