Can anything else possibly go wrong for the Obama administration's Middle
East policy? In the past ten days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
has twice reversed herself publicly on her attitude toward the Israeli
settlements. Palestinians have refused her direct request to rejoin peace
talks with Israel, and Palestinian Authority president Abbas has said he
will not run for reelection. U.S.-Israel relations are in a state of frozen
mistrust. The New York Times and Washington Post, among others, are calling
Obama's policy a complete failure--in news stories as well as editorials. The
only thing missing is a plague of locusts.
The policy is indeed a complete failure. In ten months the administration
has managed to offend and demoralize Israelis and Palestinians, lose the
support of Arab governments, and reduce previously excellent relations
with the government of Israel to levels unmatched since the James Baker
days. Meanwhile, George Mitchell's trips to the region are increasingly
reminiscent of the Colin Powell visits in 2002 and 2003--producing little
but embarrassment. The Israeli "100 percent settlement freeze" and the Arab
outreach to Israel, early goals of the Obama team, are now forgotten, as is
an early resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
These disasters are mostly the product of an ignorant and belligerent attitude
toward Israel and especially its prime minister. The ignorance was most evident
in the administration's view that a total construction freeze could be imposed
not only in every settlement but in Jerusalem itself. But the U.S. policy
was worse: We demanded a freeze that would apply to construction by Jews,
but not by Arabs; could any Israeli leader be expected to support such a
position? One does not need to be a member of the Knesset to understand that
such a freeze was impossible for Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition as it
would have been for any Israeli prime minister--but apparently this fact
was beyond the understanding of Mitchell, Rahm Emanuel, and all the other
"experts" on the Obama team.
The belligerence toward Netanyahu has been evident all along, but is best shown
by the refusal to tell Israel's prime minister whether or not the president
will see him this coming week when Netanyahu (like the president) addresses
the United Jewish Communities annual general assembly in Washington. The
Israelis gave the White House weeks of notice that Netanyahu had agreed to
speak, would be in town, and hoped to see Obama. The White House reaction has
been to keep him twisting in the wind, with news stories several days before
his arrival saying the president had not decided yet whether to see Netanyahu.
Think of it: Our closest ally in the region, critical issues at stake (from
Iran's nuclear program and the recent Israeli seizure of an Iranian arms
shipment meant for Hezbollah to Abbas's announcement), yet the Israelis get
no answer. Obama and his "experts" may think they are reminding Netanyahu
who is boss, but they are in fact reminding all of us why Israelis no longer
trust Obama--and making closer cooperation between the two governments that
much harder.
The problems Netanyahu has with Obama pale in comparison with those of the
Palestinians, and Abbas's announcement reflects their frustrations. The best
example: Obama and Clinton lured Abbas out on the settlements-freeze limb
and then sawed it off. When they said a total freeze including Jerusalem
was necessary, he of course happily agreed. But when they abandoned that
doomed policy and instead began talking of "restraint," he could not climb
down. Abbas has threatened to leave many times before, and it's worth -noting
that he did not resign. He said he would not seek reelection next year,
in elections scheduled for January 24 but highly unlikely to take place
then--if ever. So he will be around for months more, in fact indefinitely if
elections keep getting postponed. His statement must be regarded, then, not
as a Shermanesque personal denial but as a protest against an American policy
that has weakened him and left him high and dry. Israelis and Palestinians
when I visited in October had two main questions: Who is making this Middle
East policy, and do they not realize by now that it is a disaster? At least
in this, one can say the administration has produced Israeli-Palestinian
unity. They are also united in watching warily as the president seems unable
to make a decision about Afghanistan. For the Palestinians, this suggests
he'll never really take on the Israelis for them, as they thought he might
back in January. For the Israelis, it means he'll never take on Iran, and
that they may in the end face the Iranian nuclear threat on their own. They
all wonder whether to blame Mitchell or Clinton or Dennis Ross or National
Security Adviser Jim Jones or the State Department's Near East bureau,
and each individual Israeli and Palestinian has a favorite target. But the
