changes in us policy toward israel/palestine - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 05-13-2009, 08:13 AM

ok so it's obvious that the obama administration is going to change the course american relations with israel away from the total passivity/absolute approval of anything and everything done by the israeli right that was characteristic of the bush administration to something else, perhaps more rational, certainly more even-handed.

this editorial gives an idea of what's happening:

Quote:

Progress is doomed if Obama is merely a cleverer version of Bush

At next week's US-Israel summit, a change in mood music will not be enough. A radical shift in strategy is needed

o Jonathan Freedland
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 12 May 2009 23.00 BST

Binyamin Netanyahu can comfort himself with one thought as he heads to Washington next week. At least when he stands alongside a popular US president who radically disagrees with him on the future of the Middle East, it will not be the first time. Netanyahu will be able to draw on the memory of a similarly tense encounter back in 1996 – the day, shortly after his election victory, when he had to make nice with a visibly chilly Bill Clinton, who had all but campaigned for Bibi's opponent.

So presidential froideur is no novelty for the new-old Israeli prime minister. He is used to dealing with Democrats who would much prefer not to be dealing with him. He knows his job is to ignore all that and make next Monday's meeting work. There is nothing that matters to Israeli leaders more than their relationship with Washington. Screw it up and they can end up out of a job (as Bibi's mentor, Yitzhak Shamir, found out the hard way when he clashed with the first George Bush). People often like to criticise Israel as a law unto itself. But the reality is there's one voice that Israel listens to intently: the one located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. London doesn't carry quite the same weight, as David Miliband might discover today when he meets Israel's new hardline foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

So the stakes could not be higher for the first Netanyahu-Obama summit. At last we should learn exactly how the Likud leader plans to manage the Israel-Palestine conflict – and, more important, we should discover the same about Barack Obama.

There has been plenty of hyperventilating talk of a "showdown" in DC. That is unlikely. Neither side needs that right now; and Netanyahu is skilled enough a PR man to make sure things look good. Journalists will do their best to prise the words "two-state solution" from Bibi's lips, given that he has still not committed to it. He will certainly win big headlines if he utters the magic formula, but he's a canny enough operator to wriggle out of the question.

Still, even if the leaders do their best to conceal it, there can be no denying that Israel and the US stand further apart now than at any time in the last eight years. For those of us who believe that George Bush was a disaster for Israeli-Palestinian peace, any break from that era counts as good news.

Witness the speech that Joe Biden, the vice-president, gave to the pro-Israel lobby Aipac last week. "You're not going to like my saying this," he began, demanding that Israel work for a two-state solution and build no "more settlements, dismantle existing outposts, and allow the Palestinians freedom of omgmovement". Nor would Biden be content with mere promises. "This is a 'show me' deal – not based on faith – show me …"

Or take the leaked word of the national security adviser, James Jones, promising that the new administration would be "forceful" with Israel. Note too the Israeli angst that Obama will next month deliver a speech detailing his vision for the Middle East not in Jerusalem but in Cairo – with no promise to visit Israel either before or afterwards. It may not sound like much, but the Israeli high command had grown used to different treatment: in the Bush years, they were consulted constantly. Now they are getting a very different message.

"The attention we're giving Middle East peace is a change," one senior administration official told me yesterday, recalling Bush's 2001 decision to put the entire issue on ice. "Holding both sides equally to account is a change," he adds. Above all, Obama rightly believes that true backing for Israel does not consist in repeated omgdeclarations of support. "Part of helping Israel is solving this goddamn problem," says that official, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

All that is encouragingly un-Bush. But some in Israel suggest these actions are mere variations in the mood music, confident that the underlying US position will not shift. They draw comfort from that. The rest of us should be alarmed.

This conflict will not be solved by simply implementing the old Bush approach with more skill. Obama mustn't be Obama on the outside and Bush on the inside. The approach itself has to change and change radically.

