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Avoiding a September Israel/Palestine train wreck

Doom and gloom over at Woodrow Wilson this morning:  Shai Feldman and Aaron David Miller in particular foresee no prospect of agreement under current conditions.  Train wreck is more likely, Feldman believes:  what happens in New York will trigger youth demonstrations in Palestine.  This will threaten the Palestinian establishment (Fatah especially) and force it into a more radical posture.  Politics in both Palestine and Israel militate against a conflict-ending settlement.  In the absence of some unexpected event, or act of unusual statesmanship, prospects are not good.

Nevertheless, Hussein Ibish suggests that there is some possibility of incremental progress in the fall at the General Assembly.  Palestine will not become a member of the UN, because the U.S. will veto.  What is important, according to Ibish, is that Palestinian progress in state-building be preserved and sustained.  He believes there are real possibilities for avoiding a counter-productive clash at the UN. The Palestinians will not press a General Assembly resolution if negotiations are restarted, and they can accept something less than UN membership in order to back off.

Palestinian unity is not really on the horizon, Ibish suggests.  The Hamas/Palestine Liberation Organization agreement is nothing more than an agreement to agree, but in fact there is still no agreement on anything important.  They can’t even agree on who should be prime minister, much less on things more important than that, like how to deal with Israel.

Jackson Diehl suggests the U.S. has a good deal to lose from vetoing Palestinian membership in the UN.  The Saudis have already warned that they will react.  Aaron David Miller asks if there is a way to avoid Washington being put in this position?  Is this sufficient reason for Obama to launch a grand initiative to solve the Israel/Palestine conflict? Or, Shai Feldman asks, is there something more modest that could be done, like adopting the Obama parameters (from his speech in May) as the basis for future negotiations? Aaron David Miller suggests this is a real possibility, with the Obama speech (including 1967 borders) as a common frame of reference.

But how close are they to a deal, Diehl asks?  Shai Feldman thinks Netanyahu may be focused on demographic trends, which have been presented recently to the Israeli cabinet.  The issue for him is not Palestine, whose population he envisages in a separate state, but rather the Arab population of Israel.  This is the issue that may pull Netanyahu toward the center, as it has other Israeli leaders, and push him into serious negotiations.

Hussein Ibish thinks the sides are far apart on the issues.  There will be no quick breakthrough.  But once gaps start closing, they could close quickly.  Nothing will happen without restarting the negotiations, so that is the way out of the September train wreck, even if Aaron David Miller suggests though there is nothing worse than another failed negotiation effort.