Word: netanyahu
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...diplomatic spat, Ayalon's defiance potentially carried a high cost. But it took a behind-the-scenes intervention of the proverbial grownup in the Israeli establishment - President Shimon Peres, who served for decades as Israel's key diplomat - to orchestrate a climbdown. Peres called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Lieberman and urged them to defuse the crisis. But domestic politics was in play: not only was Ayalon's initial action calculated to burnish the nationalist appeal of his and Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party, but Netanyahu's need to maintain that party's support for his coalition prompted...
...1990s, simply getting the two parties that had spent years trying to kill each another to sit down and talk was a breakthrough. But after two decades of conversation, talking is no longer an indicator of progress toward ending the conflict. As Gheit's comment implies, sitting Netanyahu down with Abbas for "final status" talks risks simply confirming the belief widely held among Abbas aides that no deal is possible with the current Israeli government. (See the top 10 news stories...
...sobering reality is that Abbas - both as President of the Palestinian Authority and in his previous capacity, as Yasser Arafat's chief negotiator - declined the best offers of two of Netanyahu's more dovish predecessors, Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008. And with the median in Israeli politics having swung steadily to the right, the idea that Netanyahu might offer more than Barak and Olmert did is fanciful. It's not that Abbas is an obstinate man; he simply knows what it will take to sell any peace agreement to his skeptical public. Still, Abbas has staked...
...Netanyahu, by contrast, is under no domestic pressure to make peace with the Palestinians. On the contrary, Israeli society is comfortable with the status quo and skeptical of offering the Palestinians new concessions, much less of risking the civil strife that would be spurred by any attempt to remove settlers from the West Bank. Israeli public opinion prevented Netanyahu from accepting the settlement-freeze demand, and the primary factor that brings him to the negotiating table may simply be the need to stay on side with Washington. (See 25 people who mattered...
...Palestinian peace a foreign policy priority and has made it a centerpiece of the President's outreach to the Muslim world - which remains an important political component of the Administration's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan and against al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Yemen. Although it failed to get Netanyahu's agreement to a complete settlement freeze, its leverage over Abbas may be sufficient to cajole him back to the table. But it's far from clear how the proposed two years of negotiations can bridge the gaps that remain after two decades of a peace process...