Viewpoint: An Israeli-Palestinian summit now

The vacuum created by the collapse of the political process opened the door to terror and violence from both sides.

By ILAN BARUCH
A Palestinian rioter clashes with police in East Jerusalem, July 2, after rumors spread that a missing Palestinian youth had been killed by Israelis avenging the deaths of three abducted Jewish teens (photo credit: REUTERS/BAZ RATNER)
A Palestinian rioter clashes with police in East Jerusalem, July 2, after rumors spread that a missing Palestinian youth had been killed by Israelis avenging the deaths of three abducted Jewish teens
(photo credit: REUTERS/BAZ RATNER)
A year has passed since US Secretary of State John Kerry launched his peace effort. After the brutal terrorist murders of three yeshiva students in the West Bank and the ugly revenge actions by Jews against Arabs in its wake, Kerry’s mission looks like a chronicle of a failure foretold.
In preparing the initiative, the Americans recognized Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s need for ammunition to defend his participation to a skeptical Palestinian public hardened by past disappointments. They gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several options for the necessary down payment to Abbas for kick-starting the process.
Netanyahu took the narrow political view. To keep his right-wing coalition intact, he chose releasing Palestinian prisoners over freezing building in the settlements. But the prisoner releases sparked vociferous public debate and sharp criticism of the prime minister from the Likud’s settler support base and the Bayit Yehudi settler party. Of the four slated prisoner releases, only three were carried out.
As a result of the public commotion, the fourth group of 26 prisoners was not released on time, in violation of the agreement on which the Kerry mission was based. In parallel to the talks, the substance of which was kept secret by mutual consent, Netanyahu and Abbas carried out a highly visible diplomatic duel aimed at getting the US and Europe to blame the other side for the looming failure.
With a year’s hindsight and given recent revelations by the American negotiating team, it seems Abbas had no chance of effecting a political breakthrough and Netanyahu no interest in effecting one. Therefore, the blame game quickly took center stage, with Netanyahu firing off frequent accusations – not only in the direction of Ramallah but also toward Washington.
Along with their arsenals of blame, the parties promoted their respective “Plan B.”
Israel’s was to return to the status quo and significantly expand building in the settlements; Abbas’s was to turn the spotlight on the domestic front through reconciliation with Hamas, and in the international arena, to press for membership in international conventions, highlighting Palestinian claims for statehood and mobilizing Western opposition to continued Israeli occupation. In both cases, his goal was to reaffirm the 1967 lines as the agreed basis for future territorial negotiations.
Indeed, the main stumbling block that ultimately led to the collapse of the Kerry mission was Israel’s adamant refusal to discuss future borders on the basis of the 1967 lines and the Palestinian refusal to give way on that basic demand at any price.
Many political observers saw early on the grave risk of failure, and the concomitant loss of momentum or even abandonment of the process without any substantial achievements. But failure came at a terrible price. In transferring the center of gravity of the Kerry mission from the diplomatic sphere to mutual recriminations, sometimes even targeting Kerry himself, both sides lost their capacity to restrain their extremists: Jihadi terrorists on the Palestinian side, “price tag” Jewish ultra-nationalists in the settlements.
Ever since the West Bank kidnapping, Netanyahu has been conducting a focused political campaign designed to disrupt Abbas’s partnership with Hamas. But without a “smoking gun,” proving that the Hamas leadership in Gaza was behind the murders, Netanyahu is unlikely to succeed in mobilizing the international community against Abbas and his Hamas-supported government of technocrats.
Netanyahu also wants to dampen international support, especially American and European, for the Palestinians.
For his part, Abbas will make every effort to keep the reconciliation process under control, and minimize the diplomatic fallout from the kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers.
The vacuum created by the collapse of the political process opened the door to terror and violence from both sides. As soon as the dust after the kidnapping settles, we will have to ask ourselves, what next? Heading off the slide toward ever widening cycles of violence will be the immediate order of business. And for that to happen, Netanyahu and Abbas must signal their joint unequivocal opposition to further violence.
They should hold a summit dedicated to ending the violence on both sides. And perhaps, after that, the parties, more sober than before, may be ready to start talking peace again – and really mean it.
Ilan Baruch, a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa, is a political adviser to the Meretz party leader