Paris: Will the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations progress in the coming months?

I doubt whether negotiations will resume in the short term. The hard-line constituents of the Netanyahu government will make it difficult, if not impossible, for Netanyahu to continue following the announcement that the Palestinian Authority will seemingly work with Hamas. Should the latter revoke its policy concerning the existence of Israel, there might be a chance of negotiations resuming somewhere down the line; but even then there would certainly be serious resistance.

Kerry, and presumably Obama, are understandably fed up with the tactics and game-playing, which is why Kerry was allowed to make his statement about Israel being in danger of becoming an apartheid state. The government of Israel and many diaspora Jews have done what they can to make this analogy taboo – and with some reason since the radical hate-Israel lobby has adopted it. But there are many similarities between the governance of Apartheid South Africa with regard to blacks and the rules governing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The former was infinitely worse, but they exist on the same spectrum.

Now that the Palestinian Authority has obtained the right to join international organizations, it has new leverage. The threat that Palestine might be allowed to join the International Criminal Court hangs over Israel, again with reason, but membership would also open the P.A. to investigation for putative crimes. The best solution might be for both parties to join. The deterrence factor alone would benefit both sides and move Israel, in particular, closer to the contemporary world.