Perhaps the biggest factor that the new Palestinian-Israeli peace talks have in their favor is that virtually no one, except it seems US Secretary of State John Kerry, believes they have the remotest chance of success. The nine-month deadline set by Kerry for their completion merely adds to that incredulity. Palestinians have every reason to distrust the Israelis whose overwhelming interest lies in the failure of the talks. The status quo suits the Zionists' position just fine. However, it is clear that even the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu recognizes that his government has to be seen to be trying to negotiate. Israel's highly effective worldwide propaganda campaign has always rested on the pretense that it is the victim in the Middle East, that time and again its eager attempts at peace have been spurned by an aggressive Arab world and the implacable hatred of the Palestinians, who wish only to see Israelis driven into the sea and an end to the Israeli state. When Israel smashes Gaza with overwhelming force, when its soldiers gun down foreign peace activists and local kids throwing stones, when it seizes Palestinian land to build yet more settlements that are illegal under international law, when it erects a physical barrier cutting Palestinians off from their jobs and farms and families, when it does all this, it protests that it is acting only out of the need for security, to protect its people from the terrible violence that would otherwise be unleashed upon them. Thus there are limits to the extent that Israel can reject the chance to sit down and talk about peace. Successive governments have become masters at choosing the moment when giving in to outside pressures for renewed negotiations can have the greatest impact. Generally speaking that pressure has been greatest when there is a new kid on the block in Washington. Israelis ground their teeth when they heard Obama's Cairo speech and were furious when the new US president did not include them in his first Middle East tour. Yet they were not particularly concerned that the new man in the Oval Office would be forcing them back to the negotiating table. They rightly divined that for all its fine words on the Middle East, the new administration would be too busy fire-fighting the US and international financial meltdown to pay any proper attention to the outside world. But the arrival of John Kerry at State, combined with a second-term Obama more willing to square up to an Israeli leader for whom he entertains a personal distaste, signaled to the Israelis that it was time to put on the Reasonable Face again. Hence Tzipi Livni, the Justice Minister sent to Washington to talk to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, was all smiles and sonorous sound bites when the new talks were announced. It was a brilliant Israeli production into which much thought must have gone, upstaging the Palestinians by its sheer hopefulness. But of course, it was all sheer bunkum. This is the same Tzipi Livni who was foreign minister in 2004 and backed the ruthless month-long bombardment of the Gaza ghetto. She knows there will be time and opportunity aplenty to walk away from the talks because of Palestinian “unreasonableness” or aggression from Hamas. But for the moment, Israel has to look as if it is serious about peace, even as half a million illegal Israeli settlers live on stolen land in the Occupied West Bank.
