Daniel Levy on Rice’s visit: An “A” for Effort is just not good enough
Daniel Levy wrote this commentary on Rice’s just concluded visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah, in a piece published in the Comment is Free area of The Guardian, and also on his own (apparently-US-based) website:
“In relaunching the peace process last November, the US sought to address three issues. First, get a deal on the parameters of a permanent status peace. Second, significantly upgrade the situation on the ground – enhance security, ease closures and stop settlements. And third, improve the regional climate for peacemaking. In pursuing all three in parallel, they got the ‘what’ right. It is the ‘how’ that went horribly wrong. Next month will mark 15 years of the peace process. At this stage we need more peace and less process. Clearly, defining the endgame parameters, achieving closure, is a necessity. Getting Israelis and Palestinians negotiating again is certainly an achievement. The problem is that after nine months, the negotiations today are barely back to where they left off in January 2001 … In emphasizing the open-ended negotiations, the Annapolis process relegated developments on the ground to being an issue of secondary political magnitude. While the US did enhance its efforts and monitoring on the day-to-day issues, it did so without either a willingness to expend political capital to push for compliance or a readiness to recognise and adapt to certain new realities (in particular Hamas’s election victory and subsequent political pre-eminence on the Palestinian side). Unsurprisingly, the result was too much of the same ongoing deterioration. Settlements continue to expand (see the latest Peace Now report showing that settlement expansion almost doubled this year), obstacles to Palestinian movement have increased not decreased and any gains registered on the security front are at best marginal.
…
“At the end of her seventh visit, Rice gets an ‘A’ for effort, but the results seem less generous in every other category. Rice could still produce a handover to the next administration, which could be, with some justification, portrayed as a significant improvement on the hand received in January 2001. She may even suggest American guidelines for a peace deal based on her own conclusions from the current talks. But to be useful, such a plan would have to get the content right (and previous Bush announcements are a cause of concern), be adopted by the new president-elect and be introduced at an appropriate moment in the Israeli and Palestinian political cycles (which may not exist between now and January). More likely, Rice will need to hand over a work that is not only in progress but also in need of major repair. A new administration of either political stripe will likely express commitment to continuing negotiations and pursuing peace, but they should be warned that if achieving a two-state solution is still the goal, then an ‘A’ for effort will not be enough this time. It is not an alarmist or exaggerated claim to suggest that on the watch of the next US president the two-state solution will either finally be realised or have definitively passed its sell-by date”.
This comment on Rice’s visit and the Bush Administration’s Annapolic-Conference-lead event can be read
here .
