A pledge to forge Mideast peace in one year

What happened

Launching an ambitious new round of Middle East peace talks, President Obama last week pledged to help negotiate a comprehensive agreement between Palestinians and Israelis within one year. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed unusual optimism as they met for the first time in nearly two years. “We seek a peace that will end the conflict between us once and for all,” Netanyahu said. “We seek a peace that will last for generations.” If successful, the talks would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank.

The new peace effort abandons the incremental approach that characterized previous talks, all of which eventually ended in failure. Instead, all the tough issues—the borders of a new Palestinian state, security for Israel, the status of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees—will be hammered out in a single package deal. To avoid pressure from domestic hard-liners, neither side will release details of individual compromises before the final pact is announced. Most important, the talks are at the highest level: Netanyahu and Abbas will meet personally every two weeks.

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What the editorials said

Great, Netanyahu and Abbas are talking. But for how long? asked Investor’s Business Daily. Netanyahu’s 10-month moratorium on building Jewish settlements in the West Bank ends this month, and Abbas has already threatened to walk out of the talks if building resumes. Even if he stays, Abbas doesn’t speak for most Palestinians; the “terrorist group” Hamas, which currently runs Gaza, does. The growing power of Hamas is the reason why these talks are so vital, said National Review Online. Hamas insists that Israel must be destroyed, and if it took over the West Bank, “a bloodbath would follow.” Fortunately, Abbas has been consolidating security and the rule of law in the West Bank. “The best outcome of these talks, whether they break down, founder, or continue,” is that they increase Abbas’ stature, so that he, and not Hamas, will determine the Palestinians’ fate.

Such pessimism may have been warranted in the past, said The Economist, but there’s something new this time around: Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister is “swinging around from spoiler to genuine, if hesitant, peacemaker.”

What the columnists said

This is Netanyahu’s “Nixon in China” moment, said Israeli journalist Aluf Benn in The Washington Post. Only the staunchly anti-communist Richard Nixon had the credibility to establish relations with Communist China. And in Israel, only a dedicated Zionist like Bibi has the clout to make territorial concessions. This longtime opponent of Palestinian statehood has been “reborn” as “a moderate, levelheaded leader.”

Not really, said Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times. Netanyahu is willing to deal with the Palestinians because he needs Obama’s help in preventing Iran from going nuclear. What Israel really wants “is the leeway to plan a military strike against Iran” without alienating the U.S. or cutting Arab ties. Engaging in talks with the Palestinians—especially with the participation of Egypt and Jordan—is a means to that end. I wish there were reason for more optimism, said Trudy Rubin in The Philadelphia Inquirer, but “these talks will fail.” It’s been 17 years since the Oslo accords, and most Israelis have given up on peace and moved rightward. Palestinians, walled off, are no less bitter. And the old sticking points are still with us—Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Palestinian “right of return.”

Resolving those issues will be the supreme test of Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic skills, said Mark Landler in The New York Times. It was the secretary of state, not the president, who got these talks going in the first place with “her relentless phone calls” to Arab leaders that “wore down the reluctance of the Palestinians.” Unlike Obama, who is seen as anti-Israel, Clinton is respected and trusted by both Israelis and Palestinians, and she has made this peace process her personal mission. The question ahead is whether she has “the negotiating grit to keep both men at the table.”