‘Politics Failed’: Top U.N. Envoy Says Gaza War Followed Years of Weak Diplomacy
The New York Times
World leaders failed to focus on a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and risk making the same mistake again, the departing United Nations’ envoy in the region says.
In September last year, the top United Nations envoy for the Middle East peace process left a meeting with Hamas leaders in Gaza thinking that he had helped avert a major escalation.
The veteran Norwegian diplomat, Tor Wennesland, said he believed that Hamas had agreed to reduce recent tensions along the Israel-Gaza border in exchange for more work permits for Gazan workers.
But Hamas had bluffed Mr. Wennesland, along with the Israeli leadership and much of the international community. Days later, the group’s fighters attacked Israel, setting off the deadliest year in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It was a misconception that Mr. Wennesland now says is emblematic of the problem with the international community’s recent approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As he retires after a four-year tenure, Mr. Wennesland, 72, says world leaders have wrongly focused on short-term fixes, including small-scale humanitarian initiatives in Gaza, at the expense of a more ambitious push for a Palestinian state.
“The feeling that Hamas had no interest in the conflict — that was the mantra, and it was wrong,” Mr. Wennesland said in a parting interview before leaving Jerusalem last weekend. “I’m somehow blaming myself for not getting that, not that I was the only one,” he added.
