The start of proximity talks between the Israelis and Palestinians mediated by the United States seems to have been ignored by the international media. These new talks are the result of the White House’s intention to resume negotiations at all costs, even without any real concessions that leave a glimpse of hope for a positive outcome at the end of the four-month term set for the talks.

Pessimism seems to be the prevailing mood in the Palestinian Territories and in Arab countries (and Israel too) to the point that one might ask why the Arab League gave the green light to the Palestinian Authority to resume talks.

The Arab position was summarized by Qatar’s prime minister, Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani, who said that the Arabs do not believe in the Israeli’s willingness to reach a compromise but have judged positively the signals from the U.S. mediator. Arab governments have placed all their trust in President Barack Obama.

Among Arab analysts, those who believe that the proximity talks have a chance of success tend to be closer to the reality of U.S. politics for one reason or another. They realize that the recent dispute between the Obama administration and Netanyahu government has kindled a political debate in the United States that has led pro-Israel lobbies to openly criticize the White House.

While on the one hand it provides evidence of how much support the Netanyahu government can rely on in the United States, on the other, the very fact that these groups have openly and quite unusually taken a stance to defend Israel and oppose the United States government has driven many to ask to what extent they are actually acting in the interest of the United States, considering that they are openly challenging the U.S. administration to defend the policy of a foreign country.

The more optimistic observers also believe that only negotiations like those that have just started will allow the United States to exert pressure effectively on both parties to reach a compromise. Within the framework of talks, the United States could even submit their own peace plan to reach a definitive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Question.

However, some Israeli officials have already warned that an imposed solution would be bound to fail. Moreover, according to the pessimists (who are the majority), any U.S. peace plan would inevitably demand that the Israelis give more than they are ready to grant and offer the Palestinians less than what they can accept.

Some Arab analysts argue that since Netanyahu is convinced that he has made a major concession to Obama by tacitly agreeing to the freeze on new settlements in East Jerusalem and, more in general, agreeing to talks on the creation of a Palestinian state, he expects similar concessions by Obama to Israel.

Tel Aviv has actually been granted a first concession: accession to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has been greeted by some in Israel as a quid pro quo for the start of proximity talks, according to a custom started at the beginning of the peace process: Israel makes a concession to the Palestinians and gains benefits from the West.

According to many observers (not only among the Arabs), the problem lies in the fact that Israel’s concessions are practically meaningless: the start of proximity talks without any prospects, because the current Israeli government has made it clear that it can accept only a demilitarized state without geographical continuity and depending entirely on Israel from an economic point of view – namely a country that cannot survive on its own.

Considering that there is no real intention to reach an agreement on the key issues concerning a future Palestinian state, many argue that the only objective of the parties to the talks is to carry on negotiations for the sake of saying that the talks are actually underway.

This would allow the U.S. administration to say that it has made progress, though partial, and the Israeli government to ease international pressure on it, and give one last excuse to the Palestinian leadership, which is now delegitimized due to the lack of results hitherto achieved and to the fact that the mandate of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has expired for some time now.

Considering these premises, it is unlikely that the proximity talks (the very fact that they are indirect leaves very little reason for optimism) can lead to tangible results.

However, regardless of the great distance between the Israeli and Palestinian positions, the prospects seem even less promising in the light of the wider regional context.

The new start in Israeli-Palestinian talks coincides with the announcement that Washington has confirmed the sanctions on Syria that have been in force for years now. In turn, this announcement comes at the climax in the heated campaign of accusations levied jointly by the U.S. administration and Israeli government against Syria’s regime, which is allegedly responsible for having given Scud missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Incidentally, it must be noted that although Syria has contributed to rearming Hezbollah in recent years, there is no evidence that it has given Scud missiles to the Lebanese Shiite movement. Senior UNIFIL officers – the UN force deployed in southern Lebanon – have stated that there is no evidence that this movement of weapons has ever actually occurred, and even U.S. officials have admitted that theirs is only a suspicion without any tangible evidence (among other things, these missiles are considered to be of scarce utility to a militia like Hezbollah because they are large vectors that are difficult to maneuver and easily detectable).

The worsening in relations between Washington and Damascus comes almost as a surprise considering that in recent months the White House had made openings to Syria, making a decisive contribution to bringing it out of the international isolation imposed during the Bush era.

