Israelis See Ticking Clock, and Alternate Approaches, on Iran and Palestinians

Israelis See Ticking Clock, and Alternate Approaches, on Iran and Palestinians
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/world/middleeast/israelis-see-ticking-clock-and-alternate-approaches-on-iran-and-palestinians.html
By JODI RUDOREN
Published: November 25, 2013

JERUSALEM — Israeli leaders on Monday condemned the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program as an exercise in appeasement by the Western powers and a delaying tactic by Iran. Yet many of them see the same strategy of interim confidence-building steps as the only realistic route to resolving their long-running conflict with the Palestinians.

Israel is outraged that, under the deal signed Sunday, Iran is not required to stop enriching uranium or to dismantle centrifuges while negotiating a final agreement with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany. At the same time, Israel continues to build West Bank settlements while negotiating with the Palestinians, prompting similar outrage from the international community.

Easing economic sanctions against Iran, Israel argues, will only remove the pressure that brought Tehran to the table in the first place. Yet Israel — as well as the United States — sees initiatives to improve the Palestinian economy as a critical companion to the political and security discussions.

Do these alternate approaches to parallel issues that are crucial to Israel’s future amount to hopeless hypocrisy? Or are they simply a sign of the profound differences in the way Israel views the two problems and its starkly different role in the two sets of talks?

“Looking at how Bibi views these negotiations tells you a great deal about how he’s seeing the world,” said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, using the nickname of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “Bibi’s self-image first and foremost is shaped by wanting to lead Israel out of the shadow of the Iranian bomb. His image is not driven by being the peacemaker, creating two states and dividing Jerusalem.”

“Both offer pathways that are incredibly problematic for him,” Mr. Miller added. “It’s like the rest of the world is playing checkers and he is forced to play three-dimensional chess.”

After years of railing against Iran’s nuclear program, and decades of discussions with the Palestinians, Israel suddenly finds itself facing clocks ticking simultaneously on both fronts. As Tzipi Livni, Israel’s lead negotiator with the Palestinians, said on Monday, “We have six months to prevent a permanent agreement with Iran that will make it nuclear, and six months to reach a permanent agreement with the Palestinians, which will secure a safe, Jewish and democratic Israel.”

Mr. Netanyahu announced Monday that he was sending a team led by his national security adviser to the United States to discuss the final deal with Iran, which he said “must lead to one result: the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear capability.”

But Israel is not a party to the Geneva-based talks on Iran’s nuclear program, leaving it mostly to lobbing grenades from the bleachers. And Israel views Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a threat to its existence, while the Palestinian issue garners far less urgency and is mainly seen as a problem to be managed in the hope of avoiding international isolation.

“It’s interesting on paper, but it’s missing the whole point of the substance about what each of these tracks are about,” said Yossi Klein Halevi, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute here who has written extensively on both issues. “There’s a difference between creating a state and stopping a nuclear program. It’s not the same dynamic.”

“This is an existential moment,” he added, “and the Palestinians at this point are a diversion.”

There has long been suspicion of linking the two issues, along the lines of the Obama administration’s promising Mr. Netanyahu it would block Iran from getting the bomb in exchange for his making concessions with the Palestinians. Such a trade seems off the table now, and many think Israel will continue to go through the motions of the peace talks started this summer only at the insistence of Secretary of State John Kerry, while focusing intensely on Iran.

The significance of the interim agreement for the Israeli-Palestinian issue did not escape the notice of Palestinian officials. On Monday, Saeb Erekat, the lead Palestinian negotiator, called it a “unique precedent” and “platform” that should be applied to the peace process.

“What happened in Geneva is a new prototype where everybody has shared in reaching an agreement to avoid war and achieve stability,” Mr. Erekat said in a statement. “We call upon the international community to make use of the same efforts in order to end decades of occupation and exile for the people of Palestine in order to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine.”

In some ways, Israel’s approach to Iran has echoed arguments long made by its Palestinian adversaries. Over the past few weeks, Israeli leaders frequently said Iran must be forced to comply with United Nations resolutions and International Atomic Energy Agreements that it has been violating for years. Similarly, the Palestinians insist that Israel must live up to prior promises to evacuate settlements considered illegal under international law.

“It shows a double standard,” said one senior Palestinian official involved in the talks, speaking on the condition of anonymity under an American dictate not to discuss them publicly. “If they expect to reach a solution in Iran by pushing more and more sanctions, why shouldn’t they expect from our side to push for sanctions against Israel?”

Jay Rothman, a professor in a new program at Bar-Ilan University on conflict management, resolution and negotiation, said both tracks were stuck in a pre-negotiations phase where the sides saw each other as “evil” and had yet to narrow their differences enough to define a common agenda.

“These are existential needs, and unfortunately when we play the negotiations game, they’re played against each other as if they’re zero-sum,” Professor Rothman said. “If we’re talking about interests, power, economic gains — those are bargainable. But in existential needs, the more I get the better, but the less you get, not the better, because unless you get your existential needs, you’re not going to let me get mine.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 26, 2013, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Israelis See Ticking Clock, and Alternate Approaches, on Iran and Palestinians.