Talks about talks: don't hold your breath

So a delighted John Kerry has brought the two opposing sides together for "talks" in the U.S. The Israeli and Palestinian spokespeople got together just for an hour or so this week and have gone back to their masters to report back prior to starting the "talks proper" in two weeks time.

We should remain calm, and totally pessimistic about the outcome. In the famous Paris peace talks of 1972 there were months of preamble before they finally got down to the meat of the discussions. According to myth and legend they spent over a week simply debating what shape the table should be.

Behind Tzipi Livni, the Israeli negotiator, who may stand to the left of the ruling Licud party at home, but who  would find herself way out on the lunatic fringe of, say, the Tory party, is her boss, Binyamin Netanyahu, and he has made his own position abundantly clear. At a private meeting recently, he accidentally-on-purpose let it slip that he had a number of tricks up his sleeve to derail the peace process, while cunningly making it look like the Palestinians were at fault..

As for them, the diplomatic leaks revealed by Bradley Manning (who, like Mordecai Vanunu, will one day will be seen as a true hero of our time) showed that they were prepared to offer a number of wide-ranging concessions to the Israelis, but that at every turn the Israelis refused to move a single inch from their own position. All of which does not bode well for the ordinary citizen in the West Bank or Gaza. They will continue to be a marginalised people, denied their human rights on racial grounds while the Israelis continue to cite passages from the Bible to justify their policies, which bishop Desmond Tutu has described as "very similar to Apartheid" .

One of the levers used to bring down white rule in South Africa during the 80s was the sporting boycott: South Africans were, and are, sport mad, and the ban hurt them deeply. Economically they were on firmer ground, with both President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher happy to do business with that foul regime. But even so, the apartheid government eventually fell apart, as we can only hope will happen in Israel. However, while the US continues to regard Israel as one of its closest allies, and we consider Israel "our friend" as William Hague put it only last year, then I'd say the Palestinians will continue to be in a world of shit for some considerable time to come.