Peace remains a political captive

Jan.15, 2008


Peace remains a political captive

IT is not diffcult to figure out why Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated on Monday that Israel may not reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians, but will continue negotiations because maintaining the status quo is dangerous.
The danger is multi-fold. Palestinian hopes have been raised with the Annapolis conference and the recent visit by US President George W Bush that a peace agreement could be worked out sooner than later. Any setback to those hopes would result in militancy fuelled by frustration leading to undermining diplomacy, making it all the more difficult for any effort to work out a peace agreement.
The medium-term danger is demographic and would see Jews outnumbered by Arabs under Israel's control and thus undermine its claim to be "the Jewish state." That is essentially an Israeli problem, but with all that it entails in terms of Palestinian aspirations for independent statehood.
The situation highlighgts the uncertainty of the whole process launched under US auspices in Annapolis in November and brings into question Bush's confident promise that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement would be signed before he leaves office in January 2009.
Olmert, who is facing dire political straits, is trying to do several things at the same time. Facing pressure from his coalition partners against discussing core issues with the Palestinians, he wants to dilute Palestinian demands by suggesting that his coalition government could collapse if he were to grant "too many concessions" in the peace talks.
Olmert is also sending a message of assurance to hawkish coalition partners such as Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, who has threatened to pull out of the coalition if the government begins discussing the questions at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Even if Lieberman — who controls 11 seats in the 120-member Israeli parliament — makes good this threat, Olmert's government would still command 67 seats. But then, Olmert faces a similar threat from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which has seats. Shas says it would quit the coalition if Jerusalem comes up for discussion, and this would mean Olmert without a parliamentary majority and raises the prospect of snap parliamentary elections. Olmert's Kadima party is expected to do badly if elections were to be held today. The hard-line Likud bloc led by Benjamin Netanyahu is most likely to emerge as the leading vote-winner and could form the next coalition government, and there disappears the chance of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
On the other side, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has his own troubles. All he could count on at this point is Bush's assurance that the US would remain engaged in the peace negotiations and the international community's pledge of several billion dollars that, if properly utilised, should indeed make a positive difference to the daily life of the Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Abbas faces the task of of not only somehow regaining control of the Gaza Strip but also of keeping militancy in check, a tough task, given the Israeli refusal to entertain Palestinian demands that are key to any peace agreement.
Any Israeli-Palestinian peace process has always remained captive to internal Israeli politics as to internal Palestinian politics. It is now Olmert's turn to grapple with the issues at hand and the fate of the Annapolis process depends on his success or defeat to handle the political forces that are determined to maintain the status quo.