Direct negotiations: Recipe for prolonging the occupation: While Palestinians only receive their “goods” after the negotiations end – if they get them at all – Israeli leaders are paid with legitimacy from the minute they enter the negotiation room.
This is the reason that the Israeli right, which until the early 1990s opposed all contacts with PLO leaders and demanded those holding talks with the organization put on trial, is now courting the Palestinian leadership, asking to negotiate “anytime,” “anywhere,” and “without pre-conditions.” This, as Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman understood, is the most effective way to enjoy national consensus and fight off diplomatic pressure. From the perspective of any Israeli prime minister, and certainly a right-wing one, it is very tempting to stay in the negotiating room forever – postponing indefinitely the near-civil-war that will accompany the evacuation of settlements, while earning the international legitimacy of “the peacemaker.”