Matthew Duss is right. The Paris Peace Conference is different, and the fact
that the United States’ stronghold of supposedly trying to resolve conflicts
in the Middle East is being challenged, is a point worth noting. Yet, this is
hardly important. “The multilateral nature of the conference is a Palestinian
strategic victory, marking another step toward the internationalization of the
peace process,” Duss wrote in Tablet magazine.
Some 20 years ago, the Palestinian leadership allocated the responsibility
of obtaining justice and human rights for its people to the international community.
That was clearly a blunder, one which has been reenacted from the United Nations
to the US.
Since then, the American political establishment has moved from being unconditionally
pro-Israel, to adopting Israeli political priorities as US national security
imperatives. That shift was certainly more exaggerated during the George W.
Bush administration than under that of US President Barack Obama. But despite
Obama’s perceptibly sour relations with Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, a clearly defined and different US foreign policy is yet
to be articulated. If anything, the Obama administration is offering Israel
yet more money, and has done everything in its power to thwart Palestinian efforts
at achieving any of its political goals, whether at the United Nations or at
other international institutions.
But the advent of the French “peacemaking” initiative between Israel and Palestine
is unlikely to alter this already skewed picture.
Those who are expecting France to bring about a paradigm shift are likely to
be disappointed. The French, just like the Americans, are also governed by domestic
concerns and by regional and international ambitions. Passing the baton from
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, to French Foreign Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault,
will not change much. It is merely a further indication of American sidestepping,
if not decline in terms of its Middle East leadership. The fact is the French
peace initiative-turned-conference in Paris on June 3 is likely to fizzle into
the vacuum of a dead “peace process”. So, why the colossal waste of time?
If you have been following the Middle East “peace process” issue in the last
quarter of a century, you are certainly aware that the “negotiations table”
is nothing but a metaphor for buying time and obtaining political capital. The
Israelis require time to finalize their colonial projects in the form of escalating
illegal colonies on occupied Palestinian land; and the Palestinian leadership
uses the “talks” to acquire political validations from a so-called “peace-broker”,
namely the US.
The US, in turn, has used the futile “negotiations” to further assert itself
as the “caretaker” of the Middle…