Hope for Mideast Peace or Just Another Photo-Op?

Last week I was walking into a Tel Aviv mall and a security guard wearing wire-framed glasses and an Uzi strapped to his chest, pointed to my pregnant belly, smiled a perfectly pleasant smile and asked, “Male Soldier or Female Soldier?”

“Excuse me?” I said, thinking I had perhaps gotten my Hebrew mixed up and had misunderstood the customary question: “Boy or Girl?”

He repeated himself and I mumbled something about “hopefully neither” and walked off feeling numb, repeating the age-old hope parents living in this region tell themselves, “Peace will come by the time my children grow up.”

But, as the name of a panel in an upcoming conference hosted by Israeli President Shimon Peres sums up, “Will there ever be peace in the region?”

And so I join in the collective sigh with war-weary Israelis and Palestinians looking on across the world today to the posh surroundings of New York City’s Waldforf-Astoria  Hotel where yet another attempt to jump-start peace talks will take place in the form of a tri-lateral U.S-Israeli-Palestinian summit.

We’ve seen it before: the flags, the blinding glare of television cameras, a smiling U.S. president, lots of talk of peace, and little hope for it on the horizon.

The glumness on this side of the pond is not just a case of sour grapes. It’s a feeling of “much ado about nothing” malaise that comes from over a decade of splashy starts with neither side feeling terribly convinced that this time, the “other” side will understand their needs, deadlocked in the political version of a miserable marriage.

The Palestinians insist this is no resumption of negotiations as long as Israel holds out on promises of a full-on settlement freeze in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the Palestinians to shout to the hilltops that yes, Israel is “the Jewish state” and to provide for what he terms the “natural growth” of the settlements.

Aluf Benn, editor-at-large at  Haaretz writes that Israelis should lower their expectations and adopt the U.S. step-by-step approach to peace efforts.

And so we look on as Americans scramble to make today’s meeting more than just a photo-op. Different options to make that happen are being floated: an announcement from President Barack Obama that peace talks are officially being re-launched or perhaps that another international peace conference is in the work.

But neither side trusts each other.

And both Israelis and Palestinians remain at odds from within. The Palestinians remain divided both geographically and politically between Hamas rule in Gaza and Fatah control in the West Bank.

Israel’s peace camp tries to speak out but have been marginalized and Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition members play down any significance to any progress being made in the summit or talks in general, envisioning a long comfortable road ahead for themselves, absent of concessions or meaningful dialogue.

I think about the security guard at the mall, still chafing at his cheerful militarism and insensitivity. But I know then when it comes to the question of peace in our time, tragically he’s probably the realistic one.

(Photo by Grant Neufeld)