Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were cut off after the Israeli invasion of Gaza in late 2008, faced with the standoff, President Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, has pressed for the indirect talks during months of shuttle diplomacy.
Following the declaration of support by Arab League ministers for such talks, administration officials announced that Mitchell will travel to the region over the weekend.  Washington hopes the two sides will resume a dialogue, albeit via US mediators, more than a year after negotiations broke off.
Experts in the US are calling on the Obama Administration to make bold changes. 
Dr. Louis Kriesberg, a sociologist at Syracuse University, and a leading expert on conflict resolution, said Friday that the “Bush Administration policy on the Middle East, especially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a great failure, and actually made things worse in the region.
With the new Obama Administration, said Kriesberg, “there was hope things would be better.”
Kriesberg, speaking at The Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, praised some initial actions by President Obama when he took office “that underlined new sensitivities, beginning with his new approach outlined in Cairo.”
Obama, he said, named George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East, a man “who not only had experience in negotiating peace in Northern Ireland, but also chaired the committee that investigated the Second Intifada.”
But, one year later, Kriesberg admitted: “It’s hard to say that much progress has been made.”
 

Mitchell has been working hard shuttling back and forth between high level officials on the Israeli and Palestinian sides, “but some say he’s not giving enough recognition to other players – both in Europe and in the Middle East,” said Kriesberg, now Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Maxwell Professor Emeritus of Social Conflict Studies at Syracuse University, and the founding director of the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts there.
“This makes it look like an American-only show,” he said, “and that’s not good enough.”
Some things need to be “done better;” regarding negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, Kriesberg said the recent Israeli-Palestinian talks look tired, “there’s a need to do something new and fresh.”
He cited, as an example, the fact that the US Congress has a ban on all direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority, which has been in effect for several years.
 “If you want the Palestinians to be legitimate, you must strengthen them, and give them more resources to build and succeed on the ground,” said Kriesberg, who recommended changing the ban, even if President Obama has to overrule Congress to do it.
 

Kriesberg said another “very serious” problem is Hamas.  Without them being brought into negotiations, he said, “any deal between Palestinians and Israelis will be problematic.  But Israel and the US governments will not talk to Hamas.”
This must change, he said, especially as much of the Israeli public does not object to it.
He cited recent polls taken in Israel which show that “50 percent of Israelis say they support talks with Hamas.  And 66 percent of Israelis say they support Israel talking to a Palestinian unity government.”
The US and Israel should have allowed the Palestinians into the World Trade Organization.  Kriesberg said he just learned this fact, and it has yet to be reported in the press.  “No one knows about this, but a lot of these things go on and it’s hard to catch them.”
Despite all this, talks between the Israelis and Palestinians should continue, said Kriesberg, no matter who tries to block progress.  He noted that there are millions of ‘spoilers,’ — individuals who do not want to see a peace accord between the two countries and their people.
 “There are people in Israel right now who are trying to foment another intifada, so they don’t have to sit at the negotiating table,” he said.
 “There’s an infinite number of spoilers, including AIPAC, Israeli settlers, and yes, even Iran, who don’t want to see peace talks succeed, who are vested in not allowing these negotiation to move forward.  One must advise Obama to steam roll through these spoilers, the question is – how?”
Dr. Kriesberg criticized the current Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as “retrograde, terrible” while calling the Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minster Salam Fayyad as “the darling of the West.”
Critical of the Obama’s Administration’s policy directors in the Middle East, Kriesberg noted that attitude need to change in the White House to be able to change in the Middle East and rhetorically asked: “Is it [George] Mitchell or [Amb. Dennis] Ross who is involved in these peace negotiations? Obama has surrounded himself with people who don’t appear to hold the same opinion as he does in the Middle East.  They’re all part of the old regime.”