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Peace Talks' Failure Is in the Eye of the Beholder

(New York Times) Shmuel Rosner - No one in the region was terribly surprised when the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed. Yet failure is in the eye of the beholder. And in this case only those who expected a deal - the Americans - failed. But for the two parties with real interests at stake, the talks proved, once again, that there are things more important for them than peace and calm - things like national pride, sacred traditions, symbols and land. Both parties entered the talks without any hope of reaching an agreement, and both are now exiting having reached their unstated aim: to avoid a deal in which they were never interested, without having to bear the full blame for dropping the ball. Each side would prefer to see Mr. Obama place the blame on the other side, but sharing it is reasonably tolerable. There are two false perceptions that repeatedly distort discussions of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. First is the misguided idea that everybody knows what a final deal will look like, and that the inability to reach it is basically a diplomatic technicality. And second is the unfounded belief that Israelis and Palestinians want peace more than anything else. They don't. Of course, Israelis and Palestinians, like all people everywhere, want to live without violence. But they also want many other things. They continue to battle it out because they have priorities other than the ones imagined by the mediator. The writer is a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.
2014-05-12 00:00:00
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