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How Obama's Change Message Can Go Global
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In their meeting Monday, Bibi Netanyahu asked Obama for help with Iran. Obama should make him to tear down his illegal settlements first.
It’s an obvious cliché to point out that he who controls the agenda also controls the outcome, but nowhere is this truer than when dealing with Israel/Palestine. There are plenty of reasons for this; not least among them is the complexity of the issues, the shifting alliances of the players, and the essential intractability of underlying conflict.
The press will undoubtedly focus their attention on rhetoric and body language. Did Obama sound like he meant it when he threatened Iran? Did Bibi come close enough to endorsing a two-state solution to satisfy his American hosts? These are, however, diversionary atmospherics.
If Barack Obama really means to remake U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, he will condition his cooperation on Iran with a public demand for the dismantlement of all illegal settlements built since Israel put its signature on the U.S.-sponsored 2003 “roadmap.”
A curtain-raising report on Bibi Netanyahu’s visit to Barack Obama’s Washington in Israel’s Ha’arretz newspaper on Sunday explains that the newly elected, hardline Israeli prime minister will tell Obama that “without dealing with Iran, it would be difficult to advance the peace process with the Palestinians. He will ask Obama to coordinate the American-Iranian dialogue with Israel, and stress the importance of acting firmly against Iran should this dialogue fail.”
Indeed, Bibi wants to deal with Iran and nothing else. Iran is a genuine threat to Israel’s existence and Netanyahu has bet his credibility on solving the problem, by hook, crook, or pre-emptive attack if need be. As for the Palestinians, they can wait, indefinitely as far as he is concerned. Israel’s ruling right-wing coalition has little interest in peace save the kind that Rome offered Carthage. That’s why he argues that peace with Iran is impossible unless Iran is first disarmed. Neocon supporters of Netanyahu like David Frum propagate this view as well. “The right target for the Obama administration’s urgent pressure is Iran, not Israel. The obstacles to peace are the animosities of Israel’s neighbors, not the personality of Israel’s prime minister.” In Congress, the language has already heated beyond the boiling point. Republican Minority Whip, and the party’s only high-profile Jew, Eric Cantor, told a gathering at AIPAC this week that "men are pointing guns at Israel, indeed at Jews everywhere, promising to kill us,” adding that Iranian President Ahmadinejad's goal is not merely building a bomb but "killing all the world's Jews." Cantor co-signed a letter to Obama with Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer—one that may have been authored by AIPAC, judging by its url—arguing that the U.S. must insist on putting peace on the back burner until it receives “an absolute Palestinian commitment to end violence, terror, and incitement.”
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When will the settlement drivel ever end? The problem isn't the settlements but the absence of a Palestinian polity capable for negotiating and enforcing a deal with Israel.
Doubt Obama will waste a nanogram of political capital to seriously twist Israel's arm when regardless of the concessions wrought peace isn't any closer. Forcing Israeli concessions always stiffens Palestinian resistance to seriously negotiate and is usually paid for with innocent Jewish blood.
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The settlement policy is colonialism in its most classical form: Removal of one people from land by military force for the purpose of making room for favored immigrants coming in from around the world.
The settlement issue is hardly drivel. Continued settlements is proof that Israel is not acting in good faith. We subsidize that settlement policy at over a million dollars a day.
That the settlement policy is colonialism is true whether or not there is any sincerity in the Palestinians or Arabs about peace. You are right that any evidence of disapproval with Israel launches the Arab world into fits of joy that it is about to be abandoned to its deserved heathen fate.
However, so long as Israel isn't coming to any negotiations with clean hands, it can hardly be seen as truly engaged. So long as we fund the settlement policy, we cannot be seen as either or neutral broker or as innocently distant from the conflict.
Dr. Klein, you have it absolutely right that Obama won't expend a "nanogram of political capital" seriously twisting Israel's arm. Our cowardly, political sail trimming, centrist president ain't gonna do nothing he isn't forced to do by circumstance. Back-burner Barack seems to be a fit nickname--though it is admittedly early.
