Search for Detente:

Neville Teller

Description

The Search for Detente offers a unique perspective on the latest effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. By setting the peace talks within the context of political events in the Middle East and beyond, Neville Teller offers an authoritative overview on why the Israel-Palestine situation remains so intractable. Beginning in the spring of 2012, against the background of the still-raging Arab Spring, The Search for Detente provides the context within which US Secretary of State John Kerry began his efforts to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. It records the optimism at the start of the process, when all agreed that nine months would be sufficient to resolve the issues, and how cold reality led to Kerry shifting the goalposts to achieve just a "framework agreement", which might, or might not, allow the parties to go on talking. From the end of 2012 until the formal end to the discussions in April 2014, events crowded thick and fast in the Middle East and beyond - from Israel's incursion into Gaza to end Hamas's indiscriminate rocket attacks on civilians, the start of the Syrian civil war and Assad's use of chemical weapons, to the overthrow of Egypt's President Morsi. Teller also looks at Russia's growing influence in averting a US military strike on Syria, in brokering discussions on Iran's nuclear programme and in invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. These events, and others, provide an insightful perspective on this latest effort to bring a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Sujets

• Israel
• International relations
• Palestine

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781784626709
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Search for Détente:
Israel and Palestine 2012-2014
Neville Teller

Copyright © 2014 Neville Teller
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
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publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
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concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

For Sheila and the family,
including of course the most recent additions,
great-grandsons Aaron amd Isaiah
Contents

