In a week or so, the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process will, it is hoped, be kick-started at a major Summit in Annapolis, Maryland. Its importance lies in the leading role of the United States. President Clinton took an interest in the Peace Process even if he achieved little, but President Bush appeared, until recently, to consider the position of the Palestinians wholly through the lens of the 'Global War on Terror'.

How We Got Here

From this perspective, in the wake of 9/11, Israel was to be seen as a fellow victim of terrorism.  The Palestinians were architects of their own misery because they had failed to understand that 'terrorist' activity was beyond the pale - and that Israel had to be recognised unconditionally. Israel was to be given a free hand in maintaining its own interests and no contact was to be tolerated with Hamas or Syria because they persisted in seeing armed struggle as legitimate.

The Europeans were consequently bullied and cajoled, often against their own instincts, into dealing only with Fatah and, in particular, with Mohamed Abbas as the only Palestinian who could command the confidence of the White House.

This all changed in the Autumn of 2006. The Israelis overplayed their hand in a stupidly destructive invasion of Lebanon. This contributed to the departure of Tony Blair who had faced a rare Cabinet revolt on his unstinting support for the aggressor. The US also began to need rather than want the support of Saudi Arabia in stabilising Iraq and Saudi Arabia has 'views' on Palestine of its own that were increasingly being shared in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.

Those Americans policymakers with any brains left unaddled after the round of disastrous decision-making from 2001 through to 2005 began to understand that the Palestinian plight was provenly awful and seen to be awful worldwide, thanks to the wonders of satellite television. This coverage was actively fuelling not only youthful radical resistance to Western hegemony but changing Sunni Arab street perceptions of Iran.

A Saudi propaganda campaign to reverse these perceptions of Shia Islamic democratic support for Sunni street fighters was only a temporary measure. It has become a matter of grave importance to anyone who thinks that the West and free markets have a role to play in the Middle East to get this matter sorted.

Talks About Talks

But be under no illusion, these are ‘talks about talks’ in which just one side in the final debate (that part of the international community comprising the West and its allies) is trying to develop a coherent position to close off options for radical Islamists and for the more recalcitrant ‘rogue states’. The aim is to come up with a very general position and then include as many as possible (especially Saudi Arabia and Syria) within the big tent - and at the end of the day to ensure Israel's permanent security despite itself.

This is the background to British announcements that propose economic projects that are designed to create jobs in the Palestine Authority. The British have offered £250m, according to latest reports. More will be on the way from others to the degree that Palestinians back Abbas rather than Hamas.

The West Bank will get that bit richer while Gaza looks comparatively neglected until the Gaza Palestinians deliver the 'right' democratic result. From a truly liberal perspective, the whole thing is intellectually dishonest - since Hamas was, in fact, democratically elected - but, hey, who cares, if it works ...

The immediate game has to be to get Israel and the West to give Abbas something to take home with him so that he can ‘turn’ Palestinians on the ground back towards 'peace' (in effect, towards full recognition of Israel). This is the last chance saloon for ‘realist’ diplomats in the key Anglo-Saxon countries and for conservative Sunnis to put both radical neo-conservatives and radical Islamists back in their respective boxes. 

The Necessary Seduction of Palestine

Since the Israelis have been as recalcitrant historically as any ‘rogue state’ but are backed by domestic US opinion, the short term tactic, managed in part through Tony Blair as Special Envoy, is to ‘seduce’ Palestine into compliance over time through economic kindnesses. In the first stage, it is simply a case of buying commitment and time while a real agreement, involving some very intractable issues such as the Jewish Settlements on the West Bank, can be hammered out.

The conservative Sunni interest is in unravelling insurgencies based on economic discontent. Lack of jobs is too easily expressed as a cultural revolt that threatens to turn on local elites.

The Turkish Islamists, essentially conservative, have made their own significant investments in the PA. Saudi funds are more or less judiciously used to try and guide policy and attitudes throughout the region so Palestine will be no exception. If Annapolis seems to work as a first step, countries such as Indonesia and Russia have let it be known that they are willing to get engaged. All these countries are concerned to keep the radical Islamist wolves from their door.

The West (which now includes any illiberal regime with a set of market-driven values and vaguely liberal intentions) has shown in theory (or intends to show in practice) to US-Israeli hardliners that ‘starving’ the Palestinians into submission is counter-productive. Depriving Palestine of basic economic resources, as if it was some giant Warsaw Ghetto, does not cow protest but intensifies it.

