Mideast Peace, Step by Step
Anyone who seriously hopes for a quick return to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should take a deep breath and lie down until the feeling passes. What's needed at the moment is something completely different, a whole new kind of approach that puts the Oslo process in the past and focuses instead on cautious but credible unilateral steps.
To their credit, both Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas seemed to understand that at their recent meeting in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt. Their agenda reflected the triumph of the achievable over the desirable, of the probable over the possible. Their unspoken motto: Think small.
I worked on the Arab-Israeli peace process at the State Department for most of the last two decades, and I am gratified by the fact that Oslo's most important legacy -- the mutual recognition between political Zionism and Palestinian nationalism -- endures to this day. But that's just about all that remains.
The Oslo process was in many respects a religion for believers, blinding its adherents to its flaws. In retrospect it is clear that Oslo over-idealized and sentimentalized an excruciatingly difficult process and created an expectations gap that could not be closed by negotiations alone. The process elevated negotiation to an almost sacred level of importance. Then, when those negotiations failed between 1993 and 2000 to create a real partnership or a change in the situation on the ground, the parties -- under U.S. auspices -- rushed into last-minute talks for a final deal that they were neither willing nor able to consummate.
The process launched at Sharm el Sheik last week, on the other hand, was a business proposition for pragmatists. Driven by four years of bloody conflict and disappointment, it is nurtured by a deep but healthy skepticism about what is possible and what is not. Indeed, unlike Oslo, the expectations gap now separating Israelis and Palestinians about what each side can do is narrower than ever. Neither side is focused on the endgame; even more encouraging, Sharon and Abbas appear to appreciate each other's political constraints. This kind of partnership is of inestimable value; it may constrain each side from pushing too far too soon.
For Abbas, the focus is on prisoner releases and the Israeli commitment to stop killing leaders of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade; this is critical to building his legitimacy with Palestinians and to his efforts to co-opt the armed opposition.
