Thursday, April 22, 2010

What offer to the Middle East?

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) counting professionals with connections to the US military establishment published a couple of days ago a very interesting report regarding the possible and recommended security direction for a prospective Palestinian state.

Following the lessons learned from the analysis of three international peace missions - in East Timor, Kosovo and Lebanon - the authors are drafting the possibilities of creating a security environment in the Middle East, starting from the application of the two-state solution. An interesting proposal is to create a NATO-led military force, complemented by a civilian-led organism, able to handle political, governance and development matters.

NATO is assigned a big role in creating the premices for peace. but if at the military level this solution could be viable - given the long experience of the Alliance in dealing with difficult environments, from the political point of view, creating consensus for supporting a new mission - after the various discussions regarding the situation from Afghanistan would be more difficult.

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell is these days in the region with meeting scheduled with representatives of the the state of Israel and of the Palestinian authority. Since the beginning of this year, the political relations between Israel and US suffered several set-backs. In advance of the visit of the Washington representative, Israeli prime-minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed the standpoints expressed in his June 2009: the state of Israel needs the necessary security guarantees in order to accept the creation of a Palestinian state.

The optimism regarding the area must continue to be extremely moderated. But, in the same time, thinking about solutions and possibilities of implementation could open a door to a new level of the discussions. Given the failures of the last decades, any optimism is counter-productive if not a dangerous illusion.

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