Middle East factions await new president's first move

Sunday, 16 November, 2008 | Lisa Van Dusen

Not long after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month, former Finnish president and international peace negotiator Martti Ahtisaari, whose job demands that he choose his words carefully, described the failure of the international community to resolve the Middle East conflict as a "disgrace."

More optimistically, he added that "if the political will is there, we can solve anything," and that he hoped the new president-elect of the United States would use his first year in office to reach a permanent solution to the Israeli- Palestinian problem.

Having negotiated peace agreements in Northern Ireland (as a member of the troika that included former U.S. Senate majority leader George Mitchell and Canadian General John de Chastelain), Kosovo, Indonesia and Namibia, among others, Ahtisaari, who got a bite of the Middle East on a UN fact-finding mission into a controversial siege of the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, knows something about what's missing from a room when nothing works.

Former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has spent the past 18 months as envoy for the Quartet on the Middle East (the group of four powers -- the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations -- that oversees peace efforts) also said last week it was important that the Barack Obama administration "grips this issue from day one" and makes the Middle East an urgent priority.

That Day 1 exhortation holds a caution not to repeat the mistake of the past administration's hands-off approach.

There are three weeks between the inauguration on Jan. 20 and election day in Israel on Feb. 10. Elections on either side are always about the peace process, whether it's moribund, alive and well or on life support.

While Obama will be warned not to touch the tinderbox until after the vote or risk being accused of interference, players on both sides will be watching for a sign as to whether he'll be more like George W. Bush, Bill Clinton or something in between.

Polls show Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who took over the Kadima party when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigned amid corruption allegations, in a dead heat with former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the right-wing Likud party, who has made a career of selling security over peace.

Both leaders have nuanced their positions in the past week, with Livni, who as chief Israeli negotiator supports the Annapolis process begun last year, hardening her line by warning Thursday that Israel doesn't need any "dramatic" interventions in the peace process from Obama when he takes office in January.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, has softened his position that the Annapolis process should be shelved in favour of rebuilding the Palestinian economy, saying after meeting with Blair last week that he would continue peace talks with the Palestinians as well.

That was one day after Netanyahu's spokesperson said following a meeting of Israeli, Palestinian and international negotiators at Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt that there would be "no point" in continuing with Annapolis.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, are still on board. At least Fatah, which controls the West Bank, is. Palestinian President and Fatah Leader Mahmoud Abbas said at Yasser Arafat's memorial service last week that he won't agree to a peace deal without a massive release of Palestinian prisoners even as Hamas was accusing Abbas of rounding up their own usual suspects in the West Bank to force them back to bilateral Palestinian talks in Cairo.

With everything else a president-elect has on his plate, it's easy to see how the Israel-Palestinian file can be a slippery slope to that sad pantheon of former presidents, prime ministers, envoys, negotiators and chairpersons who've come and gone while the same issues sit unresolved on the table.

What Obama brings to that table, aside from enormous leverage and possibly that political will Ahtisaari called for, is a mandate for change, a fresh pair of eyes and the common sense to see the craziness.

There's also a line from his campaign speech that works well for this puzzle: "The real gamble is having the same old folks doing the same old things again and expecting a different result."