Start with the Bush assumption that peace could be made with the Fatah-ruled West Bank alone, shutting out Gaza and Hamas as if they didn't exist. That approach is surely doomed: peace has to be made with the entire Palestinian people, not just one half of it. The previous US administration actively enforced the Hamas-Fatah split, favouring the latter over the former and refusing to accept a Palestinian unity government. The Obama administration has to avoid that trap.

The Bush team paid no heed to the landmark Arab Peace Initiative, under which the entire Arab world offered normalised relations with Israel in return for a withdrawal to the 1967 lines. Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, has by contrast hailed the plan; Jordan's King Abdullah said this week it would form the heart of Obama's vision.

The great merit of this approach is that it would shrink down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, letting it be dwarfed by the prize of a larger regional peace. Israel could even settle with Hamas, which would be merely one of 57 Arab or Muslim states reconciling with Israel. What's more, it would represent a welcome break from the never-ending, futile bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that constituted Bush's failed Annapolis process.

But there is a danger. The US-based analyst Daniel Levy warns that the "problem with bilateralism was not the absence of the Arab states but the absence of the United States". The biggest change Obama could make from his predecessor is to have the US directly and energetically involved in peacemaking. That means more than chairing talks. It could even entail allaying Israeli security concerns by promising a US-led military force to watch over vacated omgterritory: the UN force in East Timor might be a model.

Which brings us to settlements. Bush indulged them, even authorising the largest settlement blocs. Previous US administrations had sought a settlement freeze – but allowing for "natural growth". That simply opened up endless negotiations with Israel over the precise definition of growth, debating the status of specific housing units. It's a dead end. Obama should simply demand an end to all settlement expansion – and refuse to get into hair-splitting argument.

Bibi will want to talk about none of this next week. He would prefer the focus to be Iran and its nuclear omgprogramme. Obama should heed those Israeli fears, which are real. But he should also insist that Israeli-Palestinian peace cannot wait on the Iranian omgquestion. The two have to be pursued at the same time. Indeed, if Obama can show on-the-ground progress on the Palestinian issue, he is more likely to win broader Arab and Muslim support to the cause of omgrestraining Iran.

Obama has enormous global political capital. He has a better chance than most of his predecessors at achieving the Middle East peace that eluded them – but only if he shows an iron determination to avoid their mistakes.

Progress is doomed if Obama is merely a cleverer version of Bush | Jonathan Freedland | Comment is free | The Guardian

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meanwhile it's not quite as though aipac and it's conservative buddies have exactly rolled over. here's a link to a piece from alternet which outlines the "problem" that faces the neo-cons, the source of which is accurate information on the israel/palestine question. the whipping boy is charles krauthammer, a tool of considerable import. but it could be almost anyone from the right:

How to Make the Neocons Crazy About the Middle East: Tell Them the Truth | ForeignPolicy | AlterNet

and here are a couple useful visual aids in the form of maps.

this map of the west bank showing israeli settlements and roadblocks:

La Cisjordanie occupée

and this is of palestine as it under the israeli "generous offer"----an archipelago. superimpose the two maps and you get a pretty clear sense of just how far from viable this ludicrous proposal really is:

L'archipel de Palestine orientale

i put all this stuff here to pose a very simple question.

how do you think the obama administration is going to change american policy toward israel?
what direction do you think the administration *should* move in?
what outcomes do you see as desirable for the region?

