The Israel-Palestinian conflict has been largely out of the news in the six weeks since President Barack Obama called for reinstating the 1967 borders—an idea Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed as "pointless." But with another flotilla sailing for Gaza this week, Palestinians pushing for statehood in September, and continued uprisings across the Arab world, this could be a pivotal summer in this conflict.
As an adviser on the Israel-Palestinian conflict for six secretaries of state, Aaron David Miller played a crucial role in structuring American involvement in peace talks in the region. His 2008 book, The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search For Arab-Israeli Peace, drew widespread praise as an even-handed, insightful mix of diplomatic history and personal memoir. Business Insider spoke to Miller to get a sense of where things are now, and where they might go from here:
1. Palestinians recently dropped their demand that Israel freeze all settlement construction before peace talks can start again. It seems that their confidence in the U.N. route is faltering as U.S. resistance becomes more apparent. Will these revised preconditions have any effect on the peace process? Does this seem to indicate the Palestinians are negotiating from a position of weakness heading into September?
I don't know that they actually dropped that demand. It's unclear what exactly their conditions would be until they are faced with an offer to talk. You can't treat these as formal conditions. It's virtually impossible to understand this on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. This is going to change all the way up to September or to the point where the United States makes a proposal.
I don't think the Palestinians have given up on going to the U.N. in September, at least not from a bargaining point of view. Now that some Europeans have backed away from supporting it, Abbas may be less enthusiastic. They cannot gain membership at the U.N. At most what they'll get is a General Assembly resolution with no legs. Or maybe they'll try to gain permanent observer status. None of this is going to translate into sovereignty.
Even if they succeed at the U.N., they'll face a major problem. All of this is going to leave the Palestinian public dissatisfied. It's a no-win situation for President Abbas: if they drop the initiative, Abbas will be accused of giving in to the Americans, as he did with the Goldstone Report. If they succeed, they will face what I’ve been calling "the day after problem." A resolution won’t produce statehood.
2. There were widespread fears a few months ago in Israel and among American Jews that regime change in Egypt would be bad news for Israel and bad news for the Jews. In hindsight, were these fears warranted? How do things stand now?
I wrote a piece in the Washington Post early in the Arab Spring—which I actually call the Arab Winter, I think it's more appropriate—arguing that we've come out somewhere between business as usual on the one hand and Armageddon on the other. You're not going to see the Egyptian peace treaty with Israel collapse, you're not going to see the Muslim Brotherhood come to power.
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