Early promise turns to dust again

Mention the Middle East peace talks and voices of optimism become hard to find. Since the US administration and the quartet's formal invitation to the Israelis and Palestinians to re-engage in direct talks, reactions have swung from Israeli newspaper Haaretz's Israel Harel's declaration that the peace process "will make war more likely," to the shrug of Palestinian shoulders.

In the West Bank town of Ramallah, at the central roundabout - a circle of lion statues adorned in Palestinian flags - a 500-strong crowd of left-wing political parties, independents and civilians express their anger.

The slogans demanding a stop to peace talks without preconditions ring through the nearby streets that bustle with shoppers.

Even here it seems that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is on his own - finding a voice of support is impossible. Suhbu Awad, who owns a trinket store on the main street, captures popular opinion.

"People are desperate. [Israel] doesn't believe in negotiations - settlements have increased. I don't believe it is going to happen, nobody believes anything."

After the dozens of trips made by US special envoy for Middle East peace George Mitchell to the region, the endless rounds of meetings, political wrangling and sweeteners the race is finally on, but nobody, it seems, cares.

This apathy stems from the belief that little will come from the talks. A caricature in the Palestinian newspaper Asharq al-Awsat shows a plane as a metaphor for a peace dove on an airstrip. The plane tries to take off but the wheels, the dove's legs, are stuck. Below reads the caption: "Direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians."

So what is causing this pessimism?

The list of reasons, ironically, is reminiscent in length to Tolstoy's War And Peace - disillusionment from conflict longevity, failed promises, political weakness, a split Palestinian leadership, facts on the ground prohibiting a two-state solution, the negotiators are reading from different song sheets, final status issues are intractable, Washington's desires as the mid-term elections approach, the list goes on.

It is true that the direct talks are not being conceived in love and goodwill - more forceful arm-twisting.

Abbas has spoken of the intense pressure from the US that, many speculate, is the cause for the Palestinian Authority's succumbing to direct talks despite the dissent of much of the Palestinian population.

Perhaps less obviously, Benjamin Netanyahu has come under similar pressure.

"After 25 years in the IDF I know how to recognise shell shock," says MK Ariah Eldad describing Netanyahu's exit from his meetings with Obama.

It is a merry-go-round of political jostling and all on it are too dizzy to find the off button of genuine disposition.

On settlements, bickering and incendiary language have left the start of the peace talks mired in confusion.

"We don't have an agreement on what level the freeze should be," says former Knesset member Yossi Beilin speaking to a crammed room of journalists.

This and the PA threat to stop negotiations should the settlement freeze end dangle precariously over the negotiations like an anvil over a pencil-leg table.

There is also no common ground in intention. On the table Netanyahu is jostling for focus on security issues, while Abbas wants the final status talks based upon "previous discussions."

This is not the start of negotiation say some, but of naughty schoolboys being made to apologise as they scramble to kick each other under the table.

Both sides have been brought together on a forced basis. This is "diplomatic innovation," says Beilin, and is "not the way to carry out peace talks."

"This is short term successful diplomacy," says Beilin, but "life goes on, this is about the future, not only about September."

But in the midst of the pessimism, critique and condemnation, there remains the niggling question - what other options are available?

It would be obtuse to advocate violent struggle as a tool for peace. If this needs historical weight, the social wounds of the violent second intifada, what Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath calls "our biggest mistake," have not yet healed in either society.

Dialogue is the human tool for co-existence. If the two sides are ever to foster mutual understanding, they stand a much better chance of reaching it through conversation. Orwell's dystopia of 1984 is a poignant reminder of the importance of language - remove dialogue and you kill ideas. Kill ideas and you limit possibility.

True, dialogue a tool. It is how you use it that matters, and the driving force for its use to foster peace requires something else. It requires desire, the will to bring a different situation about.

This will is not immediately evident in either Palestinian or Israeli society. Save for a marginalised few on the fringes of the Israeli left, the general conviction in finding peace is either subordinated to ardent religion or simple ignorance. The "peace process" suggests that the intention is to find resolution to war, but for those Israelis sunning themselves on Tel Aviv's beaches and dancing in the booming nightclubs, "war" is a distant notion. Swathes are simply unaware of life behind the separation barrier or indeed of a separation barrier.

For Palestinians the fact of occupation is visible. However, years of failed distant conversations have caused peace talks to exist outside of the frame of reference of most.

Faisal Saleh works in the cultural centre of Balata refugee camp, just outside Nablus. The camp has an unemployment rate of 40 per cent, with over 50 per cent of its 25,000 inhabitants living below the poverty line, says Saleh quoting the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics.

Life is not easy in this overcrowded square-kilometre concrete jungle.

"There is only one general doctor for the whole population," says Saleh. For people here the peace talks seem particularly irrelevant.

"They are not negotiating about the important issues - refugees, water, Jerusalem but about settlers. I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel," says Saleh.

So what then is the answer?

Martin Luther King Jr once said: "Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal."

If dialogue is the best means we have, and the will to use it well is key to success, then endless criticism of its engagement is surely self-defeating. It is important to hold governments to account, yes, but with cynicism, the critics may become part of the problem.

The pressure on leaders to make these talks succeed is less if the population for whom one is negotiating has already decided upon their failure.

Economist JK Galbraith in his book The Affluent Society speaks of want creation. Once people's basic needs are satisfied in an affluent economy, the rules of supply and demand are reversed - businesses must first create the demand in order to then match it with their supply.

The same concept can be applied to these direct talks. In Israel's affluent economy, the demand for peace is not instinctive. Positivity must create the demand.

Stirring up social interest or dare one suggest it, excitement about peace talks may help place pressure on governments to genuinely seek to make something of them.

While the temptation is to lose oneself in the intricacies of the conflict, to focus on the micro which viewed alone may seem intractable, perhaps the only way society can contribute is to keep the ideal of optimism alive.