Willravel · 05-13-2009, 08:53 AM

how do you think the obama administration is going to change american policy toward israel?
They aren't going to do much. I suspect we'll take a middle of the road position, where we kinda hint to Israel that he might, maybe, sorta, kinda consider a two state solution, but say it so softly that Israel may not even hear it.
what direction do you think the administration *should* move in?
An immediate peace treaty (not just a ceasefire) halting hostilities will need to be signed right off the bat, with real consequences for breaking said treaty.
For Israel: Revert to 1967 borders, stop supplying Israel with arms and send in nuclear inspectors.
For Palestine: In exchange for the reversion to 1967 borders, Hamas will be held responsible for any rocket fire or gun fire into Israel or attacks on Israeli citizens. After a moment's breath to settle into old and legal national boundaries, we'll need to get Palestine back on a road to stability. This means allowing all food and medical supplies to move freely into Palestine. The obvious course of action is performance based lifting of the embargo. We, the "international community" (US, EU, UN and Russia) will set goals for stability in Palestine, such as developing infrastructure and certain amounts of time without attacks on Israel. Each time they meet a goal, we end the embargo on something. Call it socioeconomic positive reinforcement. The hope is that, after goods start to flow back into Palestine and poverty begins to shrink, the country will become a great deal more stable.
what outcomes do you see as desirable for the region?
Personally, I'd like to see Jerusalem made into international soil. The place is a powder keg and no one country should have control over it.

I'd also like to see Palestinians given their state so that Israel's neighbors run out of excuses to call for it's destruction. If Palestine is free and is becoming a stable and reliable nation and Iran is still calling for Israel's destruction, we get to call bullshit.

Finally, I'd like to see Zionism die out in my lifetime. It's radical religious fundamentalism and it has no place in the 21st century.

percy · 05-13-2009, 10:29 AM

The US doesn't have enough money and gifts to buy Israel into accepting a two state solution. If Obama pushes hard over the next year or two in that direction, he will be a one term president.

As far as borders go? They will keep expanding each day as more illegal settlements go up.

Willravel · 05-13-2009, 10:37 AM

We don't need gifts with Israel, all we need is to demonstrate we're willing to stop sending them a giant check and tons of military supplies. We need to prosecute members of AIPAC. They've been misbehaving for quite some time, and it's time for punitive measures.

Baraka_Guru · 05-29-2009, 06:30 AM

I don't see the Obama administration changing policy much. I see him "picking up the torch" of previous administrations.

I'd like to see Obama take the approach beyond politics and into human rights and humanitarian concerns. There needs to be a minimum standard of living created for the Palestinians. This is a more immediate concern than settling political differences.

The bottom line is that Palestinians needs some autonomy when it comes to life's necessities. Israel isn't doing enough.

I've come here because I came across this:

Quote:

Israelis get four-fifths of scarce West Bank water, says World Bank
Palestinians losing out in access to vital shared aquifer in the occupied territories

A deepening drought in the Middle East is aggravating a dispute over water resources after the World Bank found that Israel is taking four times as much water as the Palestinians from a vital shared aquifer.

The region faces a fifth consecutive year of drought this summer, but the World Bank report found huge disparities in water use between Israelis and Palestinians, although both share the mountain aquifer that runs the length of the occupied West Bank. Palestinians have access to only a fifth of the water supply, while Israel, which controls the area, takes the rest, the bank said.

Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water a person each year, against 75 cubic metres for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans, the bank said. Increasingly, West Bank Palestinians must rely on water bought from the Israeli national water company, Mekorot.

In some areas of the West Bank, Palestinians are surviving on as little as 10 to 15 litres a person each day, which is at or below humanitarian disaster response levels recommended to avoid epidemics. In Gaza, where Palestinians rely on an aquifer that has become increasingly saline and polluted, the situation is worse. Only 5%-10% of the available water is clean enough to drink.

The World Bank report, published last month, provoked sharp criticism from Israel, which disputed the figures and the scale of the problem on the Palestinian side. But others have welcomed the study and its findings.

Gidon Bromberg, the Israeli head of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said there was a clear failure to meet basic water needs for both Israelis and Palestinians, and that Israelis were taking "the lion's share".

"The bottom line is there is a severe water crisis out there, predominantly on the Palestinian side, and it will be felt even worse this coming summer," Bromberg said at a conference on the issue in Jerusalem.

He said the Joint Water Committee, established in 1995 with Israelis and Palestinians as an interim measure under the Oslo peace accords, had failed to produce results and needed reform.

