The lessons of Dennis Ross

The truth is of course a little bit different from what Dennis Ross
now claims it to be. After all, the Americans are hardly an impartial,
neutral side, which can objectively step in when the sides don´t
keep up their commitments. The problem is that Americans are in
love with Israel. The Oslo process was in the eyes of the Americans
an easy way to help Israeli leaders to achieve what they wanted and
in terms that would be beneficial to Israel; in no way was the US ready
to force Israel to do anything, commitments or no commitments. This
worked as long as Yitzhak Rabin lived, but after he was murdered, the
Americans got first weak Shimon Perez, desperate to win election, and
then new leaders hostile to the terms that Rabin was ready to accept as
the price of the peace. The Americans now hand in their hands Israeli
leaders hostile to any realistic peace deal, but tried to continue as they
would be still dealing with Yitzhak Rabin and not with Benyamin
Netanyahu.

What the article´s writer writes about Jasser Arafat is, bluntly said,
nonsense. Israelis seem to have the oddest ideas about the Palestinian
leadership - like making Arafat all powerful among the Palestinians -
which is pretty much adrift in an ocean without any means of steering
the ship. The problem is the weak position of Palestinians in
the negotiating table - no superpower to back them, no ways to force
Israel to keep up it´s promises - and the weakness of the old leadership,
now losing it´s support and credibility among the populace, because of
the aforementioned weaknesses. Like the Americans, the Palestinian
leadership hasn´t been able to accomodate the changes in Israel´s
leadership and Israel´s changed goals because of this. As there wasn´t
any more leaders in the Israeli side who were ready to peace deal acceptable
to the Palestinian populace - this is one oddity in the American-Israeli
camp, they believe that the Palestinian leadership should accept any
kind of deal, not understanding that they can only accept a deal that
the Palestinian people accepts - there was little they could do.