The Arab League’s Endorsement of Direct Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations: Arab Activism or Political Theater?

At first glance, the reluctance of Palestinian Authority President and Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to move from proximity talks (which have not really been held in close proximity) to direct negotiations with Israel seems incomprehensible. But things are not necessarily what they seem.

Palestinian objections to direct negotiations with Israel – voiced most recently by Abbas at the Arab League foreign ministers meeting in Cairo in the last week of July – have traditionally reflected either ideological or instrumental approaches. The first has typified those who reject any reconciliation and believe that direct interaction entails some implicit legitimization of Israel’s existence that nullifies the validity of their own beliefs. At most they have been prepared to countenance indirect contacts as an unavoidable means of satisfying vital short term needs that could not otherwise be secured. That approach characterized almost all Palestinian political forces since the beginning of the conflict until it was incrementally abandoned by the PLO in the late 1980s and 1990s, and it is still the central leitmotif of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and smaller “rejectionist” bodies.

The second, instrumentalist approach to negotiations has generally guided the PLO/Fatah since it approved the idea of resolving the conflict through political means. According to this school of thought, negotiations are acceptable in principle, but every effort should be made to involve powerful third parties (which for the past few decades essentially means the United States) in order to redress the imbalance of power that is assumed to favor the stronger party in any bilateral negotiation. Moreover, while negotiations are not strictly conditional on prior agreements, political skills should ideally be mobilized in the pre-negotiation stage to secure prior concessions from Israel and/or the United States in return for the concession of agreeing to negotiate directly.

That approach appeared to have been jeopardized by the position adopted by Abbas in 2009 when he not only demanded the complete halt to all settlement construction activity beyond the Green Line (following the American lead) but also made it a precondition for the resumption of the negotiations that had proceeded, albeit intermittently, since 1993. Indeed, he hardened his position over the course of 2009 and 2010 by adding more preconditions, particularly assurances about the outcome of the discussions over borders.

Although it became increasingly clear that these conditions would almost certainly not be met, Abbas could not easily reverse himself because of a variety of domestic constraints, some of them self-imposed. Backing down would not only reinforce the image of weakness and inconstancy that has dogged him for a long time; it would also expose him to accusations of capitulation by the ideological purists, particularly Hamas and its foreign backers, with whom he remains locked in a desperate struggle for power.

Still, persisting in what the relevant part of the international community considers unreasonable behavior specifically because direct negotiations were demanded by Israel helped undercut Palestinians efforts to deepen Israel’s isolation or even just to secure an extension of the moratorium on settlement construction. Indeed, avoiding negotiations enabled Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to postpone an extraordinary test of political courage – either the courage to agree to concessions and face the wrath of members of his own party and his coalition partners or the courage to refuse concessions and face the wrath of domestic critics and major international partners, including precisely those who helped satisfy Netanyahu’s insistent demand for direct talks by pressing Abbas to return to the table. Moreover, the most frequent public Palestinian argument against the immediate resumption of direct negotiations – that they would be a waste of time – looked increasingly sterile since there was no more productive use to which time could be put. That was particularly true if the most urgent task of diplomacy is not to achieve a peace agreement but rather to ensure that blame for failure to do so falls on the other side – which is precisely how the Qatari foreign minister explained last week’s Arab League endorsement of direct negotiations.

All of this suggests that with both the Arab League mandate for proximity talks and the partial Israeli moratorium on construction activity in the West Bank set to expire in September, the Palestinian Authority resistance of American and European calls for renewed direct negotiations, though not devoid of domestic political calculations, was essentially a pre-negotiation posture, meant to elicit a quid pro quo when or even before Abbas eventually makes his concession and complies with the declared preference of the Arab League. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that the entire Arab League proceeding was coordinated in advance. After all, most of the major Arab states, while certainly interested in the revival of what looks like a viable peace process, are reluctant to expose themselves to the accusation that they are once again attempting to undermine what remains of the PLO’s role as “sole legitimate spokesman” of the Palestinians. And Abbas cannot really want to jeopardize what was one of Yasir Arafat's major historical accomplishments, the “independence of the Palestinian decision.” Far better, then, for the Arab League to agree to provide him with a rationale needed in the domestic debate to climb back down from an unsustainable position and “bow” to the irresistible pressure of the whole world, including even his Arab allies.

If that is indeed the case, then what has been described by some as a major achievement for Netanyahu may well turn out to be a major achievement for Abbas. At the very least, the resumption of direct talks before the construction moratorium expires will make it infinitely more difficult for Netanyahu not to extend it. Beyond that, Abbas may well be able to activate whatever understandings may have been reached about the nature of American engagement in the process, in the not unlikely event that the bilateral negotiations reach a point of deadlock.