And how exactly do you propose they develop a stable polity of their own when the Israeli government is the only one with ultimate authority over the land and resources?
Some problems have no solution. This is one of them.
CRAP...more CRAP...this writer is correct ...if you keep dogs in a cage for years and keep poking them with sticks sooner or later they turn into mad dogs...This is not a anti Semite vent but rather a Israeli vent...take a man's land, respect and future away and you get a bunch of mad dogs behind a cement curtain. Presently they are kicking out hundreds of people who have been living in Jerusalem since the 20's ...guess who gets the land?...I know as one of my neighbors family just got booted after 50 years...
'Take a mans land'...whose land are you talking about Bub!...maybe you should be speaking to King Abdullah. ...Israel believes in a two state solution. period!, have you forgotten Wye, Camp David etc...as for Altermans pathetic drivel, after Israels 'given back the settlements' who do they talk peace with ...Mr Meshal, Mr Haniyeh, Mr Abbas!, we are talking three states here...your ignorance is frightening!
There is a chance, albeit a small chance, that President Obama will realize that the country is sick to death of AIPAC automail campaigns, and more than ready to see the end of illegal settlements and Israeli bluster. The settlements have to go. Obama MUST stand up to this old, right-wing, obstructionist and think of the new generation of Israelis and Palestinians. He needn't be afraid he'll lose support in the "Jewish community." More than half of the "Jewish community" favors a two state solution and a cut-off of military subsidies to Israel. That's not anti-Semitic. It's pro-Israel's future.
AIPAC is the smallest part of it. There are tens of millions of Americans who care about Israeli policy because their Fundamentalist Protestant preachers tell them Israel's existence is necessary to induce Jesus to return.
Public foreign policy in service to religious myth--both Jewish and Protestant. At least the Jews have history and experience to misread in support of their policy choices; fundamentalist American Protestants care for purely religiously ignorant reasons.
The two communities are a great deal alike. I wouldn't argue your assertion that fundamentalist (Do you mean evangelical, apocalyptic, by the way?) preachers care about Israel for purely religiously ignorant reasons. There are many American Protestants--President Carter is an example--who have never bought into Revelations as a political roadmap. Most Protestants haven't. There should be equal concern, and in enlightened quarters there is, of course, about extremist Rabbis in the settlements and elsewhere who inflame the conflict with formulaic and simplistic rhetoric and naked greed for land earmarked for Palestinians. Perhaps the broader point is that it's time and more than time for secular statesmen to seize control of this situation, to impose a two-state solution, and to sidestep Israeli-initiated hostilities that would keep the U.S. from true negotiations with Iran that potentially could benefit the entire Middle East.
Israel will only take real steps to defusing the situation caused by its creeping expropriation of Palestine land, by the US cutting back, way back, on monetary and military support. Fat chance with the all powerful Israeli lobby and the Israeli held congress as Buchanan put it.
love this!
I'm for a 2 state solution under the auspice of peace and negotiations 100%.....my confusion is Netanyahu's claim that it starts with Iran disarming (something the entire planet should do) while at Dimona, in the Negev desert of southern Israel near Beersheba, joint Israeli-S. African (uranium suppliers) testing happens. Iranian style governing withstanding, is it justifiable to request a nuclear free Iran with out asking the same of Israel?
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Bibi is the bore hole in the two state solution. If he wants Palestine to acknowledge Israel as a "Jewish" state then he should acknowledge Palestine as an Arab one. If he wants to take out Iran, he better stockpile his oil cuz all the taps will be turned off on Israel. An embargo and other economic sanctions would result. He'd put Israel in an isolation chamber. The US should absolutely refuse to tolerate Bibi's raving vigilante mentality on that red herring. What the guys needs to do is start acting like a world leader instead of a truculent bullyboy. Give the Golan Heights back to Syria as mandated by the UN. Stop all West Bank settlement expansions and begin to return the land stolen from Palestine. That should take another 100 years to accomplish which, in mideast time, could be considered normal.
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