answers to their questions seem obvious: It is the president's policy, and no,
he does not seem to be aware that it has already failed. While he has backed
off from the early targets, he has not changed his attitude toward -Israel's
government, nor altered his basic approach: to push for negotiations over
"core issues" as soon as possible. And this is the fundamental problem
with Obama's policy: Like too many of his predecessors he believes that a
solution is at hand if only he can force the parties to the table. There,
presumably under American tutelage, they will reach American-style compromises
(pragmatic, sensible, realistic) and resolve the dispute, with Nobel Peace
Prizes for all. The only question is where the table is: Camp David, Taba,
Annapolis, Oslo, perhaps this time Chicago. This approach undermines the one
real hope in the region, which is the practical advances being made in the
West Bank. There, the economy is improving, law and order are maintained,
the Palestinian Authority is fighting Hamas, Israeli-Palestinian security
cooperation is growing, and mobility for the population is increasing. In
recent months Israel removed more checkpoints and expanded the hours of the
Allenby Bridge to Jordan. It isn't paradise, but it isn't Gaza either, and
life is better each year. It could be far better if the Obama administration
would abandon its doomed efforts to force an Israeli construction freeze in
Jerusalem and an Arab embrace of Israel, and instead ask them all to think
of real-world ways to keep improving life in the West Bank. There are many
ways this could be done, from further steps to remove Israeli barriers to
movement, to reliable and generous Arab financial support. The way forward
does not lie through fancy international conferences, and one idea still
mentioned as an Obama option--proposing a final status plan--would be
disastrous and unsuccessful. The way for the Palestinians to get a state
is to go ahead and build it. If and when the institutions are there and
functioning, from police and courts to a parliament, negotiations will
reflect that fact. But the argument that settling the borders and removing
the Israeli troops must come first is a path to failure. For one thing,
Israel will not and should not leave until it is clear that the West Bank
can be policed by Palestinians and that the region will not be a source
of terrorism against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel
left there. No conference and no treaty can provide such a guarantee; only
functioning Palestinian police forces that are already fighting and defeating
terror can do so. Such a practical approach would bring other benefits. It
would enhance the status and power of Palestinian moderates who are working
to improve life in the West Bank, rather than enhancing the status and power
of old PLO officials who thrive on endless, useless negotiating sessions. It
would put a premium on practical Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, rather than
elevating precisely the final status questions (like Jerusalem or Palestinian
refugees) that most bitterly divide them. It would increase the gap between
the West Bank and Gaza, thereby showing Palestinians that Hamas rule brings
only despair and poverty. It would press the Arab states to help real live
Palestinians in the West Bank, rather than the imaginary Palestinians--all
either bold jihadists or desperate widows and orphans--whom they see on Al
Jazeera. In fact, except for occasional visits by Jordanians and Egyptians
(who have peace treaties with Israel already), top Arab officials haven't a
clue what's going on in the West Bank, for they've never been there. Not one
head of state or government or foreign minister, not once. If George Mitchell
wants to do something useful, he could organize a tour; take a few princes
and foreign ministers to Ramallah and Jericho and Jenin, where they would
find that they are neither in Somalia nor some heroic battle scene against
Zionist oppressors. But thus far, the anniversary of Obama's election appears
to have passed with no rethinking of policy. Instead the administration
slogs forward, judging itself by its elevated intentions rather than its
performance. Clinton's pronouncements--demand a total construction freeze one
day, accept Netanyahu's more modest offer the next, then back to the wider
demands two days later in Morocco--are increasingly reminiscent of World War
I trench warfare: gain a few yards, lose a few more, while the casualties
pile up. There will be no progress this way, and the practical efforts that
should be at the heart of U.S. policy will instead be undermined as we poison
Israeli-Palestinian relations and degrade the trust both parties have in us.
Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations.
11/16/2009, Volume 015, Issue 09
The Weekly Standard
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