The prospects for Mideast peace

So far, there's not a lot of joy to be found in what Israeli and Palestinian leaders are saying. Maybe it's time to start looking at what they're not saying.

Last week Palestinian and Israeli leaders met in Washington for the first direct peace talks between the two sides in 20 months. When they left the meetings, they promised to meet again next week, and in the interim the world’s pundits are weighing the prospects of peace.

Those prospects are, shall we say, a little dim, according to a Globe and Mail editorial. Expectations “may be lower than for any other leader-to-leader peace talks in decades.” Since the last talks (which achieved nothing), the “violent Hamas faction has tightened its hold over the Gaza Strip, and a less conciliatory Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has taken power.” Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the possibility that Israel might perform a pre-emptive strike against Iran, only threaten to further destabilize the Mideast. But Netanyahu’s refusal to halt indefinitely the construction of new Israeli settlements on disputed land is the “main immediate obstacle” to peace.

The idea that settlements are the main issue is positively unpalatable for the National Post’s George Jonas, who writes “Hello! If the Middle East conflict were about Jewish buildings in East Jerusalem, it would be tractable. It’s intractable because it’s about Jewish buildings in” the rest of the country. Due to media bias, “a Martian visitor might conclude that the obstacle to peace is Zionist resistance to a Palestinian State. For the enlightenment of Martians, it isn’t. It’s Arab/Muslim resistance to a Jewish State.” An apt metaphor, as by the time Martians do land on Earth we may still be having this conversation.

If most agree that there’s little hope in what leaders have said, Gil Yaron in the Toronto Star is optimistic about what they haven’t said. For over a year Netanyahu, previously regarded as hawkish, has not made any promises to Israeli hardliners that Jerusalem won’t eventually be divided to form the Palestinian capital, nor that some settlements won’t be uprooted. This could be evidence “that Netanyahu has begun to test the waters ahead of ‘painful concessions’ he himself has mentioned.”