Convincing Kerry
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is overflowing with good will. He arrived in Jerusalem on Thursday to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but anyone watching knows that not a soul is interested. The Middle East is boiling over in Syria and Lebanon, hysteria has settled over Jordan, and Israel is leery of the Syrian threat. Really, who's going to invest the time to negotiate with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas? The Middle East is having a heart attack, and Kerry has come to treat a bruised shoulder.
Up until the latest round of violence, the widely accepted mantra stated that the non-existent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the main cause of the region's problems. Given the current circumstances, though, no one would rush to back that claim.
Still, Israel can't appear to rejoice over the stalemate. If it is serious about negotiations then there is no choice but to take them seriously, either at face value or at least as a political alibi on the international stage. On the one hand, there's no choice but to administer first aid to the negotiations, while ensuring that the Americans and Europeans conduct it in a fair and balanced way. On the other hand, it would be appropriate to accept the demand that the world treat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it did former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Until 2009, the international community did not demand that Olmert stop construction in settlements.
Even when he made a far-reaching offer Palestinians rejected it, so there's no reason to change anything. Perhaps we should expect Kerry to be disappointed to discover that Finance Minister Yair Lapid shares the Likud's perspective on the issue, that discussing a political settlement is not predicated on stopping settlement construction.
No matter, the Syrian civil war will be over one day, Hezbollah will shrink down to its proper size and the fate of Iran's nuclear issue weapons will not be decided between Ramallah, Hebron and the Jordan River. For this reason, Israel can afford to contribute to the advancement of dialogue. Transfer of funds and releasing a limited number of security prisoners could help renew talks, and the minister in charge of negotiations, Tzipi Livni, has already declared that recognition of the Jewish state is not a precondition for talks but an end goal.
Activists on the Israeli Left are concerned that the issue is not the wording, but that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not really mean it when he says "two states for two peoples." Still, some ministers within Likud-Beytenu are convinced that the prime minister has honestly adopted the two-states-for-two-peoples principle, and has said so on multiple occasions. Either way, Netanyahu needs to invest the time and effort so that when Kerry leaves Jerusalem, he is convinced that Israel is not the obstacle to peace.
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