WASHINGTON - Despite assurances by United States Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton on Tuesday that the US and Israel shared a "close, unshakeable bond",
the week-old crisis between the two allies continues to percolate.
Washington canceled a planned trip to the region by its special Middle East
peace envoy, while its top regional military commander warned that the failure
to make progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and the "perception" that
the US favored Israel in that conflict were damaging to US security interests
and allies in the Arab world and helped al-Qaeda and Iran gain influence.
"Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed
confrontations," General David Petraeus, the chief of
the US Central Command (Centcom), told members of the Senate Armed Services
Committee. "The conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of
US favoritism for Israel," he added.
Meanwhile, Israel and its US supporters ginned up what appears to be a major
campaign to blame the ongoing crisis on the administration of President Barack
Obama just days before the scheduled arrival in Washington of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu.
Along with Clinton, Netanyahu is slated to give a keynote address at the annual
conference of the "Israel Lobby's" most powerful organization, the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
A statement released by the powerful Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish
Organizations charged that the "unusually harsh comments made since [the return
of Vice President Joseph Biden from Israel last week] by members of the
administration have resulted in increased tensions" and called for Washington
to exert pressure on the Palestinians to return to peace talks.
The lengthy statement, which in part tracked a memo that the Israeli Embassy in
the US reportedly distributed to sympathetic organizations and congressional
offices on Monday, was a reference to statements by Clinton and Obama's top
political aide, David Axelrod, among others, over the weekend.
They called Israel's announcement that it planned to build 1,600 new homes for
Jews in Arab East Jerusalem - which is still considered occupied territory by
the US and the world's other major powers - during Biden's visit to Israel last
week "insulting" and an "affront" that undermined US security interests in the
region.
In a brief press appearance with the Irish foreign minister Tuesday, Clinton
denied that the contretemps amounted to the worst bilateral crisis with Israel
since 1975, as the Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren, reportedly described it
Saturday night.
"I don't buy that," she said, insisting that Washington retained an "absolute
commitment to Israel's security". At the same time, however, she noted that
Washington was "engaged in a very active consultation with the Israelis over
steps that we think would demonstrate the requisite commitment to this [peace]
process".
Coupled with the announcement that Obama's special envoy for Arab-Israeli
peace, Senator George Mitchell, would not travel to the region this week to
formally convene "proximity talks" between the Palestine Authority (PA) and
Israel as had been planned, her remarks suggested that Washington had yet to
receive a "formal response" from Israel to demands she made in a 45-minute
phone conversation with Netanyahu on Friday.
According to the Israeli press, those demands included reversing last week's
housing announcement; offering a substantial gesture, such as a major prisoner
release, to the Palestinians; and agreeing to peace talks that include the
so-called "final-status" issues - the boundaries of a future Palestinian state,
the refugee question, Jewish settlements in the West Bank, water rights, and
Jerusalem.
On Wednesday Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said demands for a halt to
building homes for Jewish settlers in mostly-Arab east Jerusalem were
"unreasonable".
Clinton was due to meet with her counterparts from the Middle East Quartet -
the European Union (EU), Russia, the United Nations and the US - this week in
Moscow. They are expected to rally behind the US position, exerting more
pressure on Netanyahu on the eve of his arrival in the US for the AIPAC
conference.
While the delay in Mitchell's trip underscored the administration's continuing
displeasure with the Israeli prime minister, however, Petraeus' testimony
before the senate committee made it clear that the military brass increasingly
sees the perpetuation of the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict as a major
obstacle to US strategic aims in the broader region, a link that Israel and its
supporters here have long rejected.
In his prepared testimony, Petraeus, who until now has been hailed by many
pro-Likud neo-conservatives as the greatest US military commander of his
generation and possible presidential material for 2012, argued that "Arab anger
over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships
with governments and peoples in the AOR [Centcom's Area of Responsibility] and
weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world."
"Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize
support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its
clients, Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas," he added.
Elaborating on that theme, he said, "A credible US effort on Arab-Israeli
issues that provides regional governments and populations a way to achieve a
comprehensive settlement of the disputes would undercut Iran's policy of
militant 'resistance', which the Iranian regime and insurgent groups have been
free to exploit."
"...[P]rogress toward resolving the political disputes in the Levant,
particularly the Arab-Israeli conflict, is a major concern for Centcom," he
asserted, adding that the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict had an
"enormous effect" on the strategic context in which we operate ..."
Daniel Levy, an Israeli former peace negotiator based at the New America
Foundation in Washington, said, "To the extent to which the latest events have
given rise to a debate over whether there is linkage between a broader American
security interest and a credible peace process, Petraeus weighed in today in
the most unequivocal terms by articulating at some length not only the
existence of that interest and linkage, but also just how front and center it
is to the military."
"What Petraeus made clear - and that should be a wake-up call for Israel - is
that the unresolved Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the entrenched occupation
are placing an increasingly unbearable burden on the US-Israel relationship,
and the best way to address it would obviously be to resolve that conflict," he
added.
According to a widely read article published by foreignpolicy.com last weekend,
the administration's tougher stance toward Israel and its settlement policies
over the past week was due in major part to growing frustration and concern by
Petraeus and other military commanders over the loss of US credibility in the
region resulting from Washington's failure to rein in Israel, particularly with
respect to the expansion of Jewish settlements.
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.
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