Ahead of a meeting with US envoy to the middle east George Mitchell on Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Leiberman announced that he would tell the envoy that there was no prospect for peace for many years. Mitchell had said that President Obama believed there was ‘no alternative' to the resumption talks, suspended ten months ago, aimed at a comprehensive regional settlement involving the Palestinians, Syria, Lebanon and other Arab states.
Defence Minister Ehud Barak was more sanguine, telling Mitchell that ‘the time had come to move determinately forward' in pursuing a ‘win-win' scenario in the Middle East. However, Jordan's King Abdullah, who is seen as a key mediator between the Israeli and Arab parties to the peace process, was quoted on Thursday as saying in an interview that ‘we are sliding back into the darkness.'
The ToD verdict: ‘There are many conflicts in the world that haven't reached a comprehensive solution and people learned to live with it.' Such was the Israeli Foreign Minister's assessment of the prospects for a comprehensive peace settlement. Speaking to Radio Israel, this statement gives great insight into the likely strategy that the Likud-led coalition is likely to pursue in its dealings with the Palestinians. It is also a striking reminder that Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is far from being the most hard-line member of the governing coalition.
It seems unlikely, in view of continuing settlement expansion in the West Bank and military operations in Gaza, that Ehud Barak's apparently contradictory views represent nothing more than a more polished presentation of the same grim prognosis; that of the continuing the status quo. Whatever Barak's desire to re-engage the peace process, it is unlikely that his centre-left Labour party, with only 13 seats in the Knesset compared with the combined Likud-Yisraeli Beiteinu total of 42, can provide the political backing for him to prevail against the coalition's right-wing consensus.
On the other side of the Green Line, Palestinian politics is increasingly chaotic, with the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, facing serious attacks on his credibility after the PA endorsed last week's decision to postpone a critical vote on the UN's report on the Gaza War. As well as alienating many Palestinians, it has also damaged fragile negotiations with Hamas with a view to forming a unity government; a fact signalled by the postponement of the signing of a reconciliation pact at the urging of the Gaza-based Islamist movement.
The postponement of the vote, which is likely to be interpreted as the result of intense American political pressure, may well be regarded as another concession made at considerable cost but resulting in little appreciable gain. As for George Mitchell's mission, the continuing settlement activity in the West Bank, in defiance of President Obama's requests for a halt, is proof alone that the Israeli government is confident it has little to gain from negotiation and little to lose from a continued policy of intransigence.
Over forty dead in Peshawar bomb attack
A bomb exploded in the busy Khyber Bazaar area of Peshawar on Friday, killing at least 41 people and injuring over a hundred. Details of the attack remain unclear, with North West Frontier Province information minister Iftikhar Hussein saying that ‘we don't know if it was a remote controlled bomb or whether a suicide bomber was involved.' The blast is the latest in a string of terrorist actions across Pakistan, the last attack coming on 5 October when a suicide bomber struck the offices of the UN World Food Programme in Islamabad killing five people.
The upsurge in terrorist violence has been explicitly linked by its Taliban perpetrators to the increasing commitment of the Zardari administration to military operations against insurgent strongholds in the Swat Valley and Waziristan. The Pakistan Air Force has launched increasing numbers of strikes on Taliban positions as a prelude to an anticipated offensive into South Waziristan. The continued military confrontation of the Taliban forms a condition of US development assistance to Pakistan, with a newly passed civil aid package of $7.5 billion potentially at risk if Pakistan reduces military pressure against the Taliban.
US denies link to missing Iranian scientist
On Thursday, the US state department categorically denied any knowledge regarding the whereabouts of Shahram Amiri, an Iranian scientist believed to be involved in Tehran's nuclear programme, who disappeared in June whilst on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Ian Kelly, a spokesman for the US state department, claimed not to ‘have any information on this individual.' His denial came one day after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki accused the US of involvement in Amiri's disappearance. Mottaki told reporters that the Iranian government had ‘discovered documents' proving US complicity and held Saudi Arabia responsible for failing to protect Amiri.
The Iranian news agency ISNA highlighted ‘rumours' that Amiri worked for Iran's Atomic Energy Agency and suggested that he defected to the West, seeking asylum. With renewed international pressure on Tehran over its nuclear intentions mounting, the incident may prove destabilising to negotiations between the major powers and the Iranian regime.
The incident also has the potential to further poison Iran's troubled relationship with Saudi Arabia, which regards Iran's influence in the region with great suspicion. Saudi Arabia has been involved in previous attempts to curtail Tehran's influence, notably through its support of the pro-Western 14 March Alliance in the Lebanese general election against the Hizbollah-led, and Iranian backed, Lebanese National Opposition.
Tensions over Iran's nuclear programme were raised again on Friday, when Mojtaba Zolnour, Ayatollah Khamenei's deputy representative in the Revolutionary Guards, told the IRNA news agency that ‘even if one American or Zionist missile hits our country, before the dust settles, Iranian missiles will blow up the heart of Israel.'