The World

In a few hours time, President Obama will be hosting a banquet at the White House, to kick off the latest round of Middle East peace talks. It does sound a bit like a boxing match: ding-ding, seconds out, round one – start negotiating.

Not many people are paying attention, other than those who make a good living from following the peace process. (If there ever actually is peace, these people will be as disorientated as Kremlin-watchers, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.) A degree of distraction and cynicism is understandable. The big Middle Eastern news that President Obama is keen to highlight at the moment is the “withdrawal” from Iraq. Others at the dinner will have their own pre-occupations. Tony Blair, for example, has a book to promote.

And then there is the biggest reason for cynicism. The knowledge of the years of effort – and failure – that have preceded the current talks. The best case made for cynicism and pessimism that I’ve read recently was made by a veteran American negotiator, Aaron David Miller, who has finally denounced the whole peace process business as a bit of a waste of time, and a “false religion.”

But there are still some well-informed optimists about. One of my favourite is Bob Danin, who has just returned from a stint as Blair’s chief-of-staff in Jerusalem, and before that was one of the State Department’s top Middle East people. Danin is now at the Council on Foreign Relations, and has just done a roundtable, in which he explains why he thinks that, this time, they might just get it right.

You can read, the whole transcript here. And here’s a flavour: Danin argues that:

“Many of the taboos that once hampered negotiators have been broken. There was a time that it was illegal in Israel to talk to the PLO. There was a time that Palestinians refused to use the word Israel. We’re long past that point.We’re now at — we’ve now identified some of the core issues. And there is a consensus around the idea that the solution should be a two-state solution based on the creation of a state of Palestine, living peacefully in — with a secure Israel in peace and security.

So there is a rough outline and goal that the two sides, as well as the international community have rallied around. So some of the work has been done. Some of the conditioning has been done in terms of the publics. I’ve just returned from spending about two and a half years on the ground there. And I — my — I came back very much with the strong feeling that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians do want a settlement and are tired of the — tired of the conflict and are willing to pay the price, that’s — the price that’s necessary and make the concessions that are necessary.”

Nice try. But I’m not convinced. Still here’s hoping I’m wrong, and Danin and the optimists are right.