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00:00 The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Bahrain as he continues his tour
00:04 of the Middle East in a bid to stop the Israel-Hamas war from spreading.
00:08 Well, earlier in the day, the top US diplomat met the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah.
00:13 He urged Blinken to, and I quote, "stop the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people,
00:18 not just in Gaza," he said, "but in the occupied West Bank as well."
00:22 Well, Blinken told President Abbas that Washington supports taking steps
00:27 towards the creation of an eventual Palestinian state in which
00:31 a reformed Palestinian authority would govern Gaza as well as the West Bank.
00:36 Earlier today, I had an opportunity to meet with President Abbas in Ramallah,
00:40 and we talked about those efforts. We talked as well about the importance of reforming
00:48 the Palestinian authority, Palestinian governance, so that it can effectively take responsibility
00:55 for Gaza, so that Gaza and the West Bank can be reunited under Palestinian leadership.
01:03 It's very clear to me from President Abbas that he's prepared to
01:08 move forward and engage in all of these efforts.
01:11 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking there. Well, let's get some more analysis.
01:15 We can speak to Yossi Mechelberg, who is an Associate Fellow of the Middle East
01:18 North Africa Program at Chatham House in London. Thank you very much for joining us
01:22 once again here on France 24. How productive would you say those talks were between
01:27 Blinken, Abbas and Ramallah?
01:28 Good evening. Well, it's just the beginning of a conversation.
01:33 I think there is very little trust among Palestinians in the United States. Even before
01:40 the war in Gaza, very few Palestinians believe that the United States can be an honest broker,
01:47 let alone after the support in Israel, now three months, the war in Gaza and 23,000
01:56 Palestinians dead, while the United States is vetoing time and again a resolution for a ceasefire.
02:04 I think the most important thing that the meeting took place, Secretary of State Blinken
02:12 is talking about a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, but it has to do
02:19 something more concrete. It's the same Secretary of State that two and a half years ago promised
02:24 Abbas to open or reopen the American consulate in East Jerusalem and it hasn't happened.
02:32 So I think we are at the beginning of a very long process.
02:36 Indeed. And I mean, when you listen to the kind of language being used by Blinken today,
02:41 talking about an eventual Palestinian state, and you listen to the kind of language being
02:45 used by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, I mean, worlds apart.
02:50 It is world apart. First of all, we need to discuss the end of the war.
02:55 This calling for a ceasefire, then who is going to govern Gaza? Talking about the reform of the
03:03 Palestinian Authority. Bear in mind, it's actually the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO,
03:09 which is, according to the Oslo Agreement, is the legitimate negotiator with Israel when it
03:16 comes to peace, not the PA. Need elections, uniting the Gaza and the West Bank and the
03:26 faction and having one government, not two governments. So there is, we are talking about
03:31 the long process, but it's the time to start setting some deadlines, setting some objectives.
03:38 And when talking about two state solution, because right now it's very abstract,
03:43 what kind of two state solution? What is the modality of that, considering there are
03:47 more than half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank, another 200,000 in East Jerusalem?
03:56 How can you create an independent Palestinian state? So this all needs to be discussed and
04:03 quickly let's remind ourselves that there is the last time that Israel, if the United States,
04:08 forgive me, was engaged in serious peace negotiation, tried to mediate one is nearly a
04:14 decade ago. Yeah, I mean, speaking to our correspondent today and yesterday in Jerusalem,
04:21 she told us today that the talks between Blinken and Mahmoud Abbas have been extremely tense,
04:25 some raised voices, possibly the same sort of tension in some of the other places on Blinken's
04:32 tour of the region. He's already been in Saudi Arabia. He's been in the UAE. I'm just wondering
04:38 whether that sort of pressure that Antony Blinken perhaps felt in some of the other countries,
04:43 he's now in Bahrain. I'm wondering whether that's translating into any change in position on the US
04:49 front or any change of tactics in the negotiations to try to bring this to an end. I think gradually
04:57 the Biden administration starts to feel the pressures from all directions, also domestically,
05:03 but definitely internationally, because there are clashes between different interests.
05:08 On the one hand, the United States says that this is not time for a ceasefire. In other words,
05:13 allows Israel to continue the war in Gaza despite the devastation there, despite the death toll.
05:19 But at the same time, it would like countries in the regions that are affected by this,
05:25 also domestically, their cooperation to ensure that the war doesn't spread, for instance,
05:30 in the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, or to contain the attacks on merchant ships
05:39 in the Southern Red Sea. So the countries, wherever it goes in the Middle East,
05:45 those two things can't reconcile. The United States needs to decide. But it's the United
05:52 States itself that keeps telling Israel that the death toll is too high by any standards. It's
05:58 extremely high, but it doesn't do anything to stop it. So in this sense, the United States
06:03 put itself in a very difficult position vis-a-vis its other allies in the region. But also, when
06:10 Blinken visits Ramallah and he wants the cooperation of the PA, he puts President
06:17 Abbas in almost an impossible situation. He does, but now Israel has got allies in the Arab world
06:26 of its own. It doesn't have to go through the United States to communicate with some of the other
06:31 regional leaders. And they are also applying pressure to Israel. Even Saudi Arabia today is
06:37 saying they'll sign a normalisation agreement with Israel on the condition that there is an
06:44 eventual Palestinian state. I'm just wondering whether this adds pressure on to Israel,
06:49 whether Israel feels that, when in the past that dialogue didn't exist at all, because there were
06:54 no links whatsoever between those countries and Israel. It doesn't seem that this message is
07:00 actually landing in Israel. And what Saudi Arabia, what Riyadh says right now, it's not even new.
07:08 The Arab initiative that was conceived in Riyadh is more than 20 years old. It's the same old
07:17 formula and the right formula that the Arab world would normalise relations with Israel as long as
07:24 Israel is ready to make the necessary concession for peace with the Palestinians. So it's a repeat
07:31 of this. And the Saudis definitely, under the current leadership, is more than ready to advance
07:38 normalisation, but on the conditions that there is a end of war in Gaza and then moving quickly
07:47 into a peace process and peace agreement with Palestinians to deal with all the outstanding
07:52 issues, including borders, Palestinians' independence, Jerusalem as the capital,
07:58 which Jerusalem, out of it is capital of the Palestinian state, and dealing with the refugees
08:04 issue. But at the same time, in Israel, there is right now not a government that is ready to
08:10 discuss it and no constituency within the rest of the country. Okay, we're gonna have to leave
08:17 there. We're out of time. But thank you very much for joining us once again here on France 24.
08:21 Yossi Mekelberg at Chatham House in London. Thank you.