Talk of talks

TOUGH beginnings often make things easier later on. Inveterate Middle East optimists clung to this dubious reasoning as diplomats strained this week to get direct peace talks going again between the Israelis and Palestinians.

The proposed choreography is intricate. The peacemaking Quartet (the United Nations, the European Union, America and Russia) was meant to issue a statement on August 16th urging direct talks based on Israel's 1967 borders and aimed at setting up a Palestinian state within two years. The Palestinians were expected to welcome this and the Israelis to balk at it, claiming it smacked of “preconditions”. Then the Americans would invite the two parties to Washington, or perhaps Egypt, for a formal opening of negotiations. The American letter was to be vague enough for Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu to accept it without rocking his rightist-religious coalition, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would point to the Quartet document to ward off his critics.

None of this came off as planned. Now the likelihood is of an opening ceremony in early September. That would still allow direct talks to get going before Mr Netanyahu's ten-month freeze on settlement building ends on September 26th.

The freeze has been applied patchily, but settlers and their backers are hailing its end as a moment of triumph. They plan to mark it with a roar of bulldozers as building resumes in settlements in the West Bank. That, and Palestinian and Arab reaction, could scupper hopes of progress towards peace. But if negotiations were already on track, Mr Netanyahu could point to them as reason–or pretext–to stop a new building splurge, while still keeping his pro-settler partners sweet. Some Palestinians, however, worry that if talks start, Mr Netanyahu will beg an easing of any freeze in place to deflect his right-wing critics.

One relatively moderate minister has proposed resuming building only in the large settlement “blocks” close to the 1967 border and around Jerusalem. The Americans, and at times the Palestinians too, have signalled in the past that these might form part of future land swaps. What constitutes a block remains unresolved.

Diplomatic sleights-of-hand to start talks or to preserve the settlement freeze touch on substantive issues: the borders of the two states and the political and religious demarcation of Jerusalem. Mr Abbas came close to agreement with Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli leader, at least on borders. He wants to pick up where he left off. But having pinned his political career on these talks, his credibility, and that of the Palestinian Authority he leads, may be weakened further if they seem a farce. Mr Netanyahu's intentions are still opaque.

The minister of defence, Ehud Barak, has said his Labour Party will leave the coalition at the end of the year if there is more building and no talking. He wants Mr Netanyahu to swap his hardline partners for Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima party. That might help the search for peace. But it is not clear that Ms Livni would join Mr Netanyahu's government, even if invited.

Direct talks with the Palestinians may force Mr Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians into making the choices they have all been avoiding. “The time is now,” said Shimon Peres, Israel's president, this week. “You have to be prepared to pay the price of peace.”