Middle East peace prospects are slim, outgoing U.N. envoy says
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Version 0 of 1. JERUSALEM — If judged by outcome, the United Nations’ special coordinator for the Middle East peace process has met with limited success, to put it diplomatically. In his seven years in the post, Robert Serry has participated in three rounds of U.S.-led peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians — all ending in failure and recrimination. He was unable to stop three wars in the Gaza Strip, including the 50-day air and ground offensive this past summer between the Islamist militant movement Hamas and Israel that killed about 2,200 people. Serry’s time here as the top U.N. peace envoy ends this month, and in his final briefing to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday, the veteran diplomat said, “I cannot but express an overriding feeling that I have been part of a peace process in which a can is kicked down an endless road.” The gloomy remarks came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on the eve of his recent reelection that he would never allow the creation of a sovereign Palestinian nation on his watch. Netanyahu later backtracked and said he meant that current conditions would not permit a Palestinian state. President Obama was not convinced, saying, “We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership, and so that’s why we’ve got to evaluate what other options are available.” [On Israeli election day, Netanyahu warns of Arabs voting ‘in droves’] In an interview with The Washington Post at his headquarters in Jerusalem just before his departure, Serry seemed to be a man who sees dark clouds above and storms on the horizon. The Dutch diplomat noted that each failed round of peace talks was followed by war in Gaza. “Einstein said if you keep doing the same experiment over and over expecting a different result, for him, it was the definition of madness,” Serry said. “This applies to Gaza. If we are not able to change the dynamics in Gaza, then I will leave Jerusalem pessimistic.” Serry was disliked by hard-line Israelis, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who famously called for the U.N. diplomat to be declared persona non grata after he worked to bring $20 million in cash from Qatar to pay salaries for Hamas’s civil employees in Gaza. Serry also had other dust-ups with Israelis, who generally view the United Nations as a hostile forum. Last year, he joined a group of Palestinian Christians who were stopped and jostled by Israeli police on their way to an Easter celebration in the Old City. Serry called it “a precarious standoff.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry brushed it off as “a non-event.” “As you know, I am leaving, and I sometimes have the feeling that what I have been witnessing is looking dangerously like the end of an era,” Serry said. He was speaking of the era that began with the signing of the Oslo accords more than 20 years ago, which created limited self-governance for the Palestinians and initiated a thrilling, then demoralizing peace process whose ultimate aim, as Secretary of State John F. Kerry put it, remains “two states and two people living side by side in peace and security.” Over coffee and tea in the former Government House dating to the British mandate years, Serry observed, “The problem is if you know the horse you are riding — the two-state solution — is a dead horse, and you want to jump on another one, what is the other horse? It is a one-state reality. And we already see what that means for the Israelis and the Palestinians.” Serry and many others have warned that a one-state solution threatens the democratic and Jewish DNA of the state of Israel — because it would mean that either Israel maintain the almost 50-year-old status quo that denies civil rights to Palestinians, who denounce the military occupation and its strictures as apartheid, or somehow absorb millions of Palestinians as fellow citizens, an idea that no Israeli leader has embraced. In his final brief to the United Nations, Serry said he did not think talks between the two sides would be productive at present. Obama said last week that the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace “seems very dim.” [White House keeps tweaking Israeli prime minister] Serry suggested that the United Nations could propose the broad outlines of a peace plan, should conditions permit it. The French are considering introducing such a U.N. resolution. It is possible that the Obama administration will allow it to pass. During his time in Jerusalem, Serry has paid special attention to Gaza, which remains paralyzed by a fight between Hamas, which controls the strip, and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, run by the rival Fatah party of Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas has pledged to hew to a path of nonviolence. Hamas, though, has been branded a terror organization by the United States and Israel. The group fired 6,500 rockets and mortar shells at Israel during the summer conflict, actions that Amnesty International last week characterized as war crimes. Serry said there will never be peace unless the problem of Gaza — an impoverished enclave that is under a partial military blockade, isolated from the West Bank and pinned between two hostile states — is solved. The Hamas government is “imploding,” he said, adding that it was difficult to persuade reluctant donor nations to put their money ($5 billion in pledges) in what “they fear is just a black hole waiting to explode again.” The U.N. envoy proposed a “Gaza first” strategy, in which Hamas relinquishes control of the crossings into the coastal enclave; embraces the new but ineffectual Palestinian unity government; and pledges to maintain a truce with Israel to allow Gaza to be rebuilt. Serry imagines a reconstruction “hudna,” or freeze, of all military activities “above and below ground” by Hamas and other militant factions in Gaza for three to five years in exchange for large-scale projects on infrastructure, housing, energy and desalination. “The United Nations has been pleading for the lifting of the blockade, and for that, you need steps,” he said. “The stark truth is that despite all our efforts, Gaza is our collective failure.” The envoy’s replacement is Nickolay Mladenov of Bulgaria. Serry wished him “every success in dealing with this infinitely challenging environment.” Read more: Now comes the hard part for Netanyahu What Netanyahu’s election victory means for the Palestinians Netanyahu apologizes to Israeli Arabs for comment widely criticized as racist Where do strained U.S.-Israeli relations go after Netanyahu’s victory? |