That's sort of a rhetorical question: They're not!
George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, is back in the region meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials. The proximity talks were supposed to start today, but they've been postponed until after a PLO executive committee meeting on Saturday.
The Obama administration is counting on a carefully-timed sequence of events to jump-start "proximity talks" between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will present a formal proposal for indirect talks when the Arab League's peace process committee meets on May 1. The Arab League already endorsed the talks early last month, but withdrew its support just over a week later after Israel approved new construction in Ramot Shlomo.
Depending on which account you read, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu either secretly agreed to freeze new construction in East Jerusalem, refused to freeze new construction, or has yet to stake out a position one way or the other.
The U.S.-Israel spat is winding down. The White House insists there's no crisis in bilateral relations; George Mitchell is scheduled to arrive in Israel tomorrow; congressional leaders (with a few exceptions) say the public fighting should end. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will deliver a speech at the AIPAC conference on Monday morning, and her remarks will almost certainly mark the end of the Ramot Shlomo kerfuffle.
Who came out ahead? Ethan Bronner tries to answer that question in the New York Times, and points out that both sides are declaring victory -- Obama, because he received a few guarantees from Israel; Netanyahu, because he didn't have to compromise on Jerusalem.
U.S. vice president Joe Biden arrived in Israel on Monday ahead of a week-long trip to the Middle East. The Obama administration is billing this as a hugely important trip -- a chance to lay the groundwork for "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and also a chance to speak directly to the Israeli people. And indeed, the White House announced on Monday that both sides had agreed to the talks.
President Obama's special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, arrived in Ramallah last night to begin "pre-talks" to the "proximity talks" the United States hopes will occur between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the National reports. You'll be hard pressed to find anyone who has much faith in their ultimate success.
The Arab League -- meeting today in Cairo -- voted to endorse "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. American mediators, presumably led by George Mitchell, will shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah.
The Palestinian Authority either accepted George Mitchell's proposal for "proximity talks," or is close to accepting, according to Israeli and Arab news outlets.
Ha'aretz reports today that Mahmoud Abbas "agreed in principle" to the talks, according to unnamed Palestinian sources. The talks will reportedly resume later this month, with Mitchell ferrying messages between negotiating teams in separate rooms.
Foreign Policy is holding a foreign affairs Oscar contest, and the editors are looking for ideas, so here's my nomination: The minds behind the Middle East peace process clearly deserve the award for best original screenplay.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is considering George Mitchell's offer for "proximity talks" with Israel, and plans to issue a final response on Thursday, according to an interview with The Guardian.
President Obama plans to appoint Robert Stephen Ford as the U.S. ambassador to Syria, according to a report (عربي) in An-Nahar.
George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, reportedly told Syrian president Bashar al-Assad about the appointment during his visit to the region earlier this month. No word on how Assad reacted to the news.
We mentioned this in our weekly newsletter -- are you subscribed? -- but Stephen Walt posted an impassioned call for George Mitchell's resignation on his Foreign Policy blog. Walt argues that Mitchell was conned into accepting the Middle East envoy job by an Obama administration that claimed to be committed to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
... he is wasting his time. The administration's early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. "mediators" who ended up complicit in Israel's self-destructive land grab on the West Bank.
We've needled Mitchell for months -- we made our own frequent-flyer crack back in November -- but the truth is that, as Walt writes, Mitchell is only as good as the administration he represents. If Obama isn't willing to take serious (and politically difficult) steps towards brokering a peace deal, Mitchell is doomed to failure.
President Obama's Middle East envoy hasn't even left the region yet, and Israeli and Arab news sources have already declared his visit a failure.
Mitchell met for nearly three hours today with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. But Abbas refused to resume peace talks without a complete settlement freeze -- including East Jerusalem -- which Israel is unwilling to offer. Mitchell met yesterday with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak.
Yesterday was President Obama's one-year anniversary in office, and so predictably we saw a rash of anniversary pieces (we thought about writing our own but decided to spare you).
Joe Klein's Time Magazine anniversary piece is based on a Jan. 15 interview with Obama. Most of it is focused on domestic politics -- but towards the end, they discuss the Middle East peace process, and Obama really tries to dial back expectations for progress in 2010. Excerpt after the jump (emphasis mine).
If Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas get their way, the borders of a new Palestinian state will be drawn without direct Palestinian involvement, and Israel will retain a military presence inside those borders.
No, seriously.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas asked Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu for an undeclared three-to-six-month settlement freeze in East Jerusalem, in exchange for a resumption of peace talks, according to Israeli and Palestinian media reports (عربي).
One of the worst things a journalist can hear from an editor is "find a local angle." Aluf Benn apparently got that order from his boss at Ha'aretz last night, because he went out to write about the Massachusetts Senate election (won by the Republican candidate, Scott Brown) and came back with this thesis:
Over the past nine months, Netanyahu has managed to curb pressure from Obama, who enjoys a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress. Now, however, Obama will be more dependent on the support of his Republican rivals, the supporters and friends of Netanyahu.
I guess I missed the year in which the Democratic Congress -- which is still Democratic, by the way, despite Brown's win -- exerted any kind of real pressure on the Netanyahu government. Let's take a look at AIPAC's 2009 legislative report, shall we?
Ha'aretz ran an almost Onionesque headline yesterday: Mitchell to arrive in Mideast this week with no plan, no agenda.
That's not really an exaggeration, nor an attempt at humor. President Obama's Middle East envoy is headed back to the region for meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials. He does so without any guarantees: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas asked Mitchell to promise that Israel would totally freeze settlement-building, and Mitchell refused, because Israel hasn't approved anything of the sort.
If you just woke up from a year-long sleep and wanted to know the current state of the Arab-Israeli "peace process," these three quotes -- from three Israeli ministers -- pretty much sum up the situation.
Israel's foreign minister, Yuval Steinitz, said today that Israel doesn't need loan guarantees from the United States -- the same loan guarantees at the heart of George Mitchell's purported (and now, denied) threat to cut off foreign aid to Israel if the peace process remains stalled.
A senior Obama administration official has now denied to Yedioth Ahronoth that Middle East envoy George Mitchell threatened to cut off aid to Israel (a claim that was never terribly believable to begin with).
"It was not a threat and not an implied threat," the senior official told Ynet.
Other U.S. officials are also pushing back against Mitchell's remarks: Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut -- traveling in Jerusalem -- said today that Congress would never approve a reduction of aid to Israel.
