When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Southern Lebanon to great fanfare last month, he did more than irk Israelis and the West who seek to diminish Iranian influence in the Levant. The visit served to underscore the increasing polarization in the broader region, placing the divergent views of Iran and the Arab states in stark contrast, with Syria in the middle. As a result, Syria is under newfound pressure.
Israel's public image today is dismal. As Elie Wiesel once joked, "Jews excel in just about every profession except public relations, but this should not surprise us: when God wanted to free the Jews from Egypt he sent Moses, who stuttered." However, today Israel's problem is not that its leaders are stuttering, rather that they are stalling to show leadership toward ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. In doing so, they are sending a message to the international community that Israel does not care what the world thinks, and that it does not want peace after all.
It is time for the White House to bring on a new Mideast peace team. At various points in the past several months Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell has responded to reporters' questions about the stalled peace process by recalling his experience mediating the conflict in Northern Ireland, stating that he had "700 days of failure and only one day of success." Unfortunately, this analogy was never an apt one. In the Middle East, 700 days of failure serves to undermine credibility and trust-and that is exactly what has happened to Mitchell and his team.
With the peace process at a standstill, President Obama must shake up the current efforts, and his Mideast peace team, in order to get the Israelis and Palestinians back on track toward a peaceful resolution of their conflict. The Obama White House has invested an enormous amount of political capital to advance Middle East peace since taking office, yet has little to show for it. Even so, the United States cannot abandon its efforts and leave Israel and the Palestinians to their own devices. It is therefore time to recognize that the current U.S. strategy is not working-significant changes are needed if there is to maintain any hope for reaching a breakthrough in the coming year.
Despite efforts to internationally isolate Syria, especially during the Bush era, Syria has reasserted itself as a central player in the Middle East. Following the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, the United States withdrew its ambassador to Beirut, intensified sanctions against Damascus and sought to deepen Syria's isolation from the international community. The recent array of high-level visitors to Damascus-including United States officials-demonstrates that President Bashar al-Assad has weathered the storm of isolation and has emerged as an essential actor in resolving regional disputes, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel should now respond favorably to Damascus' call for renewed peace talks, and in so doing utilize Syria's influence to advance peace, rather than thwart it.
The Arab League's decision to give more time for efforts to resume the stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations provides more than just political cover for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas-it also signals a more prominent role for the Arab states in determining the fate of the peace process. The Obama Administration must further encourage this apparent shift by the Arab states to expand the scope and change the direction of the negotiations to provide the peace process with the comprehensiveness that has been sorely lacking.
The military and economic prowess currently enjoyed by Israel has led to a false sense of invincibility and a belief that the status quo between Israelis and Palestinians is sustainable-yet it is not. While Israel's economy is robust and public confidence in its military remains high, Israel's national aspiration for a safe, secure and prosperous homeland for the Jews has yet to be achieved. Obtaining this goal is inextricably linked to the establishment of a lasting two-state solution; relinquishing occupied Arab land while abandoning the perilous notion held by many Israelis that their country can maintain this false sense of invincibility. Perhaps this attitude explains the Netanyahu government's unwillingness to extend the settlement freeze for a mere two more months, because the Israeli public has become complacent and does not care if the negotiations break down completely.
The religious, demographic, physical, psychological and political realities facing the Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem today require that it be an undivided-yet shared-city serving as a microcosm exemplifying Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. Jerusalem not only represents the largest urban concentration of Israelis and Palestinians coexisting alongside one another, but also the epicenter of the conflict that divides them. The leaders on both sides must counter the rejectionists at every level to create a solid foundation in Jerusalem for a lasting two-state solution.
The two interdependent issues which hover over every aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are satisfying Israel's national security requirements while meeting the Palestinian demand to end the Israeli occupation. Whereas the Palestinians must understand that unless Israel feels secure, there will be no independent Palestinian state, similarly, Israel must recognize that a two-state solution must mean an end to Israeli occupation in any form. To achieve these two objectives, both sides must carefully consider not only each other's requirements, but also demonstrate sensitivity to each other's mindset, which has been ingrained for decades and continues to fuel their conflicting positions.