THE AMMAN ROUND

The Palestinian-Israeli settlement has another long-awaited chance of continuing. However, unfortunately, there is no reason for full optimism, because the parties' positions are completely opposite on the main issues at the core of the Middle East conflict.

In early January, Jordan's capital Amman hosted a meeting of representatives of Palestine and Israel: a member of the PLO executive committee, Saeb Erekat, and an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Yitzhak Molho. It was also attended by Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasr Judah and representatives of the International Quartet of Mediators (UN, USA, Russia and EU).

The meeting was the first direct dialogue between Palestine and Israel in more than a year. Attempts to resume the negotiations between the conflicting parties were undertaken in September 2010 after a 20-month break caused by the powerful blow that the Israeli military operation in Gaza - Cast Lead - dealt to the settlement process. However, the peace efforts made last autumn failed due to Israel's refusal to extend the moratorium on the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

For this reason, the meeting in Amman was a kind of a breath of fresh air in the atmosphere of the complete stagnation, in which the Middle East peace process was in the past few months. But as the talks showed, the oxygen potential capable of moving the Palestinian-Israeli settlement from the dead point was not so great. The 3 January meeting and the following second round of talks on 9 January did not lead to any serious progress. What is comforting is the mere fact that the parties to the conflict, despite fundamental differences in their positions and the general deterioration of the situation in the region of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, found the strength, even through under heavy pressure from the outside, to sit at the negotiating table.

Speaking of external pressure, it should be noted that in addition to the efforts of the International Quartet, the position of the host country - Jordan - also played a role in preparing the Amman talks. Its leader, King Abdullah, expressed a particular interest in resuming the peace talks between Palestine and Israel, as this may be an important factor in stabilizing the situation in Jordan, where recent months have also seen some excesses in the spirit of the Arab spring, especially considering the fact that the Palestinians hold key positions in the Jordanian political community and the majority of Jordanians are of Palestinian origin.

However, the difficulties in the resumption of the direct dialogue had already affected the parties' precise definition of the Amman talks. The Palestinian side refused to even think of them as the resumption of dialogue. Several hours before his meeting with Molho, Saeb Erekat said that the reason was the refusal of the Netanyahu government to freeze the construction of Jewish settlements and express willingness to establish a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders as a condition for beginning a new phase of the negotiations. As a matter of fact, the head of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmud Abbas, consented to the meeting in Amman on condition that the actual negotiations would begin only after a full freeze in the construction of Jewish settlements. As for the Israeli approach to the Amman meeting, Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed the hope that it would give a start to direct peace talks in 2012.

At the end of the meeting in Amman, the sides said that it was held in a positive atmosphere. The main outcome of the meeting was that representatives of Palestine and Israel exchanged documents attesting to the parties' positions at this stage of the conflict. Saeb Erekat confirmed the position of the Palestinian side on the issue of borders. In turn, Yitzhak Molho presented Israel's position in a document consisting of 22 points, where the main emphasis was placed on the security issue rather than on the issue of borders, Jewish settlements and the status of Jerusalem - i.e. the main themes that concern the Palestinians.

This hitch in the parties' positions, in fact, led to the failure of the Amman meeting, which was held on 9 January. At the end of the second meeting, the parties refrained from communicating with the press and did not publish any information about the negotiations. But later, it became known that they did not accept each other's proposals. The Palestinians said that Israel's position was too vague. It turned out that the 22 points presented by Yitzhak Molho fitted into one page. So the Palestinians could not understand what, for example, the "borders of Jerusalem" meant. The Israeli "points" gave them grounds to conclude that Tel Aviv's position continues to be based on refusal to withdraw its troops from occupied East Jerusalem, dismantle all Jewish settlements in the West Bank and grant the Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel in accordance with a UN resolution.

In fact, no-one expected the parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to stop adhering to their traditional positions on settlement issues. The Palestinians made another move at the UN on 6 January in order to show that Ramallah has no illusions about the prospects of the Amman talks. Palestine's permanent observer to the UN, Riyad Mansour, handed a letter to the UN Security Council chairman and the chairman of the 66th Session of the UN General Assembly, focusing on Israel's illegal actions in the occupied Palestinian territories and calling on the international community to give Israel a clear message on the complete cessation of illegal activities.

On the same day, 6 January, the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, gave a Friday sermon at Kairouan Mosque in Tunisia, where he was on an official two-day visit. Haniyeh stated that the negotiations with Israel conducted by the Mahmud Abbas administration failed and now "the only way to liberate Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the entire Palestinian land is resistance".

Meanwhile, the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmud Abbas, stated a few weeks ago that Ramallah will toughen its stance if Israel's position makes it impossible to resume the direct negotiations. He linked the "hardening of positions" to 26 January, the date named by the International Quartet last autumn for reaching a tentative agreement between the parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians made it clear that they are willing to continue the negotiations until 26 January. Meanwhile, the Israelis tend to think that the Palestinians are deliberately taking a tougher tone without waiting for 26 January in order to exert pressure on Israel in the context of the interim talks in the Jordanian capital.

The International Quartet, for its part, hopes that it will be able to influence at least some agreement between Israel and Palestine in the next few days, or at least, weeks. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that "a lasting peace is an urgent priority as never before, and therefore, the conflicting parties must take courageous decisions to make progress on this path".

The desire of the Quartet to intensify the Palestinian-Israeli settlement is clear: all four of its members, who are major players of international politics, find the situation in the Middle East "too hot" anyway in view of significant and in many ways, unpredictable processes unfolding here in connection with the Arab spring, the Turkish-Israeli confrontation and, more importantly, the sharp deterioration in the crisis around Iran. Therefore, it is in the interests of the Middle East Quartet to cause at least some optimistic expectations about the possibility that the biggest headache of international politics, which is the chronic Israeli-Palestinian conflict, will be resolved in the near future. This, of course, will yield some dividends to the members of the Quartet. Each of them is playing its own game in the Middle East and intends to appear as a peacemaker for both Palestine and Israel with the aim of untying their own hands in other directions (for example, Syria or Iran), where the Western part of the "Quartet" may soon adopt tough decisions that could significantly affect the entire international situation.