The Europeans have long argued this but they have felt obliged to show a united front in an alliance still led from America. Euro-realists have often been close to despair at the effects of US intransigence on their own back yard. Terrorists are a far more real prospect for Frankfurt and Milan than Chicago or Los Angeles.

The ‘hardliners’ (not confined to the US and Israel by any means), in contrast, are not much convinced by this rush of financial benevolence and jaw-jaw.  They are sending some signals to that effect. As with Iran, they are going to give the 'liberals' enough rope with which to hang themselves.

The recent ‘collective punishment’ of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel, depriving the area of electricity, is just such a signal, although it also helps 'soft’ negotiators to indicate what the alternative may be if Abbas asks for too much because of domestic pressures and the talks then fail as a result.  Such fine calibrations!

Malloch-Brown and the Syrians - Fine Calibrations Indeed

The intense media lobby against Lord Malloch-Brown in recent weeks can also be seen as an expression of anxiety about the effects of a loose cannon amongst some of the ‘soft’ players, notably the professionals in the FCO. US-Israeli political tolerance for the talks may collapse if they distrust European-Sunni Arab motives.

If there are any hints at this time that the ‘softies’ are prepared to talk to Hamas and Hezbollah, both regarded as unregenerate terrorists to be extirpated amongst quite mainstream US politicians (which is not the majority view in Europe), then the Israelis may use this as an excuse to back out. They might have strong domestic US political support for doing so. Most Middle Eastern policy in the West is conducted with half an eye on Congress.

The ‘softies’, especially the UK FCO, are also particularly concerned to engage Syria in the process. Partly this is a geo-political manouevre to get Damascus out of the orbit of Iran, but it is mostly because its military presence and its rhetoric appear to provide yet another an excuse for Israeli to be more intransigent than is desirable.

The Syrians have stood their ground against continuing Western assaults on their interests because they reason (rightly unless Israel has a radical change of attitude towards its own Arab population) that there is no lasting peace without their engagement. Syrian territorial obsession with the Golan Heights and the fact that much of the Palestinian ‘resistance’ operation is permitted to operate with impunity out of Damascus both provide some interesting 'lines in the sand'.

But there is also a tradition of Damascus giving support for national liberation movements (‘terrorists’ to Americans) and then kicking them out when the Syrian national interest finds this useful. The Golan Heights could certainly be returned just as much as Sinai. The diplomats have every reason to hope that deals can be cut on the right terms.

So, Malloch-Brown’s perceived 'dabblings' in the pre-Annapolis process and his argument for direct talks with Hamas and Hezbollah threatened to open up, at an inopportune time, the space for a fresh hardliner insistence that Syria be excluded from the talks process because it 'sponsored terrorism'. Fortunately, it has not.

To the professionals in the State Department and the FCO, this would be an own goal - for Malloch-Brown as much as for anyone insofar as he is personally committed to re-engaging Syria with the West.

The Israelis Test the System

This policy imperative also helps to explain the determined silence in Washington (despite constant media and political pressure) over the mysterious strike at an alleged Syrian nuclear facility some weeks ago.

The Israelis, with their penchant for the right alchemical mix of hard and soft power (which makes the Lebanon mess so noticeable), set this raid up to test the water within a West that is partly excluding them from its inner councils.

When Olmert shuttled from Russia to Paris and all points a few weeks ago, he would have returned to Tel Aviv fairly sure that everyone was committed to Israel's security, but that he could no longer rely on the rest of the West accepting his Cabinet's definition of Israeli security at face value.

The Israelis now want to know how much of a ‘sell-out’ is being planned in the long run. They now know that their allies now consider uncritical support for Tel Aviv to be an international relations disaster under new conditions of global insurgency - and after the Lebanese fiasco.

Back To The Primacy of Economics

The new Western strategy is to accept that there are no hard power solutions to the regional crisis. This, in itself, strips away half of Israel’s bargaining power, given its considerable local military strength.

Economics has now moved to the fore. People without jobs or hope did not matter until an organized cadre emerged to exploit the situation. This cadre is organised Radical Islam. Violent extirpation by absolute and unremitting force would not stand up to scrutiny in the global media even if it was technically feasible. 

The only alternative now is the massive delivery of economic aid (mostly Euro-Saudi) to ‘buy back’ a discontented population and extract sufficient concessions from Israel to give sufficient political traction for the West's preferred settlement.

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