Israel-Palestine Peace Process Will Return From the Dead
The Mideast peace process may appear to be dead, but rest assured it will return, writes Aaron David Miller, former adviser to Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State on Arab-Israeli negotiations. When it does, it will bring back most of the illusions that have helped to prevent a deal.
A wise Israeli once observed that in Israeli politics, you could be just dead or more permanently dead, and buried. It’s a useful distinction which also has relevance for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process these days.
The negotiations are clearly lifeless; but by no means out of life. Rest assured they’ll be back. And when they do return, they’ll appear with most of the same illusions that have long persisted and helped to prevent a deal. While we await the return of the peace process, it might be useful to review several of them.
Everybody Knows the Outcome
This canard emerged in the wake of the July 2000 Camp David summit with its companion, “ we were this close to an agreement” canard. Neither of these assumptions are correct. We do know that the least bad solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is two states and we do know that there’s been a great deal of work done on the core issues these many years. But the notion that Israelis and Palestinians have narrowed the gaps on all the issues and can close them is just flat out wrong.
