As Obama caves in, settlements are no longer of key relevance to the Mideast peace talks.
With divergent views on settlements, the Israeli Prime Minister and the Palestinian
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| Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech during a business conference in Tel Aviv December 13, 2010. Netanyahu hailed on Monday a U.S. decision to drop efforts to achieve a building freeze in Jewish settlements. REUTERS/Jack Guez |
The administration will now go back to low key, covert Mideast diplomacy, and hopefully draw some lessons in peace promotion.
Obama is likely to pay less attention to the Arab-Israeli conflict over the next few months. For a President who is worried about a second term, it does not make sense to spend more political capital on Palestinian statehood, as long as Palestinians are deeply divided, and the Arab world is equally polarized. Obama has learned the hard way that it is not smart to provoke the Jewish lobby on the issue of settlements when Congress reflexively supports Israel.
While the official U.S. policy on settlements has not changed, a serious shift in attitude has taken place. Regarding settlements, the sentiment has evolved from strong opposition to cautious tolerance, and now to near neglect.
During his presidential campaign, Obama expressed strong disapproval of Israel’s occupation policy. He saw settlements as the ugly face of the occupation. When the Harvard-trained, former activist became President, he still viewed the settlements as “obstacles to peace.”
The U.S. stance on Israeli land-grab worsened for a while, when the Pentagon and national security officials affirmed that settlement construction undermines the “stability” of our nation.
Then, suddenly, the White House started treating settlements as an entitlement of the occupier; Washington called freezing settlements in the West Bank a welcomed “concession.”
All along the White House has been nervous about pressuring Israel on its occupation policy. Obama got worried about Netanyahu’s feelings of rejection. The White House mood had to switch to assure Tel-Aviv that U.S. relations with Israel “are unshakable.”
In fear of offending the offender, Obama turned to bribing him. In October the U.S. administration offered Netanyahu a “short-sale” diplomatic package: 20 stealth bombers in return for a 90-day, final moratorium on construction. Netanyahu’s hawkish cabinet rejected the offer. The Israeli government theatrically reaffirmed its position of ownership of the contested land, and its privilege to build on it.
Obama yielded. And now the shift is complete: Peace talks can resume while expansion of illegal housing continues. For Arabs, the act of leaning on Israel to freeze, rather than stop, building settlements reflects Washington’s lack of opposition to their illegal status and of sensitivity to their intrusive impact on Palestinian life.
Three ideas emerge from the last two years of Obama’s ailing peacemaking theater.
First, Washington has proven unfit to convene peace in a polarized region, where America stands too close to one camp and too far from another. The U.S. lost credibility by trying to barter with Israel weapons for peace. The U.S. is also selling Saudi Arabia massive weapons, supposedly to enhance regional “stability.”
Second, Israel’s sense of entitlement to Palestinian land has escalated and reached a level of militancy among half a million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlers are Israel’s “party of God”: a Jewish resistance and a counterpart of Hamas and Hizbullah.
Third, peace is not possible when the American-Jewish community is not motivated, when Palestinians are split and when tension over Iran is growing.
A radically new diplomacy is needed to handle conflict in the Middle East. The new policy must be internationally sponsored, regionally focused, inclusive of hard liners and fair for all.
Expanding settlements is a policy of war waged with bulldozers. While U.S. official policy on settlements is clear, Washington’s tolerance for their expansion is not morally defensible.
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