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Source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22731
Obama and the Middle East
[New York Review of Books] Hussein Agha and Robert Malley - If the President's objective is to achieve a comprehensive, two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it will be pursued under unusually inauspicious circumstances. On the Palestinian side, intense Egyptian-mediated reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah have so far failed to stitch the national movement together. Hamas possesses the power to spoil any progress and will use it. It can act as an implacable opponent against any potential Palestinian compromise. Bilateral negotiations that failed when Olmert was prime minister and Hamas was a mere Palestinian faction are unlikely to succeed with Netanyahu at the helm and Hamas having grown into a regional reality. The other question is what, in short, would a two-state solution actually solve? Peace may be possible without such an agreement just as such an agreement need not necessarily lead to peace. Unlike Zionism, for whom statehood was the central objective, the Palestinian fight was primarily about other matters. The absence of a state was not the cause of all their misfortune. Its creation would not be the full solution either. Today, the idea of Palestinian statehood is alive, but mainly outside of Palestine. Establishing a state has become a matter of utmost priority for Europeans, for Americans, and even for a large number of Israelis. But universal endorsement has its downside. The more the two-state solution looks like an American or Western, not to mention Israeli, interest, the less it appeals to Palestinians. There may be another way. Its starting point would be less of an immediate effort to achieve a two-state agreement or propose U.S. ideas to that effect. Rather, it would be an attempt to transform the political atmosphere and reformulate the diplomatic process. Hussein Agha is Senior Associate Member of St. Antony's College, Oxford. Robert Malley, formerly Special Assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs, is currently Middle East and North Africa Program Director at the International Crisis Group.