WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has brought her usual limitless energy and commitment to revive the Middle East peace process, but the Israelis and the Palestinians, while disagreeing on everything else, are united only in rejecting everything she wants them to do.
Clinton hit the region in her usual whirlwind style. She held talks Wednesday with Israeli President Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, then with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Like Clinton, all three of them want to breathe new life and credibility into the moribund Israeli-Arab peace process. The only trouble is: Every one of them is a lame duck, and the rising, truly powerful forces in each community reject every core concession that Clinton wants them to make.
Clinton told Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement that rules Gaza and looks poised to win this year's municipal elections on the West Bank, that it had to recognize the existence of the state of Israel. "In the absence of Hamas agreeing to the principles that have been adopted by such a broad range of international actors, I don't see that we or they -- or anyone -- could deal with Hamas," she told CNN Tuesday.
However, the demand to annihilate Israel is ingrained in Hamas' charter and is repeated by all the organization's leaders on every occasion.
Ironically, while hanging tough against Hamas, Clinton is also trying to woo Syria, the historic main ally of Iran in the region for the past 30 years. She announced this week that the U.S. government would send two diplomats to Syria. Clinton's advisers see Syria as a linchpin in the Israeli-Palestinian question and as a valuable middleman in Washington's continued standoff with Iran over its nuclear development program.
The Obama administration also wants to avert any new clashes between Israel and Syria that could escalate into war. However, the likelihood of getting Syrian President Bashar Assad to mellow toward the United States appears highly unlikely. Even if Iran would permit Assad to defect from his loyal support and dependency on Tehran, Syria is also a sponsor of Hezbollah, the Shiite Party of God in southern Lebanon, and it provides for Khaled Meshaal, the fierce, uncompromising leader of Hamas, in Damascus.
Syria provided invaluable intelligence to the United States in helping fight al-Qaida and suppress it across the Middle East in the year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, but Assad suspended the cooperation in disgust at the refusal of the Bush administration to cut him any slack. Afterward, U.S.-Syrian relations continued to deteriorate.
To this day, Syria allows passage for mujahedin and supplies for Sunni Muslim insurgents who have been fighting U.S. forces in central Iraq for nearly six years. The United States recalled its ambassador to Syria in 2005 in protest of the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Damascus is thought to have had a hand in the attack.
Nevertheless, Clinton and her Middle East peace envoys George Mitchell and Dennis Ross still think they can bring Syria into the peace discussions. This idea is certainly consistent with the Obama administration's diplomacy plans for the region, emphasizing the strategic principle of engagement, rather than isolation, with nations and parties in the region historically hostile to the United States. But that doesn't mean it's going to work.
Clinton is also determined to revive the viability of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the Palestinians currently have two states, not one. Clinton and her boss, U.S. President Barack Obama, have bet big that they can revive the credibility and attractiveness of tired, old PA President Abbas. But what little respect Abbas still had on the West Bank was washed away by his manifest inability to do anything whatsoever to come to the aid of the Gazans when they were hammered by the Israeli air force and army in three weeks of retaliatory attacks for Hamas' continual rocket bombardments of every Israeli settlement and town they could reach.
Abbas Wednesday demanded that Iran stop meddling in Palestinian affairs. That is like trying to make rain fall up instead of down. Iran is the main state supporter of Hamas in Gaza and funnels in as much financial support and weapons as it possibly can. It isn't going to stop doing that just because Abbas told it to.
Clinton is also fighting far more powerful political forces hostile to her in Israel. Livni and her Kadima Party edged out the right-nationalist Likud Party by a single seat to remain the largest party in the Knesset, the 120-seat Israeli parliament, in the Israeli general election on Feb. 10. However, the left-center parties in all took only 44 seats. Right wing, nationalist and conservative religious parties took 65 seats between them.
Also, fleeting Obama administration hopes that the right-wing bloc would splinter were dashed, in large part due to a bad miscalculation by Livni herself. She refused to serve under Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu without being assured a rotation slot as prime minister. Netanyahu promptly rejected that claim and proved ready to bury his differences and rivalry with rising nationalist star Avigdor Lieberman.
Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu Party is now the third-largest in the Knesset and looks set to play a key role in the coalition government Netanyahu is currently forming, and Lieberman has left no doubt he is determined to block any serious concessions to the Palestinians that Clinton might propose.
Still, it's always a mistake to count out Hillary Clinton. As first lady, U.S. senator, Democratic Party presidential candidate and now secretary of state, she has always shown herself resilient, determined and remorseless. The level of commitment she is bringing to resolve the Middle East conflict far exceeds that of her predecessors as secretary of state, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. If there is one thing she can be counted on doing, it is to try, try and try again.
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