Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is due to hold talks with the Palestinian National Administration Head Mahmoud Abbas next Wednesday in Russia's warm southern city Sochi to sort of unfreeze the Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. This came in a statement on Friday by the Kremlin's press service. Central to the agenda will prove prospects for a resumption of the Middle East peace process.
It is important that the scheduled Sochi meeting will take place shortly after the talks that the US emissary George Mitchell had on Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Judging by assurances that followed from Jerusalem and Ramallah the US special envoy had failed to bring about a rapprochement between the parties to the conflict and bring them back to the negotiating table. Israel and Palestine again accused each other of doing nothing over the stalled peace process. What's more, Netanyahu said that he is being overgenerous by agreeing to return to the negotiating table without preconditions any moment. But Abbas says he is prepared to resume talks only if Israel gives up the enlargement of old and building new settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
This is the stumbling block that has prevented both sides from resuming their dialogue for over a year now. Neither party is prepared to compromise. But then, it would be unfair to expect Palestinians to make concessions, says an expert with the Institute of Oriental Affairs of the Russian Academy of Sciences Irina Zviagelskaya, and elaborates.
"Actually, what sort of concessions could the Palestinians make, Irina Zviagelskaya asks, if they are the weak party to the conflict, the one that has no state of their own? Theirs is a tiny territory, which they control but at the gunpoint of Israel. So, they have very little room for manoeuvre. Much more depends on Israel, however, the Jewish State is in no hurry to make concessions".
That reluctance to make concessions has proved quite unexpected to the US Administration. Barack Obama admitted yesterday that he had overestimated his ability to influence the Israelis and Palestinians. George Mitchell's talks, just over, have borne no fruit. So, although Washington is not about to give up his mediatory efforts, it will most likely take a time-out, to work out a new line of action.
But nor is Moscow, another active party to a Middle East settlement, going to freeze its efforts to that end. Conversely, the Russian Parliament's upper house, the Council of the Federation, is due to hold a forum of Russian-speaking Israelis and Palestinians on ways to reach a settlement in the region. According to the Chairman of the Federation Council's Foreign Affairs Committee Mikhail Margelov, people's diplomacy is quite effective, sometimes even more so than official diplomacy. Therefore a decision has been made to arrange a meeting in Moscow of Israeli and Palestinian politicians and businessmen who can use Russian as a go-between language.
Meanwhile a Palestinian delegation is expected to be received in Moscow early next week at the topmost political level in a clear sign that Moscow is serious about its plans for a Mid-Eastern settlement. Moscow's basic objective at the moment is to bring the parties to the conflict back to the negotiating table.
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