If you were to ask Israel’s pugnacious Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, off the record, what policy he thought Washington should pursue in
the Middle East, he might very well tell you that it should be whatever he
tells Washington it should be. If he did actually say that out loud, rather
than just thinking it, it would be hard for him to get anyone else to agree,
least of all representatives of the out-going administration of US President
Barack Obama.
 |
| Benjamin Netanyahu |
The last few weeks of President Obama’s final term in office have
carried the mood of bilateral relations between the US and Israel to a new low.
The latest rift is over passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 by a
vote of 14 to zero. This resolution concerns occupation by Israel since 1967 of
Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem. It specifically underscores
Israel’s definition under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention as “an
occupying power” in the disputed Palestinian lands and affirms that, as such, the
Jewish State’s practice of building Israeli settlements in those areas is not
merely controversial and provocative but, “a flagrant violation of
international law” with “no legal validity.”
Though non-binding under the UN Charter and although its passage imposes
no sanctions as such on Israel, the resolution’s wording and its condemnation
of that country’s illegal settlement activities are the most specifically critical
for the past three and a half decades. The US didn’t vote in favor of
Resolution 2334, which passed two days before Christmas, but it didn’t vote
against it either. It abstained. And accustomed as the Israeli government is to
knee-jerk favorable reactions by Washington to its stances, this infuriated Netanyahu
who would have expected the Obama administration to not only vote against the
resolution, but also to use its UN Security Council permanent member veto power
to prevent its passage.
 |
| Obama's message has been clear |
But Obama can hardly be held accountable for this new low in his
country’s relationship with Israel. Throughout his eight years as president, the
US leader has been trying to send a message to Israel’s staunchly right-wing
leadership that current US policy in that country would hinge on achievement of
a durable peace agreement between the Jewish State and the Palestinian people,
and that the only way for there to be lasting peace would be through an
eventual two-state solution to long years of enmity between Israel and the Palestinian
Authority. From the outset, the US president made it clear to Netanyahu that
this would be a major priority for his administration and that he would be
expecting the Israeli prime minister to cooperate in achieving such an
agreement if he expected US backing to continue to be unconditional. That
message apparently fell on deaf ears. And US action (or lack thereof) regarding
UN Resolution 2334 is the most palpable consequence of Netanyahu’s obstinacy.
US Secretary of State John Kerry made that clear this past week when he gave
what will surely be one of his last major policy speeches, in which he took
Netanyahu to task, foregoing the usual restraint that Washington generally
lavishes in public on its top Middle East ally. Kerry went as far as to suggest
that Netanyahu was sabotaging any hope of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
He mentioned the Obama administration’s decision not to block the UN vote
condemning Israel, claiming that it had been the US intention to virtually save
Israel from itself, to keep it from being led on an erroneous path by “the most
extreme elements” in its government.
Kerry suggested that Netanyahu’s administration was maintaining a
long-held impasse regarding a two-state solution, adding that, “The status quo
is leading toward one state and perpetual occupation.” In reaction to a
sarcastic comment in which Netanyahu had earlier said “Friends don’t take
friends to the Security Council,” Kerry responded, “Some seem to believe that
US friendship means the US must accept any policy, regardless of our own
interests, our own positions, our own words, our own principles—even after
urging again and again that the policy must change. Friends need to tell each
other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect.”
Secretary Kerry’s impatience with Netanyahu and, indeed, with the
Palestinian Authority’s mutual lack of cooperation in laying the groundwork for
a lasting two-state solution to their decades-old conflict is not hard to
understand. On taking over the State Department from Hillary Clinton in 2013,
Kerry made getting the two sides to the negotiating table a major priority,
despite the fact that neither Clinton nor Obama had previously seemed willing
to dive head-first into that particular Middle East quagmire. They may well
have thought—perhaps rightfully so—that there was too much to lose politically
by pressuring their recalcitrant but primary regional ally at the risk of
undermining bilateral relations in the midst of rampant Middle East
instability.
