Beirut (AsiaNews) - "Little hope for peace": the title of the Saudi Arab News editorial on the direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians that will begin this afternoon in Washington. It reflects the general consensus on Obama’s initiative to end 60 years of Middle East conflict.
The U.S. president has succeeded in the resumption of direct talks, after 20 months of deadlock, since Israel’s attack on Gaza. All the players - in addition to Obama, President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the King of Jordan Abdullah II and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak - have expressed hope and confidence. Obama said that "we can achieve peace in the Middle East in a year. Israelis and Palestinians should seize this opportunity, "Netanyahu has described Abbas as" my partner for peace ", the Palestinian president has given his" full commitment”.
But the gap remains substantial, perhaps unbridgeable. For Palestinians, there is first the issue of Israeli settlements that continue to grow, but also the borders of their future state and its capital, the right of refugees to return and much more. All, or most, of these issues see Netanyahu in an apparently irreconcilable position.
In fact his entourage gave an immediate negative response to the idea advanced yesterday by Defence Minister and Labour leader Ehud Barak, who in an interview with Haaretz spoke of giving "East Jerusalem to the Palestinians" and a special status for the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Holy Places, in exchange for a demilitarized Palestinian state. " With the Israelis and Palestinians far apart on key issues - writes today the Lebanese An Nahar - expectations for the Washington talks are low, yet the stakes are high."
In Israel, the Jerusalem Post looks at what to do with Hamas. Absent from the talks, two days of bloody attacks it has made its presence felt. " With terror ongoing, peace looks like mission impossible," reads the headline of an analysis of the situation, which argues that " Killings demonstrate yet again that until Iran is neutralized, no deal can be reached." Violence "highlights one of the shortcomings of this and all the others, the diplomatic process. What to do with Hamas. How to deal with him? As ineffective? "And" how do you neutralize one of its major supporters, and the master of other terrorist organizations – Iran? It was clear from the very beginning that when the US announced a couple of weeks ago the relaunch of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, that Iran, Hamas, and Hizbullah were not going to sit quietly on the sidelines and applaud graciously, but would rather try to torpedo the talks, and do so in the only way they know how – through terrorism" .
Instead the Washington Post, writes that Iran's ambitions, “which have cast a long shadow over the greater Middle East, may serve as a common bond keeping a frail peace process". Tehran's nuclear program and its growing influence in fact have threaten Sunni countries and it is fast "becoming urgent for Israel and its Arab neighbours and to seek a peace deal with a common threat to their security and their political stability."
In this context, Haaretz assertions are quite original, according to whom “the only way to prevent the collapse of the process that is opening in Washington today is to quickly replace the failed approach with a realistic political one. Perhaps a Palestinian state with temporary borders, perhaps a partial evacuation of settlements, perhaps some other creative solution. But one thing is clear: Only if Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas forge some sort of interim agreement soon will peace come closer and an avalanche be prevented". (PD)