Cover


Also by Neville Teller


ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Foreword


Part One


MAY – JULY 2012


AUGUST – OCTOBER 2012


NOVEMBER – DECEMBER 2012


JANUARY – MARCH 2013


Part Two


APRIL 2013


MAY 2013


JUNE 2013


JULY 2013


AUGUST 2013


SEPTEMBER 2013


OCTOBER 2013


NOVEMBER 2013


DECEMBER 2013


JANUARY 2014


FEBRUARY 2014


MARCH 2014


APRIL 2014
Also by Neville Teller
One Man’s Israel
One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neville Teller was born in London, read Modern History at Oxford University, and then had a varied career in marketing, general management, publishing and the Civil Service. At the same time he was consistently writing for BBC radio as dramatist and abridger. He began writing about the Middle East in the 1980s, sometimes using the pen-name Edmund Owen. He published One Man’s Israel in 2008, and in 2011 One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine. He runs the blog A Mid-East Journal, and his articles appear regularly in the Jerusalem Post and the Eurasia Review. He is married, has three sons, ten grandchildren and two great-grandsons. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006 he was awarded an MBE “for services to broadcasting and to drama.”
Foreword
29 July 2013 was the day on which I decided to produce this book. At the same moment I determined to finish writing it on 29 April 2014.
It was on 29 July 2013, under the benign eye of US Secretary of State John Kerry, that peace negotiators for Israel and Palestine – Tzipi Livni and Saeb Erekat respectively – shook hands in Washington to launch “sustained, continuous and substantive” talks on a long-sought Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. Nine months was the period allotted to reaching agreement between the two sides. So the negotiating team had until 29 April 2014, if they were to journey right up to the wire – as I was convinced they would have to do.
That the discussions would be long, complex and difficult could have been foreseen. Many groups and individuals on both sides did not wish the negotiators well. Those who did would scarcely have believed, at the start of the process, that the stark irreconcilabilities of the two parties would scupper the original timetable. Acknowledged eventually even by the optimistic Kerry, they resulted in his shifting the goalposts halfway through the negotiating process. By a sleight of hand not unfamiliar to politicians, the objective of the nine-month negotiations was altered from achieving a peace deal to producing a “framework agreement” that might enable talks to continue into the future.
As a long-time commentator on the Middle East in general, and the Israel-Palestine scene in particular, I had been writing the blog “A Mid-East Journal” for a number of years. By the middle of 2012 my articles were appearing regularly in the on-line edition of the “Jerusalem Post”, and were being syndicated in the “Eurasia Review” and the “Albany Tribune”. Together they constitute a blow-by-blow account of events central and peripheral to the peace talks, charting first the background to this latest attempt at resolving the Israel-Palestine dispute, and then its progress over the nine months’ life it was granted.
From the end of 2012 until the formal end to the discussions in April 2014, events crowded thick and fast in the Middle East and beyond – from Israel’s short, sharp incursion into Gaza to end Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on civilians, through the start of the Syrian civil war and then Assad’s use of chemical weapons, to the overthrow of Egypt’s President Morsi, and Russia’s growing influence in averting a US military strike on Syria, in brokering discussions on Iran’s nuclear programme, and finally in invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. All find a place in providing perspective on this latest effort to bring a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Tuesday, 29 April 2014, finds me disillusioned. I explain why in “The End of the Affair” – the last piece in this volume. Some way through the past nine months I thought of titling the book “The Road to Détente”. Now I feel as though “The Road to Nowhere” might have been more suitable, or perhaps “Stalemate” or even “Dead End”. But no. Unless one truly envisages the Israel-Palestine dispute extending, unresolved, into an indeterminate future – a consummation devoutly wished by extremists on both sides of the fence but, if opinion polls are anything to go by, rejected by the majority of Palestinians and Israelis – the engagement of the two sides during last nine months must surely play a part in a final détente. So I settle on “The Search for Détente”, in the profound hope that, though the journey may be long and the way difficult, important steps have been taken.
They are not, of course, by any means the first steps. A plethora of dates are strewn across the recent history of the Middle East, marking the inauguration of well-intentioned efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To list only some, there were the Madrid Conference in 1991, the Oslo Accord signed on the White House lawn on 13 September 1993 to be followed by a second Oslo agreement two years later, the Wye River Memorandum in 1998, the Camp David Summit in 2000, the Taba summit in 2001, the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, the Road Map for Peace promulgated by the Quartet, and the Geneva Accord, both in 2003, the Annapolis process in 2007, and the Obama administration’s direct peace talks of September 2010.
As a matter of historical fact, all those initiatives, involving so much time and effort on all sides, could easily have been superfluous. Events could have taken a quite different turn, and a sovereign Palestine could have been up and running some twenty-five years ago. For preceding them was the top-secret accord reached between Israel and Jordan at a time when Jordan exercised sovereignty over the West Bank and was in a position to negotiate a binding peace agreement establishing a sovereign Palestine alongside Israel.
Top-secret at the time, today the deal is a matter of public record. A single typewritten sheet of paper dated 11 April 1987 and headed “Secret / Most Sensitive” sets out what is described as: “A three-part understanding between Jordan and Israel” − in essence an agreement to convene and attend an international conference, under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council, charged with reaching a peaceful solution of both the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian problem “in all its aspects”.
The accord specifies that the invitation to attend the conference, as well as the terms of its remit, are to be “treated as US proposals to which Jordan and Israel have agreed.”
Despite the deliberately concise nature of the document, it can be assumed with some confidence that by the time it was signed on behalf of Jordan and Israel, the terms of a comprehensive peace deal had been virtually agreed by both sides.
“The agreement with Hussein,” said Shimon Peres in 2008, during an interview to mark his election as President of Israel the previous year, “was the best and greatest agreement Israel ever had. Alas, we torpedoed it. It was the greatest mistake in our history.”
It was Shimon Peres, then Israel’s foreign affairs minister, who negotiated with King Hussein of Jordan what became known as the “London Agreement” − it was signed in London on 11 April 1987, during a secret meeting held at the residence of Lord Mishcon, a leading UK lawyer and a prominent member of the Jewish community. Also present were Jordanian Prime Minister Zaid al-Rifai and Director General of the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, Yossi Beilin.
The sting was in the tail of the document. “The above understanding is subject to the approval of the respective governments of Israel and Jordan.” With the king as signatory, the approval of the Jordanian government was a foregone conclusion. The problem − and a major problem it turned out to be − was Israel.
In 1987 Israel was ruled by a fragile and uncertain “national unity government” in which ministers were attempting − often unsuccessfully − to suppress diametrically opposite political beliefs in the interests of providing the nation with effective government. The prime minister was Yitzhak Shamir of the right-wing Likud party; Shimon Peres represented the left-wing Labor party in the cabinet. Chalk and cheese. Although Shamir permitted his foreign minister to undertake the secret negotiations and travel to London, he did not approve of the outcome, fearing that an international conference would force Israel into a solution that would be unacc