Voice of America, 24 August 2010

Israeli and Palestinian leaders will travel to the U.S. capital next month to begin long-delayed direct peace talks. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Mideast negotiator George Mitchell say they are confident that this round of talks will result in a definitive peace agreement by September 2012. But do the Israelis and Palestinians share their optimism?

For weeks, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas insisted that he would not participate in direct negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu without a complete freeze of settlements and a clear agenda that would include the so-called final status issues.

But late Friday evening, after a meeting of the Palestinian Executive Committee, Mr. Abbas announced he would accept the U.S. invitation and return to the negotiating table. Over the weekend, analysts have been scratching their heads asking, what happened to change Mr. Abbas's mind?

"Well, this is the big question mark," said Barak Ravid, a columnist for Israel's Haaretz newspaper. "In the last visit that Netanyahu had to Washington he had a meeting with President Obama and they discussed the Palestinian issue very thoroughly, more than an hour, and nobody knows what went on in that conversation because it was only the two of them."

"And apparently, from all the clues that we get, Mr. Netanyahu gave Mr. Obama some promises about what he's intending to do and how far he's going to go," he added.

Ravid believes that whatever the U.S. president heard from his Israeli counterpart convinced him to put pressure on Mahmoud Abbas to participate in direct talks.

Saed Arikat is Washington bureau chief of the Palestinian newspaper Al Quds. He doesn't believe the Israeli prime minister conceded anything that the U.S., which had previously supported the Palestinian boycott of direct talks, caved in to pressure from the Israelis.

"I think Abbas found himself in a very tight spot," he said. "I mean, he was made to climb up a tree, and no ladder was extended to him by the Americans to climb down."

Arikat believes Mr. Abbas enters negotiations in a weakened state. "I don't think this is really a good posture to enter into the kind of negotiations that the Americans want - a negotiation that can produce the ends and the goals as stated, which is a viable Palestinian state on basically the borders of 1967," he said.

Will talks bear fruit?

He says the only way this round of talks could bear fruit would be for U.S. President Barack Obama to come to Abbas's aid. "To really make Netanyahu deliver on whatever commitments he made," said Arikat.

Analysts appear to be divided over whether, after so many failures in the past, the upcoming talks will lead to a negotiated settlement. Haaretz's Ravid is cautiously optimistic.

"This is the first time that a Likud prime minister will discuss all the core issues of the final status, which means, not only the borders and security, but also very sensitive issues like the future of Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Although there is a lot of skepticism and I think the chances are slim, we can't overrule the fact that we might get something in the end," he said.

Al Quds' Saed Arikat is less confident. I don't really see this thing going forward exactly as it was going to be on Friday," he said. "They want two states living side by side. I'll be honest with you, with every day that goes by the two-state solution becomes less viable."

Right time for talks?

Dawood Kuttab is a Palestinian journalist and former Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. He says he isn't sure that this is the right time for direct talks, but he does concede there are elements in place that have not been seen before.

"We have the best Palestinian leadership we can ever get," said Kuttab. "You have a president who is publicly talking against the militarization of protesters in support of nonviolent activities. You have a Prime Minister who is very strongly in favor of building up a Palestinian state rather than cursing the Israeli occupation, and the moderate Palestinians are very angry in a very strong way with the radical Islamists."

Kuttab also points out the security situation has never been better on the Israeli side. He says there is a solution which the Israeli right wing has agreed to, so there can't be too much opposition; and above all there is a U.S. president who is making a sincere effort to understand both sides.