.jpg "Washington")
The unity pact between Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and the militant group Hamas dealt a sharp punch to US-driven peace negotiations with Israel, but the Americans insisted it was not a fatal blow to the struggling talks.
Washington was stunned by the deal announced on Wednesday between Fatah, the faction that leads the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and is viewed as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately suspended participation in the peace process brokered by US secretary of state John Kerry.
But US negotiators are not expected to give up on the process, in which Kerry has invested thousands of hours and a great deal of political capital. There is also little for Washington to lose by monitoring developments, while pushing the two sides toward reconciliation.
"This will probably slow things down, but it will resume at some point," said Aaron David Miller, a former US State Department peace negotiator now at the Wilson Center in Washington.
"There is no need for the United States to walk away from this, and it would be stupid, frankly," he said.
Washington is Israel's closest ally, and president Barack Obama has already faced strong criticism at home and abroad over his handling of foreign policy. Obama has been accused of neglect for Asia -- where he has traveled this week -- and weakness in Europe, where Russia has annexed the Crimean Peninsula and is threatening eastern Ukraine.
Months of meetings since last summer have produced no sign of progress in the talks, aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state on land captured by Israel in a 1967 war. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be capital of the state they seek in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and want Israeli soldiers and more than half a million settlers gone.
Israeli settlement construction has been a major obstacle in the negotiations. Citing security concerns and historic and Biblical links to the territory, Israel says it intends to keep large settlement blocs in any future peace deal.
Netanyahu has made recognition of his country as a Jewish state a requirement for peace. The issue has lately overshadowed other stumbling blocks over borders, refugees and the status of Jerusalem. Palestinians fear the label would lead to discrimination against Israel's sizeable Arab minority, while Israelis say it recognizes Jewish history and rights on the land.
For the United States, giving up on achieving a peace deal would be an unnecessary admission of foreign policy defeat, especially in the Middle East, amid the Syrian civil war, upheaval in Egypt and delicate nuclear talks with Iran.
"So far, no one has been eager to declare the patient dead," said Ghaith Al-Omari, executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine. "So far, everyone is talking about 'suspension,' but no one is talking about 'collapse,' simply because no one wants to be blamed for a collapse," he said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment