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At a time when the Middle East is in upheaval, the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict has been pushed to the margins of the diplomatic agenda.
The Islamist surge in the region has emboldened Hamas’s
political ambitions and is making Palestinian Authority President
Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah feel ever more isolated and anachronistic. The
loss of former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, and the Arab uprisings
more broadly, have relegated Abbas to the back burner. As the crisis
escalates with Iran, the bloodbath in Syria continues, Egypt undergoes
unprecedented change, and the region as a whole finds itself in a period
of profound uncertainty, the goal of Palestinian statehood alongside
Israel seems, to many, neither possible nor pressing.
After years of frustration with the conventional negotiation track,
Abbas has toyed increasingly, though not always convincingly, with
other options. Eager to maintain political relevance and at least the
semblance of progress, the PA has threatened intermittently to embark on
some new initiatives (see examples below). Potential for an economic
crisis and growing signs of unrest in the West Bank (for example, recent
violent protests over PA austerity measures, demonstrations against the
harsh conduct of Palestinian security forces, and a decrease in Abbas’s
popularity in the polls), have only intensified the search for popular
policy alternatives. But despite the hype often associated with these
proposals, the Palestinian leadership has consistently failed to follow
through.
To be sure, some of these initiatives –
such as the desire to seek membership in major UN agencies beyond UNESCO
– have sometimes been aborted as much because of international
opposition as Palestinian indecision. With respect to others, the PA has
initiated the pullback, assessing that the near-certain costs would
outweigh questionable and largely symbolic gains.
In the end, however, the tendency to advance and then abandon these
options has served to underscore the emptiness of Palestinian threats
and entrench a pervasive Palestinian sense of helplessness about the
current situation. For some, it has been evidence of a regular
Palestinian penchant for climbing up trees, only to find themselves
without a ladder to climb down. In the Israeli arena, those issuing dire
warnings about the dangers of Palestinian unilateral actions and
threats or of Israeli inaction have been discredited as the relative
calm persists (for now). The overall impact has been to highlight
Abbas’s severe constraints (some, perhaps, self-generated) rather than
elicit the desired response either from Israel or from the international
community. There are, of course, multiple causes
for the impasse in the peace process.
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