Mideast talks teeter

One month after President Obama jump-started direct peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis, the process was on the verge of breaking down this week after Israel resumed building settlements in the West Bank. Israel had imposed a moratorium on settlements in November, but the moratorium expired this week despite U.S. pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to extend it. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would take a week to consult with Arab leaders before deciding whether to continue the direct, biweekly negotiations with Netanyahu. “We are waiting for Netanyahu,” said Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath. “If he freezes settlements, this will bring us back to the negotiations.”

This impasse is Obama’s fault, said Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. Not all settlements are created equal. Camps deep within the West Bank are needlessly provocative, but others are not, and for many Israelis, “settlements have enormous religious and ideological importance.” For Obama to have insisted last year on a total settlement freeze as the prerequisite for talks was “bad diplomacy.” Netanyahu reluctantly complied then, but if he extends the freeze now, his coalition government will collapse.

So what? said Peter Beinart in TheDailyBeast.com. Extending the freeze might make the right-wingers bolt the government, but Netanyahu could then bring in the moderate Kadima party, “thus creating a government composed of people who actually support a Palestinian state.” Netanyahu chooses to govern in coalition with “racist, pro-settler” parties because they give him the “political cover to do what he has wanted to do all along: Make a viable Palestinian state impossible.”

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Don’t count Netanyahu out, said The Economist in an editorial. This time he actually “seems sincere” in his embrace of Palestinian statehood. And there may be a way out of the impasse yet. Israelis and Palestinians could swap land, so that a new Israeli border would include the biggest Jewish settlements. Netanyahu could lift the settlement freeze in those areas but maintain it elsewhere. Both sides would save face. Meantime, the fact that the moratorium’s end hasn’t killed the talks is a hopeful sign that they’ll continue to “splutter along.”