Livni pragmatism could achieve results

Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni succeeded Ehud Olmert as Israeli Prime Minister when he decided to step down, but she has failed to form a new government making way for early legislative elections in February 2009.

The electoral campaigns will deal not only with economic and social issues but also security and the future of negotiations with Palestinians to which Olmert was committed to. Moreover it has been stated that peace talks would be suspended during the electoral campaign.

For all these reasons we wonder if the so-called Annapolis process will achieve any results. George W. Bush expressed hopes in November 2007 that a peace agreement could be reached before the end of his second term as president of the United States. But who has seriously believed in this? Bush has left the Oslo process in disarray.

Once again hopes have been dashed at the very moment Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad launched a clear warning. According to him the two-state solution, on the basis of the 1967 boundaries is undermined and could fail because of the Israeli colony activities since the Annapolis meeting. Indeed 170 Israeli colonies with about 500,000 Israelis living in them are located in the West Bank and Gaza.

No agreement has been reached on occupied Jerusalem's status, nor on the problem of Palestinian refugees as well as on the issue of boundaries. Even moderate Palestinian leaders renounce now the two- state solution and would rather favour a binational state with Jews and Arabs living together. However this is not the ideal solution for Israel as this would mean the end of Israel as the state of Jews.

Smoke screen

Palestinians doubt that peace talks will produce any results apart from tricking them and pursuing colony activities in the Palestinian territories. It is known that even if negotiations are suspended, colonies will not. Negotiations would only be a smoke screen hiding the reality of the occupation. They would not resolve conflicts with binding resolutions but rather serve to satisfy international public opinion. As a result, Palestinians are very concerned about the real goals of Israel and what they consider to be the policy of "fait accompli". After 1948, Israel succeeded in keeping 78 per cent of the former Palestine mandate territory under control instead of 51 per cent expected by the United Nation's previous plans. The struggle between the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas is not helpful.

Moreover if the Likud party and Benyamin Netanyahu won the elections in Israel it would be the end of the two-state solution.

Fortunately there is a ray of hope. The new US president-elect Barack Obama is more likely to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian issue at the beginning of his first term rather than at the end of the second one because this never-ending conflict is damaging US interests and is the main reason for the resentment of the American policy in Muslim states.

Livni, coming from the right side of the Israeli political spectrum could now be considered as a pragmatic.

She has given up on the ideology of greater Israel and is ready to accept a territorial compromise with Palestinians. She has understood that the western support for Israel would never be granted if there is no peace at sight and if Israel is unwilling to accept a reasonable peace agreement.

She has refused to compromise with the far right Shas religious party which wanted to make sure that there would be no compromise on occupied Jerusalem's status.

Livni knows that refusing to negotiate on occupied Jerusalem is the same as saying "no" to any peace agreement with the Palestinians.

She has the advantage of being considered as uncompromising, which is not frequent in the Israeli political landscape. Having refused the Shas diktat she has not weakened but rather reinforced her personal status.

If she does succeed in being elected as prime minister with a clear popular mandate, she who is against the tenets of Greater Israel, could with the support of Obama create the conditions for a real peace agreement.

Dr Pascal Boniface is the founder and director of IRIS (Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques). He has published or edited more than 40 books dealing with international relations, nuclear deterrence and disarmament, European security and French international policy.