Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said Wednesday that the three-way summit between U.S. President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas failed to achieve a breakthrough but was an accomplishment for Israel.
"It was predictable that there would not be a serious development,” he told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew service. “Obama said that there needs to be progress in the peace process but beyond talk, not much happened there,” Shoval explained.
The summit was a real diplomatic accomplishment for Israel, he said. “The fact that it was determined that there will not be preconditions for starting negotiations with the Palestinians and that the Palestinians gave up their demands is a true accomplishment,” he claimed.
“The most important accomplishment – which is the result of many months of diplomatic activity – is that the President and his envoy Mitchell are no longer talking about a total freeze but rather about restraint. In actuality, they have practically accepted Netanyahu's approach that there will not be a complete freeze in the settlements and certainly not in Jerusalem.”
Shoval believes that the Americans understand that they went a bit too far in their approach to Israel. “The things that Hillary Clinton said, that the U.S. demands a complete freeze, including in natural growth, were too extreme a statement because no Israeli government could live with it,” he commented. “Even senior officials in the American administration admit that the approach and the attitude toward Israel need to change and that there is no point in creating an atmosphere of crisis between the two countries because of the settlements.”