The Israeli-Palestinian peace talks effectively died this week. That’s what happens when you take your case to the press.
Though the hard left no doubt cheers a Palestinian effort to seek unilateral recognition from everyone from the UN Security Council to the Poughkeepsie Dog Catchers Society, it’s simply neither a serious nor well-considered effort.
The move is bad for everyone, including peace-seeking Palestinians. A UNSC resolution will be vetoed by the Americans and will split the Europeans; its failure will then cause regional Arab powers to blame everyone but themselves at a time when Arab engagement is crucial to success.
The PA went public with this ill-conceived demand as a response to Bibi Netanyahu’s impossible pre-condition offer of extending a moratorium on settlement construction only in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Doing so is a non-starter for the PA – it would essentially prevent ex-patriot Palestinian refugees from staking a claim to property and/or cash from the Israeli government.
Bibi’s demands were the beginning of the end, and should have spurred the Obama administration’s negotiators to keep the talks quiet at all cost. Of course, maybe they tried, and tried hard, but the two parties were never on the same page from the beginning.
A resolution to this conflict will only be achieved through painstaking negotiations behind closed doors. When the parties begin to litigate their case in the court of international public opinion, it is nothing more than a desperation Hail Mary on 4th-and-a-million with no time on the clock.
If talks aren’t dead, they’re in a coma and on life support. The White House needs to get both sides to shut up, and find a face-saving way for Bibi to extend the settlement moratorium that somehow addresses – or agrees to delay – the question of Israel’s Jewishness/Palestinian refugees.
Failing that, we’ll look to start these talks up again under the next Israeli government.
