United States Secretary of State John Kerry announced on July 19, 2013, that Israel and Palestine were close to resuming "final status negotiations" on the stalled 1993 Oslo peace process. That would be a major coup for Kerry, now only six months into his tenure as secretary of state. And in the process, by virtue of his many trips to the Middle East, Kerry is taking the title of America's chief "shuttle diplomat."
"On behalf of President Obama, I am pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement that establishes a basis for resuming direct final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis," Kerry said in Amman, Jordan. "This is a significant and welcome step forward."
Kerry did not elaborate on events that prompted the breakthrough, but he did say he personally would release information about the process.
Kerry said -- "If everything goes as expected" -- Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and Isaac Molho, an envoy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "will be joining me in Washington to begin initial talks within the next week or so, and a further announcement will be made by all of us at that time."
Is This A Big Deal?
In a word -- yes. The Christian Science Monitor suggested Kerry's announcement was a "nudge," and that same outlet quoted Middle East foreign affairs expert Daniel Levy as saying Kerry is "creating the context for a breakthrough" -- but not a breakthrough itself.
Neither of those sound overly dramatic but any "nudge" that could produce results in the decades-old, often-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process is significant.
It's also a big deal for Kerry personally. He made the peace process top on his to-do list when he took over as secretary after Hillary Clinton. He also needs a regional success, given the ongoing civil war in Syria and the early July 2013 chaos of democracy in Egypt.
What Are Final Status Negotiations
Politicians, diplomats, and legislators tend to toss out phrases that they understand, but which leave the general public foggy. Kerry's announcement about "final status negotiations" was one of those moments, especially if you haven't paid close attention to the process for the last 20 years.
When President Bill Clinton brokered the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, both Israel and Palestine agreed to proceed through a series of diplomatic phases which included work on such questions as Gaza and West Bank territories. Really tough questions -- such as actual Palestinian state boundaries, distribution of water resources, and Israeli settlements -- would be left to resolve in "final status negotiations."
The phases proceeded haltingly through the 1990s, but the peace process never reached final status negotiations. More recently, the Arab League has backed a restart of the Oslo process, and U.S. President Barack Obama has encouraged Netanyahu (frequently seen as a hard-liner against Palestine and a reason for derailment of the plan in the mid-90s) to support a restart.
In 2011, Obama angered Netanyahu by suggesting that a Palestinian state be defined by pre-1967 Arab-Israeli war boundaries, then amended with "mutually agreed swaps."
No question about it, negotiators are not saving the easy stuff for the last; nothing will be easy about final status negotiations. Just getting there will have been plenty hard.
Kerry's Shuttle Diplomacy
Kerry has made six trips to the Middle East since taking office. Some of those trips also included visits to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places of diplomatic interest. In that, he is challenging the record of Richard Nixon's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for the title of top "shuttle diplomat."
The American press coined the term "shuttle diplomacy" when Kissinger made 11 trips to the Middle East between November 1973 and September 1975 to moderate the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The efforts of Secretaries of State on any given initiative are forever judged by that Kissinger standard. Kerry's more than half-way there, in way less time.
All that, of course, is simply to say that Kerry is serious about the issue of Israeli-Palestinian peace. And he's making progress.
Sources:
Christian Science Monitor. Kerry Nudges Middle East Peace Process. July 17, 2013. Accessed July 19, 2013.
U.S. Department of State. Kerry Announcement, July 19, 2013, and Kerry's Travels. Accessed July 19, 2013.
Backgrounder: Final Status Negotiations Between Israel, Palestine.
Institute for Middle East Understanding.
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