The Periscope Post

Watch the pomp and circumstance around the start of the talks from Wednesday:

Though “cautious optimism” appears to be the watchword this time around, it hardly describes the mixture of fear, trepidation, outright objection, and wilful hope coming from virtually all quarters: Observers in Israel are suspicious; Palestinians worry that the deal will not be fair to them; Hamas, which is in control of the West Bank, is actively seeking to weaken the Palestinian negotiators through attacks on Israelis; the Arabic countries are rooting for failure; Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad branded the talks “futile”; and Western critics seemed to be resigned to pessimism.

But not everyone. For a few folks, cracks of hope, like light at dawn, are appearing. Richard Spencer, The Telegraph’s Middle East correspondent, claimed that though he’s never been much an optimist when it comes to the prospect of Middle East peace through talks, recent events have actually made him more optimistic about this round.

“There was something so brutal, even for Hamas, about its assassination of four civilian settlers, and more particularly the glee with which it claimed responsibility, that I wondered if it wasn’t seriously rattled,” he observed. Hamas, he says, has failed to capitalize on any “unaccustomed sympathy” to be mined from Israel’s disastrous handling of the Gaza-bound flotilla, and the Gulf states are increasingly interested in money – meaning their more interested in stability. “They are the paymasters and the regional strategists, and they regard the Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran nexus as far more of a threat to them than Israel,” Spencer claimed. “In the face of this, Israel would be throwing away an unrivalled opportunity for a geopolitical realignment in its favour if it allowed Hamas to win the day.”

However, though Hamas may be the willful stumbling block to peace, there is a much bigger issue on the table, one that could shut the talks down before they even begin: Settlements in the West Bank. On September 26, the partial settlement construction freeze that Israel agreed to will come to an end and Netanyahu has said that Israel will not renew it. The Palestinian Authority has said that if that’s the case, then it will leave the table. Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, argued in an op-ed for the Financial Times that the PA “squandered” nine months of the freeze, choosing instead “to campaign against Israel in international forums”. Acknowledging the difficulties of PA leader Abbas’s position – given the control rival group Hamas now has over the West Bank – Prosor claimed that international community must pressure Hamas to adopt the Quartet conditions and to abandon “the brutality which has always characterized its actions”, to reinforce Abbas’s authority. Prosor declared, “To make further progress, the PA must demonstrate a sincere will to persist with talks, end incitement and recognise Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.”

But, as the Financial Times noted in one of its leading editorials, Israel says it’s committed to a two-state solution, but it’s building settlements on what would become the Palestinian state. Though Netanyahu’s position is politically delicate, bearing in mind his fragile coalition at home, Abbas’s even more so – to have Israel end the freeze and Palestine not leave negotiations would destroy his credibility utterly. The US must demand the cessation of settlements and Netanyahu must agree, even at the peril of the collapse of his coalition.

Speaking of the US, is, as The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley says, President Obama trying to earn that Nobel Peace Prize he’s already won? In this Opinion Journal piece on the talks, The Journal columnist Bret Stephens claimed that in the case of these doomed-to-fail talks, the “farce comes before the tragedy” (or perhaps pride before the fall?). The parties, he declared, are just not close enough.