

Conflict Management student @SAISHopkins. Formerly @MiddleEastInst & @yala_yl activist. Perennial Weltschmerzer. Weekend Luddite.
…garding or dismissing the possibility of a greater balance in the unfolding of things in our lives. When we set things up to make any real balance in our lives a virtual impossibility, we are evincing disloyalty to what we value most — which is literally what priorities are all about — and thus practicing, as poet and corporate adviser David Whyte so graphically and accurately articulates it, a kind of adultery, an infidelity. We may be betraying what is deepest and best in ourselves, and we may be betraying our relationships to others, even those we most love, and even our connectedness to places, to being at home where we are and fully in touch with what is most important and required in any moment. We might be losing touch, unknowingly, with our very relationship to the possibilities and the impos…
Yet these reasons may not be sufficient to deter efforts to restart negotiations. A decent chance of success has never been a prerequisite for U.S.-led talks. The peace process offers its own rewards, quite independent of its ostensible purpose. After the many strains in its external relations caused by the destruction in Gaza, Israel will view new talks as a means to improve relations with the U.S., as well as to exhibit goodwill toward those Palestinians still in favor of negotiations, repair its image in the world, slow the spread in Europe of boycotts of the products of Israel’s West Bank settlements, and solidify the tacit understandings between Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinian Authority that gave it a freer hand in Gaza.
Despite the good intentions that Skeptics, Reproachers, and Embracers express, the U.S. is less a cure than a cause of stasis. It deprives any other third party—whether European or Arab—of a meaningful part in the peace process. It negotiates and drafts proposals without adequately consulting or considering the concerns of communities whose support would be crucial for a lasting peace. These include religious Zionists and ultra-Orthodox Jews as well as Islamists, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and refugees. The U.S. tells the Palestinians that peace talks, as well as Western support, are conditional on a halt in Palestinian steps to place more pressure on Israel.