„It‘s virtually impossible to imagine Israel and the Palestinians conducting fruitful negotiations under the current circumstances. Mistrust is at an all-time high. Gaps on the core issues are wide. Talks have been in deep freeze for over two years. For months on end, young Palestinians have targeted innocent Israelis in a wave of random stabbings. The Palestinian leadership, in particular, seems weaker, more divided, and more paralyzed than ever, utterly incapable of taking on the gut-wrenching compromises that even the most generous peace offer would require. Secretary of State John Kerry devoted his first year at Foggy Bottom to a dubious, but nevertheless Herculean effort to force-feed a deal to the parties, and failed miserably. There’s no reason whatsoever to believe that the chances for success would be any better today. (…)
Obama might more productively direct his energies during his waning months in office to the slightly more auspicious diplomatic ground of Israel‘s thickening links with a handful of key Arab states. While the fact of such contacts is nothing new, there‘s now a palpable sense that both the frequency and quality of the interactions, mostly conducted in private, have intensified considerably over the past few years.
The reason for this, of course, is the growing convergence in regional threat perceptions. Both Israel and U.S.-aligned Sunni Arab states now share the view that the rising power of Iran and radical Islamism pose a far greater danger to their mutual security and well-being than the chronic inability to resolve the Palestinian question, now well into its seventh decade. This sense of common interests and priorities has resulted in expanding political, economic, and intelligence ties, including a relatively robust trade in Israeli security technology. […]“
(John Hannah in Foreign Policy: „For Middle East Peace, Look to Israel‘s Arab Partners“.)
