WASHINGTON - Increasingly distressed over
the possible consequences of Israel's recent steps
to punish the Palestinian Authority (PA) and
consolidate its hold on the West Bank, a number of
prominent voices here are urging President Barack
Obama to exert real pressure on Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reverse course.
His government's announcement that it will
build 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem
and the West Bank and expedite planning for the
development of the area known as E-1, the last
undeveloped area that links the northern and
southern parts of the West Bank, is seen here as a
particularly damaging provocation
both for Palestinians
and the administration itself.
"Construction in E-1 would make it almost
impossible to provide a future Palestinian state
the contiguity it needs to be viable and cut it
off from East Jerusalem," warned Debra DeLee,
president of Americans for Peace Now (APN), a
Jewish peace group.
"Without a viable
Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, Israel is doomed to become a bi-national
state, which means an end to the Zionist vision of
an Israel that is both Jewish and democratic," she
added in an appeal to Obama to "personally
intervene with... Netanyahu and demand that his
government reverse its decision."
Hers was
one of a number of voices urging the president to
take much stronger action against the Israeli
leader, who is also withholding from the PA more
than US$100 million in desperately needed tax
receipts in retaliation for its successful bid at
the UN General Assembly late last month to gain
"non-observer state status".
Unlike
several European countries, notably Britain,
France, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden, the US, one of
only nine countries - out of 188 - that voted
against the PA's diplomatic upgrade, has not yet
formally protested Israel's actions.
Indeed, its initial reaction to Israel's
announcements was relatively muted. Calling the
moves "counter-productive" to the goal of resuming
peace talks, the White House simply "urge(d)
Israeli leaders to reconsider these unilateral
decisions... " After three days, the State
Department released a statement noting that
construction in the E-1 area would be "especially
damaging to efforts to achieve a two-state
solution." Obama himself has been mum on the
issue.
The relative mildness of the US
response to date has suggested to many here that
the president has no intention of taking on the
Israeli leader in a renewed effort to get a peace
accord, a goal he pursued with considerable
earnestness in the first 18 months of his
administration before essentially giving up
pending the outcome of this year's election.
Given the Israel lobby's strength with
both sides of the aisle in congress, Obama may
want to avoid more bruising battles in his second
term with Netanyahu, whose right-wing coalition is
considered likely to win next month's
parliamentary elections, and his powerful
supporters here. He may wish instead to focus on
domestic priorities, further reducing the US
"footprint" in the Greater Middle East, and
consolidating his "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific.
Nonetheless, there is little love lost
between Obama and the Israeli leader, who all but
publicly endorsed Obama's Republican challenger,
Mitt Romney, during the election campaign.
A hint of that bad blood surfaced this
week amidst reports that, in a high-powered,
off-the-record meeting with prominent Israelis and
their US supporters at the Brookings Institution's
Saban Center last weekend, former White House
chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who remains close to
Obama, accused Netanyahu of having "repeatedly
betrayed" the president.
Emanuel, now the
mayor of Chicago, singled out Israel's latest
moves against the PA, which he reportedly
described as particularly galling, given
Washington's support for Israel during its brief
war last month against Hamas in Gaza and its
lonely opposition to the PA's diplomatic upgrade
at the UN.
Some believe the president may
be waiting to take action until he resolves
more-urgent business, notably averting the
so-called "fiscal cliff" at the end of this month,
then negotiating a bigger deficit deal early next
year, and getting a new foreign-team up and
running.
Others, including former
president George W Bush's top Middle East aide and
a staunch defender of Netanyahu, Elliott Abrams,
believe Obama may be playing a double game by, on
the one hand, muting US displeasure with Israel
while, on the other, encouraging Washington's
European allies to distance themselves from Israel
- as they did during last week's UN vote.
The decision by Germany, which has long
defended the Jewish state's actions in world
forums, to abstain on the Palestinian vote,
reportedly came as a particular shock. Indeed, the
only European nation joining the US in the lonely
"no" column was the Czech Republic.
"The
sense that the Netanyahu coalition can't get along
with Europe or the United States may hurt
Netanyahu with Israeli voters - which is perhaps
the precise objective of this entire effort,"
Abrams wrote in National Review Online.
While such a strategy may indeed bear
fruit, others insist that the stakes for the US
are too high to forgo more-assertive tactics
toward Israel's leadership, particularly as it has
itself moved increasingly rightward. This is
particularly true in light of the Arab Awakening
and the rise of political Islam throughout the
Middle East.
"The clear trend is toward
both greater religiosity and greater
identification with the Palestinian cause," noted
retired ambassador Chas Freeman, a top US Middle
East specialist, in a recent lecture in which he
also argued that Israel's "mid-November assault on
Gaza has simply re-inforced the regional view that
Israel is an enemy with which it is impossible to
peacefully co-exist" and that Israel's land grabs
were making a two-state solution increasingly
improbable.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who
served as national security adviser to former
president Jimmy Carter, argued that Obama should
seize back the initiative from the influence of
the Israel lobby in congress, stressing that he
can overcome opposition there "if he stands firm
for 'the national interest'".
Last week's
UN vote, he noted, "marks the nadir of the
dramatically declined global respect for US
capability to cope with an issue that is morally
troubling today and, in the long run, explosive".
The greatest opportunity for taking action, he
added, would be in the first year of his second
term.
Similarly, Paul Pillar, a career CIA
analyst who also served as National Intelligence
Officer for the Near East from 2000 to 2005,
called this week on his nationalinterest.org blog
for Obama to treat Netanyahu much the same way as
he is dealing with Republicans in congress over
the budget, "by taking his message campaign-style
to the country".
"His appeal over the
heads of members of congress is a recognition that
the opposition party understands only the language
of political force. But Mr Obama also has had
enough bitter and frustrating experience with
Netanyahu to warrant reaching similar conclusions
regarding dealing with Israel," he wrote, noting
that policy toward Israel has become "just as much
a domestic issue as the budget", particularly in
light of the Israeli prime minister's own
interference in the US elections.
Moreover, he noted, a very recent survey
conducted by the Saban Center's Shibley Telhami
found that 62% of the Israeli Jewish electorate
hold favorable opinions of Obama, suggesting that
a "charm offensive" there by the US president
could yield dividends.
Jim
Lobe's blog on US foreign policy can be read
at http://www.lobelog.com.
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