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Mistakes the U.S. Must Not Make in Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks

(Washington Post) Elliott Abrams - One mistake is to intrude too deeply and too often in what must be a bilateral negotiation. The Israelis and Palestinians do not negotiate seriously when U.S. officials are in the room; instead, they take positions designed to elicit American approval. The Bush administration tried trilateral talks, and the two sides argued more when we were present than when we were not. It's no accident that negotiations that yielded agreements, such as Oslo, were not only begun without us at the table but were kept secret from us. The U.S. role is critical, but mostly in cajoling and reasoning with both parties - separately. Another mistake would be to seek a "framework agreement." The difficult compromises necessary for a final-status agreement that resolves all the core issues will be made at the very end. Asking the parties to announce their "fundamental compromises" on the core issues when a final-status agreement is years away is asking them to commit political suicide. Efforts to force the parties to announce their bottom lines in advance of the final settlement will never succeed. The writer, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, was a deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush.
2010-09-06 07:59:39
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