Subcommittee on the Middle East and Nort

The Palestinian Authority, Israel, and the Peace Process: What's Next? Subcommittee on the Middle East and Nort

Publisher Marketing: Last July, Secretary Kerry, together with negotiators from Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, PLO, announced that the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations had restarted. Here we are now, 9 months later, and what do we have? We have a peace process that fell apart, yielding no positive results, leaving both parties with an even greater distrust of one another. In fact, the legacy of this failed round of talks could be that it ended up causing more harm than good, as it seemed to have moved Fatah and Hamas closer to reconciliation while Abu Mazen continues his push for de facto recognition at the U. N. There are laws on the books that prohibit U. S. assistance to any U. N. Agency that accepts a nonexisting state of Palestine, and the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act prohibits U. S. assistance to a Palestinian Government that would have any members of Hamas within its ranks. One has to question the amount of time, effort, and resources spent chasing the unobtainable, at least under the present conditions, when there is one of the worst humanitarian disasters in recent history occurring in Syria, transition to democracy impediments in Egypt, and Iran continues its support for terrorism worldwide and its nuclear ambition have not waned.