The Middle East direct peace talks collapsed yesterday after Washington admitted it has failed to persuade Israel to ‘freeze' its colony expansion in the Occupied Territories, which is a Palestinian condition for resuming the talks. Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas described the situation as a crisis shortly after US officials declared the failure of their "considerable effort" to get their Israeli allies to temporarily stop the colony building.
Perhaps it is tempting to blame the obviously spineless Barack Obama administration for the collapse of the talks. But Obama should not be held responsible for betraying our hopes of a just and lasting settlement in the Middle East.
Of course, the US President promised several times, most notably in his inaugural address and the subsequent Cairo speech that he will press for achieving a deal before the end of his first term in office. But why should we blame him or the US for the failure of the peace process?
We have always known that the US will never push Israel enough to commit to the conditions of a peaceful settlement. The US, we also know, is only committed to maintaining Israel's military supremacy.
"The policy and the efforts of the US administration failed because of the blow it received from the Israeli government," Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said yesterday. This is not true.
The peace process didn't work because the Arabs continue to believe that they are not able to negotiate a settlement. Therefore they depend on the US — the supposedly honest broker — to negotiate on their behalf.
We must remain committed to a peaceful settlement, a just and permanent one. But we must negotiate out of strength and try to force the other side, by political pressure and leveraging our most prized instrument — the bilateral ties some states have with Israel, to force the Israelis not only to ‘freeze' colony building but to stop this activity forever, dismantle the disgraceful wall, free the thousands of prisoners, remove the checkpoints, lift the Gaza blockade and resume negotiations on the basis of United Nations resolutions 242 and 181.
The Arab League said last month it was following the progress of the US efforts to pressure Israel into stopping the colony building. Yesterday these efforts failed. So what are we doing about this?
The League must convene an emergency meeting and declare a stop to all talks, direct and indirect, with Israel unless the Benjamin Netanyahu government publicly declares its commitment to peace and its obligations.
The Arabs have chosen peace as ‘a strategic option'. Arab firefighters were battling forest fires raging in Israel, a goodwill gesture by Egypt, Jordan and Palestine, at the same time the US declared its failure to re-launch the peace talks. But Israel time and again has proven that gestures, peace initiatives and US ‘incentives' don't actually work. Today, the ball is squarely in our court.
