U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry boards his plane on departure from Ben Gurion International Airport on Jan. 6, 2014.
Photo credit: Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy of Tel Aviv/Flash 90
The current U.S. effort to broker an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is stumbling toward collapse. Launched by Secretary of State John Kerry last summer, the latest round of negotiations was supposed to achieve a final status agreement by April 29 of this year. It quickly became clear that this ambitious deadline would not be met. Instead, Kerry reverted to merely keeping talks going beyond the deadline through a “framework agreement” — essentially, a set of principles for further talks. Even that has proved excruciatingly difficult. I won’t go into the blow-by-blow of the talks’ collapse, which was precipitated when Israel balked at a prisoner exchange without a Palestinian commitment to continue talks beyond April 29, and Palestinians responded by renewing their application to membership in UN bodies. As the negotiations faltered late last month, the Obama administration even threw the possibility of releasing convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard into the mix. Whatever the merits of releasing Pollard as a gesture toward Israel — he has been in jail 28 years and might be paroled as early as next year — his introduction into negotiations suggested just how desperate the administration had become in its effort to push talks past the April 29 deadline.
From the beginning, many foreign policy observers wondered why this particular round of talks would succeed when others had so signally failed. I, for one, was surprised that the Obama administration even made the peace process a priority, given the abysmal track record of past efforts. After all, the circumstances hardly seemed propitious: the Palestinians remained hopelessly divided both between Hamas in Gaza and the PLO in the West Bank and within the PLO itself. Over the years, the relentless growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank had raised the domestic stakes for any Israeli government contemplating a deal. And, of course, Kerry would not be dealing with any Israeli government but a fractious coalition led by a prime minister whose commitment to a two-state solution is, to put it charitably, less than passionate.
Still, I thought negotiations were, on balance, worth a try. Perhaps Kerry could, unlike his predecessors, pull the diplomatic rabbit out of the hat. He certainly seemed determined to take on a challenge that had bedeviled U.S. secretaries of state for 20 years. And, God knows, Kerry put in the hours: he always seemed to have time for another grueling trip to the Middle East and another round of endless talks. But, by late last year, it was clear that the talks had run aground on the usual shoals of deep mistrust and profound differences about the form of a future Palestinian state. And Secretary Kerry, quite understandably, changed his focus from steering negotiations to merely bailing out what was by now a very leaky vessel.
Perhaps the talks will limp past the April 29 deadline. After all, there are real incentives for the various parties to continue negotiating: Israel avoids too public a break with the United States; Palestinians keep the international aid flowing; the United States can appear to be exercising “leadership,” that catchall for “let’s do something” foreign policy.
Kerry has declared it time for a “reality check” about the U.S. role in negotiations. But we don’t need a “reality check.” We need a thorough rethink. Should we distance ourselves from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, hoping for the best but bracing for the worst? Or should we take the bull by the horns by presenting our own plan and using everything in our power — including direct presidential involvement — to get agreement to it? Both approaches bear risks. Neither appears likely. The huge inertia of American foreign policy mitigates against both; so does the salience of the issue in our domestic politics. Like the Palestinians and Israelis, we too are captives of our history, in this case a vast investment in two decades of failure in our search for peace.
Joe Barnes is the Baker Institute’s Bonner Means Baker Fellow. From 1979 to 1993, he was a career diplomat with the U.S. Department of State, serving in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.