Hira Bahadur Thapa

With the change in the US administration following the electoral victory of Joe R. Biden, analysis has begun whether the moribund Middle East peace process would revive. There is optimism based on the President-elect’s commitment to working towards two-nation solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Oslo Peace Accord of 1993 culminated in the historic handshake between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, which laid foundation for negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis leading to final status agreement seems almost dead. The accord received applause from the then US President Clinton, who played host to the agreement signing event at the White House lawn.

Setbacks
In the last 27 years since then Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have faced many setbacks with no signs of the conflicting parties coming together for talks. Nevertheless, considering the centrality of the Palestinian issue in the Middle East politics and US interest in the region, hopes are emerging that the incoming Biden presidency would restart the stalled peace process. In the opinion of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the two states are not achievable. To him, it has become a process about process, and not real. His frustration is understandable given the intransigence of right wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who seems triumphant in the wake of Arab normalisation without conceding anything to the Palestinians.
The second half of 2020 saw unprecedented change in the Middle East regional balance of power coinciding with a rapid process of normalising relations between Israel and four Arab nations. The United Arab Emirates led the normalisation drive in August and Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco followed the suit. These Arab nations’ stand in establishing ties with Israel was motivated by narrow interests. The Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative agreed at that summit emphasised that normalisation of relations of all 22 Arab states with Israel was conditioned on latter’s withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories with an independent state in West Bank and Gaza with its capital in East Jerusalem.
Judged against this historical background, the diplomatic move by four members of Arab league has no compliance with the Arab Peace Initiative, which was endorsed by Arab League summits in 2007 and 2017. Israeli-Arab détente exhibited in the normalisation of diplomatic ties was considered to be a great betrayal of the Palestinian cause. In persuading the Arab nations to normalise political relations with Israel, the Trump administration played a key role. President Trump wanted to use this normalisation process to enhance his electoral chances for the 2020 election. His Middle East peace plan has failed despite categorisation as the great deal of the century with provisions for billions of dollars’ worth of investment in the region.
The above plan did not receive Palestinians’ support. It did not embrace two-state solution, which President Obama with Joe Biden as his Vice president championed until 2016. Conversely, President Trump’s peace plan for the future of Israel and the Arab occupied territories exacerbated Israel’s settlement programme. The plan became a free pass for expanding Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. The peace plan invited Israel to formally annex around 30 per cent of the West Bank, including the illegal settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley, the breadbasket of Palestinian population. Israel has halted its expansion plan supposedly to placate the Arab nations which provided them normalisation prize. It is content with its status quo, which gives it free hand to continue creeping annexation without triggering international sanctions.
During the Trump administration, the US partiality towards Israel was evident in recognising Israel’s sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan heights. The moving of US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was a shocking decision for the Arab world, more so for the Palestinians, which regard East Jerusalem as the capital of their future independent state. The US Consulate in Jerusalem despite being America’s main channel of communication with the Palestine Authority, has been shut off. Last but not the least has been the cutting off US funding for the United Nations agency that looks after the Palestinian refugees, besides closing of the PLO office in Washington.
From the humanitarian point of view, the plight of 1.4 million Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip camps has been worsened due to withholding of funds to the United Nations Relief Works Agency. The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the Palestine economy has been severe resulting in 8 per cent contraction this year. Amid such gloom in the Middle East peace process the Biden administration has raised some glimmers of hope among the Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of Palestine Authority, has reacted quickly to Biden’s election victory in November by sending signals that he was ready to get engaged again with Israel.

Coordination restored
The Palestinian leader restored coordination between his West Bank security forces and Israel’s military administration, which had been suspended since May. He also renewed the arrangement by which Israel collects import and export duties at its ports on behalf of the Palestinian authority. The incoming US administration is not expected to undo each and every step taken by President Trump, which though has fundamentally undercut the American role in the Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking by taking a one-sided approach.
It is worth recalling what John Kerry as Secretary of State during Obama presidency said in 2016, “There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world”. No durable peace in the region is possible without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Therefore, the revival of Arab Peace Initiative can be a step in the right direction.

(Thapa was Foreign Relations Advisor to the Prime Minister from 2008-09. Thapahira17@gmail.com)