Paris peace conference: 5 reasons meeting is likely to flop

Secretary of State John Kerry will join representatives from more than 70 countries and organizations Sunday to talk about the Middle East peace process, but the meeting is unlikely to produce substantial results.

Here’s why:

Stalled peace talks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not going, slammed the planned conference as counterproductive Thursday.

"It’s a rigged conference, rigged by the Palestinians with French auspices, to adopt additional anti-Israel stances,” Netanyahu said in Jerusalem. “This pushes peace backwards. It’s not going to obligate us.”

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Israel insists on direct negotiations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) led by Mahmoud Abbas, as required under the Oslo Accord signed in 1993. Palestinian Authority President Abbas refuses to talk as long as Israel continues expanding residential housing for its citizens in the West Bank, an area where Palestinians hope to establish a state.

The peace talks are “hopelessly stalled,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator and adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Like rock ’n' roll, the peace process will never die, but under these circumstances, it’s not going to succeed.”

Terrorism

A truck attack in Jerusalem killed four Israeli soldiers and injured 17 on Jan. 8, the latest in a series of attacks on Israelis by “self-radicalized” Palestinians that further hurts the prospects of finding common ground and restarting talks, said Ghaith al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank.

“We’ve been seeing this type of attack on and off for more than a year now,” al-Omari said. “Definitely (such attacks) would harden the Israelis’ view.”

Terrorists demonstrate “the breakdown of Palestinian society," al-Omari said. “It means the need for peace has become more important.”

That's why the talks' agenda will focus on interim initiatives that could make peace more likely, he said. These include strengthening Palestinian civil society and governance, people-to-people exchanges between Israelis and Palestinians and economic incentives to move toward peace.

Thursday, French President François Hollande, who proposed the conference last year, downplayed the prospects of reaching a landmark announcement by the end of Sunday’s meeting. The conference aims to ensure international support for the two-state solution outlined in the Oslo Accords, he said.

“Peace will be achieved by Israelis and Palestinians, and nobody else. Only bilateral negotiations can succeed,” Hollande said.

Settlements

Netanyahu is angry with the Obama administration, especially over a United Nations Security Council resolution passed in December that condemned Israeli housing projects on land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank where Palestinians hope to establish a capital for a state.

The United States abstained from the unanimous anti-Israel vote, allowing it to pass without a U.S. veto. In a 75-minute speech justifying his decision, Kerry said Israel’s “permanent policy of settlement construction … risks making peace impossible.”

The decision exacerbated the situation, Miller said.

“I can’t imagine anything said or done now in any way, shape or form will remotely change the environment for Israelis, Palestinians or Americans in a positive way,” he said.

Timing

More pressing threats across the region have eclipsed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Amid Iran's resurgence after implementing a nuclear deal with world powers a year ago, Islamic State threats to the Sunni Arab establishment, civil wars raging in Syria and Yemen and divisions in Iraq, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict “is very low on the priority list,” al-Omari said.

The regional tensions, especially over Iran's role, have translated to tense relations between Obama and both Israel and traditional Arab allies, and less U.S. leverage to push through a peace deal, al-Omari said.

“It would be a bad time if you’re expecting the conference to relaunch negotiations” between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, he said. “Because the parties are just not ready, and the region is just not ready right now.”

The U.S. political transition to the Trump administration doesn't bode well for anything likely to emerge from Paris, Miller said.

“It’s nine days to go before you’ll get a new president whose view of the matter seems to be fundamentally opposite of what the previous administration wants,” he said.

Donald Trump

The president-elect has made statements and appointments that align with Israeli politicians more right wing than Netanyahu, who professes to support a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

Trump has pledged to move the Israeli Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. That would inflame passions across the Arab world because Palestinians want a capital in Jerusalem and, like most of the world, consider the city’s status unsettled. Trump’s choice for U.S. ambassador to Israel, his personal lawyer David Friedman, has written that Trump "will not attempt to impose a 'two-state solution,' or any other 'solution,' against the wishes of the democratically elected Israeli government."

Miller questions Kerry’s objectives in allowing the U.N. Security Council resolution to pass, making a speech Dec. 28 that Israel perceived as biased and attending the Paris conference, considering the incoming administration's rejection of Obama's policies.

“It makes the Obama administration look bad,” and it could be counterproductive because Trump is the “anti-Obama,” Miller said. “Anything that is done now by this administration becomes radioactive. It will either be reversed or steered away from by the new administration.”

Al-Omari held out hope that Trump might pull off another surprise.

“It’s too early to tell” how Trump, who has said Israeli-Palestinian peace would be “the ultimate deal,” will approach the issue as president, al-Omari said. “He defined it as the biggest deal he wants to achieve.”