Regional instability driving Israel-Palestinian peace talks

JERUSALEM // The meeting between Israelis and Palestinians in Amman this week was as much about anxiety over the Arab Spring and the rise of Islamism as it was an attempt to resolve their glaring differences, analysts said.

Little came of the rare face-to-face between negotiators from Israel and Fatah, the secular-leaning Palestinian faction that controls the West Bank. The two parties sat together for the first time in more than a year on Tuesday, but neither side appeared to make much, if any, headway in resolving divisive issues such as borders and Jewish settlements.

What the meeting did reveal, analysts said, was the mutually shared concern over a rapidly shifting region where revolutions have toppled dependable allies and brought to power democratically elected Islamist parties.

"It's become a huge, dark cloud for them," said Mark Heller, a researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, referring to the potential effect of the regional rise of Islamism on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. "There's apprehension because there is so much uncertainty."

Whether these empowered Islamist groups will demonstrate a heightened hostility to the two-decade peace process is still unclear, Mr Heller and other analysts said.

But there is little doubt that Israel and its Palestinian negotiating partners are worried.

Of particular concern to them is the toppling of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. He was committed to upholding his country's unpopular peace treaty with Israel and provided important backing to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority (PA) president, and his late predecessor, Yasser Arafat, during two decades of unsuccessful peace talks with Israel.

Sam Bahour, a Palestinian businessman and commentator who lives in Ramallah, said there was a realisation by Mr Abbas and some Israelis that a negotiated accord should take place before regional changes made it too difficult.

"These new governments in the region will be more responsive to their peoples' interests, and the people in the region want to see a proactive Arab stance to ending this conflict," Mr Bahour said.

What the regional upheaval has clearly done is shatter an American-backed regional order. Israel appears increasingly isolated and Mr Abbas weakened because his bid for statehood recognition at the United Nations, launched in September, has faltered.

At the same time Hamas, the rulers of the Gaza Strip, that is opposed to Fatah's peace talks with Israel, is no longer the regional outcast. Its Islamist allies, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Ennadha in Tunisia, have dominated recent elections in those countries.

This week, Hamas's prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, looking more business-like than usual, was photographed in a charcoal suit mingling with officials in Turkey during his first official visit abroad since 2007.

Israel considers Hamas a terrorist group and even though Fatah officials brokered a landmark reconciliation accord with the group in May, they hardly seem thrilled at the prospect of sharing power with its leaders.

But Hani Masri, another independent political analyst in Ramallah, said the most important aspect of Hamas's changing fortunes has been the softer tone taken by its Damascus-based leader, Khaled Meshaal. He has expressed support for a two-state solution and non-violent resistance against Israel.

These are changes Mr Masri attributed to the influence of Islamists in countries such as Egypt and Turkey, as well as concern among Hamas leaders that mounting instability in Syria could deprive the group of its base there.

"Hamas is being restrained because the Arab countries are busy with domestic issues and now, it seems, the Islamist parties want to send positive messages to the West and especially the US demonstrating how moderate they are," he said.

Israeli leaders have not responded in kind to the conciliatory tone, said Dahlia Scheindlin, a lecturer on conflict resolution at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

"It's a huge wild card and there's still a lot of speculation because what we refer to as political Islam simply won't manifest itself in the same way from country to country in the Arab world," said Ms Scheindlin.

The risk to Israel by not making meaningful gestures on the peace-process front, she said, was further regional isolation and renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence.

"If the West and America lose hope on the peace process and the Arabs are focused on domestic issues, then that could lead to a dangerous situation, such as an intifada, escalations in Gaza or a one-state solution [for Palestinians and Israelis] that's an apartheid state," she said.

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