Netanyahu's new-old methods of stalling peace talks

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Last update - 05:36 21/04/2009

Netanyahu's new-old methods of stalling peace talks

By Akiva Eldar

When Jordan's King Abdullah sits down today with a president whose middle name is the same as that of his father, he probably won't miss the opportunity to warn Barack Obama about one of the biggest dangers to his Mideast peace plan. During his last meeting with then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni, the monarch said he was tired of hearing about "the peace process" - a phrase that has become synonymous with a perpetuation of the conflict. One can discern a hint of this impatience in the statement the palace released last week, after the king's coordinating meeting with a group of Arab foreign ministers, ahead of his visit to Washington. It stated that, "The time frame is critical for achieving serious negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution for two peoples."

In the prime minister's bureau, too, time is of the essence. His predecessors at the helm of Likud, Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, taught Benjamin Netanyahu how to buy time from the Americans - months, and even years - at a bargain price. First, the settlement enterprise must be covered with the tried and true fig leaf known as the Labor Party. Give its leader the defense portfolio and he will impose order on the Palestinian side and ensure the guys on the outposts lack for nothing. Then you say that a new government needs a few weeks, perhaps months, to study the situation and to formulate its own peace policy. After all, the conflict with the Arabs is something completely new. And in between all this, they will start bringing in the proverbial goats, and then remove them again. Just like the man who complained to his rabbi that he could not live with his 10 children and wife in one room anymore. The rabbi told him to take his goat in as well. When the man returned the following day, complaining that the situation had become even worse and more cramped, the rabbi told him to take the goat out again. The improvement was imminent.

First they say there is no Palestinian partner. After the first meeting with U.S. envoy George Mitchell, they announce that the prime minister called Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. That is the first "concession" - a "(goodwill) gesture to Obama." As the second meeting with the envoy approaches, the media are permitted to start fattening the goat of determined opposition to a two-states-for-two-peoples solution. At the end of that meeting, they announce that Netanyahu is already talking about the condition for talks on establishing a Palestinian state - recognizing Israel as the state of the Jewish people. Here we have yet another gesture, and all of this before the Palestinians have even made the slightest concession. (The Palestine Liberation Organization recognized the partition decision that recognizes Israel as the state of the Jewish people more than 20 years ago.) The following day, once the Americans announce that they refuse to hear about preconditions, Jerusalem lets it be known that it will forego the Palestinian certificate of kashrut as well.

Netanyahu will take the fattest goat with him to the White House. This particular animal will be extremely difficult to remove. After shaking Obama's hand - as a sign of agreement to the immediate renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians - the prime minister will pull out the Clinton-Barak and the Bush-Olmert understandings, according to which "nothing is agreed upon until everything is agreed upon." Netanyahu will claim that since his predecessors' contacts failed to bring about an agreement, he is entitled to start from scratch. He will demand that the map of Palestine covering more than 90 percent of the West Bank's area - the map Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert presented to both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas - be removed from the negotiating table. It will be interesting to see Abbas' expression when Netanyahu presents him with his very own map of Palestine, covering some 40 percent of the West Bank. No less.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079901.html