When it comes to establishing a just and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine, should we let the perfect be the enemy of the good? Does a “good” peace even satisfy minimum human rights requirements? Can and should we negotiate with regimes with despicable human rights records in order to ensure regional peace in the Middle East? I take up these questions–some explicitly, others implied–in what follows, where I call for the Obama Administration to engage in a sustained diplomatic push with Syria and Israel in order to create the conditions for the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.

The Israeli-Arab conflict has inflamed the Middle East for half a century, and negotiations aimed towards the creation of a Palestinian state have stalled. While we should encourage Israel and the Palestinian National Authority to fulfill their obligations stipulated at the Annapolis Conference, current political and security conditions within both Israel and the Palestinian Territories are not conducive to reaching a final settlement.

This is partly due to domestic politics within both territories. In Israel, powerful far-right pro-settler parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government will seek to stymie any two-state solution, and Netanyahu’s own commitment to a two-state solution appears tenuous. Furthermore, security fears about Iran’s burgeoning regional power are widespread, causing Israel to reorient its foreign policy away from solving the Palestinian question and towards containing Iran.

Unfortunately, the political reality in the Palestinian Territories is also greatly discouraging. Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who lacks the stature of Yasser Arafat, is unpopular and politically weak even in his Fatah Party’s strongholds in the West Bank. Abbas and the Palestinian National Authority have no control over the Gaza Strip, which has been controlled by Hamas since 2007. Hamas does not officially recognize Israel’s “right to exist,” and Israel will refuse to enter into any final agreement regarding the Palestinian Territories unless Hamas renounces all its irredentist claims to historical Palestine.

While domestic politics in both Israel and the Palestinian Territories are crucially important in brokering a final peace settlement, regional politics play an important, and potentially dispositive, role in the conflict. The United States should work to shift regional politics, helping provide an environment more conducive to a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. In doing so, the U.S. may be able to alter domestic politics in both territories from the outside.

To that end, I recommend that the U.S. pursue a strategy of cautious engagement with Syria on both a bilateral and multilateral basis. The U.S. could tie its bilateral talks with Syria to a wider Syrian-Israeli peace deal, which would require direct Israeli involvement (and perhaps the continued mediation of Turkey, which has been active recently in helping to attempt to broker a deal). The U.S. and Israel have a strategic interest in such an engagement, even though both states currently have poor relations with the Syrian regime.

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