A Way Past Middle East Deadlock (Sari Nusseibeh)

[shira]

In that Figaro interview, you said you'd sent a letter to the Obama administration suggesting they essentially drop the negotiations that were going on. Can you elaborate?

That was right at the beginning of Obama's term, when senator George Mitchell was about to begin his work as a special Middle East negotiator. I wrote a letter saying that if he were to pursue the matter in the old classical way of trying to go at it step by step that he will likely be faced with more obstacles things will not work the way he wants them to. I think very soon after I sent that letter, he faced the first obstacle, which was settlements. And that has continued until today.

I hope that the negotiations now being conducted by the American administration have more to them than meets the eye, because if one just looks at what's happening, then one can't conclude that very much, in fact, seems to be happening. Now I'm not discounting the possibility that there may be something going on behind the scenes.

What I suggested at the very beginning was for Obama to call the leaders of the two sides together and put in front of them a vision of a two-state solution based on negotiations that have taken place in the past. It should include some kind of American bridging of the gaps and then asking the two leaders not necessarily to negotiate on this vision, nor to accept or reject this vision, but to take this vision respectively to the Israeli and Palestinian populations and put it to a test: Basically ask the two sides to vote for that vision or against it. And I placed a number of conditions. I said, "You know this has to be done on the Palestinian side through an electoral process, rather than through a plebiscite; on the Israel side through a plebiscite. The results should come out on the same day and should be done conditionally." In other words, the answer should be, "Yes, if the other side says yes." So if the Israelis are asking for a two-state solution on such-and-such basis, they could say, "Yes, if the Palestinians say yes," and likewise in the other direction.

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http://www.cfr.org/publication/23276/way_past_middle_east_deadlock.html?cid=rss-analysisbriefbackgroundersexp-a_way_past_middle_east_deadloc-102910