Is Israel Facing A PR Debacle Come November?

The biggest danger facing Israel in the November peace conference may not be what foolishness Israel ends up agreeing to, but rather the possibility that Israel will have the sense and the wherewithal to not be drawn into an agreement with a man who has consistently failed to lead his people to peace in any appreciable way.

Noah Pollak writes:

The risk is that if and when the peace conference fails — these events do not exactly have a promising track record — Israel will have set itself up to be blamed for the debacle, and we will then witness a reversal of the paradigm that has been dominant during the past seven years, since the failure of the Clinton-Arafat-Barak negotiations at Camp David in 2000...

America, Israel, and the Palestinians have just set out on the most ambitious peacemaking project since Camp David in 2000, and Palestinian strategists are well aware of what has come into play — namely, the ability to chip away at the idea that Israel is a constructive partner for negotiations. Israel's reluctance to agree to timelines and specifics that it knows the Palestinians cannot fulfill will thus be portrayed as Israeli bad faith, and if not played correctly Israel could suffer a serious diplomatic and public relations defeat.

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