Damascus’ reaction has been harsh. Syrian television has fiercely criticized the decision to confirm sanctions – a decision justified, according to Washington, by the fact that Syria is still a threat to U.S. national security (due to Syria’s support to Hezbollah and Hamas).

Syria had actually made concessions to the United States by intensifying checks and patrols along the border between Syria and Iraq to prevent crossing by militia and extremist groups. Damascus expected that Washington would have supported the start of peace talks between Syria and Israel. These indirect negotiations mediated by Turkey were leading to positive results in 2008, but they came to an abrupt end because of the Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip at the end of that year.

Syria has always stated that it wishes to have peace talks with Israel (confirmed up to as recently as last weekend during President Bashar al-Assad’s visit in Istanbul) and is ready to sign a peace treaty with Tel Aviv in exchange for the return of the Golan Heights occupied by  Israel in 1967. The failure to return the Golan Heights is the main reason why Damascus supports movements like Hezbollah and Hamas.

However, to date, no Israeli government has ever been willing to return the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria. Washington acknowledges that Israel’s occupation of the Golan is illegal according to international law, but, by renewing sanctions, the White House has made it clear to Damascus that it sides with Israel.

According to Syrian television, stating that Syria is a threat to U.S. national security because it supports movements like Hezbollah and Hamas is like saying that U.S. security coincides with Israel’s security (since neither of the two movements is a real threat to the United States).

This way, from Damascus’ viewpoint, the White House has not relinquished the policy of former U.S. President George W. Bush, because it is calling for Syria to stop supporting Hezbollah and Hamas and cut ties with Teheran as a preliminary condition for a real opening (and without offering any guarantee that Damascus will actually be given the Golan Heights in exchange).

This hard-line position towards Damascus leaves very little hope for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks because it is unlikely that in the Arab-Israeli conflict a single negotiation path can lead to steps ahead without any real progress on the other fronts. This is all the more true if you consider that the Palestinians are still divided, with Hamas still in control of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian Authority in power in the West Bank (still occupied by the Israelis).

Moreover, Washington’s position certainly does not help to ease tension between Israel on the one side and Syria and Lebanon on the other. For months now there have been rumors  of a possible new round of fighting between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, which, in turn, could even involve Syria.

Although all the parties involved deny that they wish to start a war, they all accuse their opponents that they aim to start one. There is a paradoxical situation by which everyone fears a war and hopes to avoid it while preparing for war because it seems to be inevitable.

In conclusion, considering the Israeli government’s hard line, the divisions between Palestinians, and regional tensions pitting Tel Aviv against Hezbollah and Damascus – a confrontation set against the backdrop of the continuing Iranian nuclear crisis – proximity talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas seem to be little more than a diversion.

The picture is completed by the fact that there is currently no sort of coordination among Arab states comparable to the Syrian, Egyptian and Saudi axis that favored the peace process that led to the Oslo Accords in the 1990’s.

The Middle Eastern scenario has drastically changed since then. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the following rise in Iranian influence throughout the Arab world have heightened divisions making it impossible to reach an acceptable level of coordination among the main Arab countries.

The detente between Syria and Saudi Arabia sealed by the visit of Saudi King Abdullah to Damascus last October is limited only to a consent on the division of the spheres of influence in Lebanon and this arrangement is extremely fragile in the light of the difficulties that Lebanon is still experiencing.

As for Syrian-Egyptian relations, the long-awaited visit of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Cairo should normalize relations between the two countries after the fierce confrontation in recent years. However, Syria’s alliance with Teheran and the current Egyptian policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Question (among other things, Egypt is making a major contribution to maintaining the siege of the Gaza Strip controlled by Hamas) are bound to be two reasons for attrition between Cairo and Damascus in the future.

In the region and internationally there seems to be no real political and diplomatic drive towards effective talks.

Just two days before the start of proximity talks, the Palestinians reported what they consider to be the first Israeli violation of the terms set for talks because of the construction of some housing units by settlers in a neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Clearly, the fate of the talks is hanging by a hair and any incident can lead to their failure, while all the main regional issues are still unsolved and the risks of a local or regional war are still running high.