Vision to Reality: The Reut Blog

As negotiations draw on between Israel and the Palestinians without any seeming progress, various reports (Reuters and Ha’aretz) have emphasized Abu Mazen’s commitment to a comprehensive permanent status agreement dealing with all outstanding issues. Such an approach is dangerous to Israel.

Saeb Erekat told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah that Abbas had told Olmert during talks in Jerusalem Palestinians “will not be part of any interim agreement. Either everything will be agreed or nothing will be agreed.”

This ‘package approach’ creates a dangerous ‘all-or-nothing’ dynamic which due to the serious differences between both sides narrows the chances of reaching any achievement in the political process.

Moreover, the failure of the political process may have reaching consequences for the region including a Hamas take over of the West Bank, the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and a Palestinian inversion towards the two state solution.

Israel needs to develop an inclusive strategy to achieve its national goals independent of the present negotiations. Since Israel has an interest in ending its control over the Palestinians, Israel could upgrade the PA’s status by transferring to it powers and authorities in different areas. This could be done unilaterally, or in conjunction with third parties, in parallel to the present negotiations and independent of their results. The logic behind these steps is to create a security net to enable the PA to ‘survive’ the possible failure of the political process.