But Kerry seemed confident that if he could once get negotiations
started, he could encourage the two sides to reach a “final status” end to
their conflict by the middle of the following year. Though that would surely
have been a stellar achievement of the Obama era, it unfortunately never
happened. In fact, by mid-2014, Israel and the Hamas Palestinian terrorist
organization were embroiled in some of the worst fighting for years between
Palestinian fighters and Israeli troops, which led to Israel’s controversial
shelling and invasion of the of Gaza, which suffered massive destruction and the
deaths of 1,492 civilians (among them 551 children and 299 women), as well as
the loss of a quarter of all Gaza City homes and the displacement of a
quarter-million people.
 |
| Netanyahu and Abbas, each blames the other |
Despite repeated attempts to bring the two sides together in some sort
of meaningful negotiations, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu stonewalled,
mutually blaming one another for the lack of progress, each saying that the
other was taking actions that made the negotiation process impossible. But
while Kerry seems to have anticipated the need to overcome Palestinian
resistance to meaningful and productive negotiations, he has been increasingly
less forgiving of Netanyahu, especially with regard to his continuing promotion
of expanded Israeli settlements in disputed territories.
The shared view of the Obama administration and US allies in Europe has
been that Israel’s unrelenting pursuit of its settlements policy has been an
effort to change “facts on the ground” in such a way as to be able in any
eventual negotiations to object to trading away areas “where Israelis make
their homes.” And as such, it is clearly a ruse to deal from a position of even
greater strength than Israel is already afforded by clearly being the most
highly protected US ally on earth, when and if the time ever comes for a
two-state agreement—to which Netanyahu pays lip service but little else.
In effect, it has been Prime Minister Netanyahu’s staunch resistance to
the Israel-Palestine Peace Process that has determined this latest toughening
of the American stance. And it appears evident that the Obama administration,
which fears reversals in the peace process under the current president’s
successor over the next four years, wanted to take action that would make its
point clear before leaving office.
Netanyahu’s comment after Kerry’s policy address to the effect that
Israel “didn’t need to be lectured” by the US secretary of state, was an
arrogant rebuke by the prime minister of a country that, indeed, depends
entirely on the United States for its survival, surrounded, as it is in the
Middle East by a veritable sea of enemies. What the Obama administration has
been asking for is the same kind of unconditional demonstration of solidarity
from Israel that the US has shown toward that country since its inception. And
in this sense, Obama’s administration has been no less the principal ally of
Israel than any presidency that preceded it, having provided sometimes
unprecedented military and financial aid to the Jewish State throughout the
president’s eight years in office and moving to ensure it of 38 billion dollars
in fresh aid over the next ten years. It seems little to ask in return that
Israel take the lead in becoming part of a two-state path to bilateral peace
between it and a future Palestinian state instead of being a very major part of
the problem.
To date, there has been a plethora of US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian
accords and memoranda designed to usher in a final peace process capable of
providing for a lasting solution to the conflict: From the Camp David Accords
in 1978 to the Oslo Accords, Hebron Protocol, Wye River Memorandum and Sharm
el-Sheikh Memorandum in the 1990s, to the Camp David Summit in 2000, and on to
the Taba Summit, the Annapolis Summit and the George Mitchell and John
Kerry-led talks from 2001 to the present, there is little left to be said on
what needs to be done. It is time for both sides to sit at the negotiating
table in a spirit of peace, understanding and cooperation until they have
hammered out what must finally be the affirmation of the sovereignty of two
nations.
The principles set by the current, outgoing US administration form a
simple path to peace: recognition by the Palestinian authorities of Israel’s
right to exist; the creation of a state for the Palestinian people and a fair
and viable solution to the Palestinian refugee situation, which dates back to
the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, when the Jewish State was formed; a secure
and recognized contiguous border between Israel and a viable Palestine, with
Israel agreeing to leave territory that it has illegally occupied since 1967,
but “with land swaps that reflect practical realities on the ground,” the
recognition of Jerusalem as the capital for both states, considering the
significance of that ancient city for the two peoples.
This can only be achieved by means of Palestinian and Israeli
authorities putting aside their long-standing feud and coming to terms with a
viable peace process. If this cannot be achieved by civilized means, then it is
hard to see how the future can hold anything for Israel and the disinherited
Palestinian people but a life of endless war and insecurity.
Comments
Post a Comment