The World Bank report said the hopes that the Oslo accords might bring water resources for a viable Palestinian state and improve the life of Palestinians had "only very partially been realised".

It said failings in water resource and management and chronic underinvestment were to blame. In Gaza, the continued Israeli economic blockade played a key role in preventing maintenance and construction of sewage and water projects. In the West Bank, Israeli military controls over the Palestinians were a factor, with Palestinians still waiting for approval on 143 water projects.

"We consider that the efficiency of our aid in the current situation is compromised," said Pier Mantovani, a Middle East water specialist for the World Bank, which is an important source of aid for the Palestinians.

Most went on short-term emergency projects with limited long-term strategic value. It was a "piecemeal, ad hoc" approach, he said.

Yossi Dreisen, a former official and now adviser at the Israeli water authority, disputed the Bank's findings and said many remarks in the report were "not correct". He produced figures suggesting Israeli water consumption per person had fallen since 1967, when Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, while Palestinian consumption had risen.

Israel argues that the water problem should be solved by finding new sources, through desalination and water treatment.

"There is not enough water in this area," said Dreisen. "Something must be done. The solution where one is giving water to the other is not acceptable to us."

However, Fuad Bateh, an adviser to the Palestinian water authority, said Israel continued to have obligations under international law as the occupying power and should allow Palestinians water resources through an "equitable and reasonable allocation in accordance with international law".

He accepted that there was a lack of institutional development and capacity on the Palestinian side, but he said the Palestinians were caught in an unequal, asymmetric dispute. Palestinians had not been allowed to develop any new production wells in the West Bank since the 1967 war.

"Palestinians have no say in the Israeli development of these shared, trans-boundary, water resources," he said. "It is a situation in which Israel has a de facto veto over Palestinian water development."

Israelis get four times more water than Palestinians, says World Bank report | World news | guardian.co.uk

roachboy · 05-29-2009, 07:10 AM

i've been posting stuff about the recent shifts in the obama administration's policy toward israel in the "iran/nuclear threat to israel" thread because, as i argued there, i see a linkage between these changes and the floating of the story about iran over the past 10 days or so.

the shift is pretty significant, at least in appearance: the administration is demanding an end to the settlement program. netanyahu's government has refused to stop it. the obama administration then said it was "willing to press the point."

but the release of infotainment about this tussle was timed out around yesterday's meeting with abbas...

anyway, we're at an interesting moment....rhetorically and in terms of the way israel is framed which follows from that, there is a shift. there is certainly a shift away from the unconditional support of the israeli right/wholesale spinelessness of the bush people.
but how far things will move really....it's hard to say at this point.

first test will be finding out what "pressing the point" means.

Baraka_Guru · 05-29-2009, 07:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

first test will be finding out what "pressing the point" means.

I'm guessing it includes statements from the U.S. that Israel can choose to ignore or refuse without consequences. Israel can do what it wants, and the U.S. is temporarily off the hook. Isn't that how the game it played?

roachboy · 05-29-2009, 07:23 AM

it certainly has been the way the game is played.
but i don't remember other administrations making the fact of the settlements and their expansion into a central problem, particularly not so early in the game.

personally, i think that israel really fucked up when it went into gaza at the end of the bush period because the bush period was coming to an end. i think they drained away whatever remaining resonances there might have been around the language that the right had used since at least sharon's term as prime minister to box in the united states by co-opting the discourse of "terror" (because israel had long exploited it in framing the palestinians and their political motivations, so in a sense this was easy)...

gaza made reality visible.

what's been happening in the west bank is not new; it is not a sudden development. but awareness of it in the united states seems to have changed. so long as the discourse of "terrorism" was operative, it seems that the realities on the ground for most palestinians could be erased behind it. gaza changed that.

but it's still too early to know whether we're in a different game or the same one.

05-29-2009, 07:10 AM	#6 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i've been posting stuff about the recent shifts in the obama administration's policy toward israel in the "iran/nuclear threat to israel" thread because, as i argued there, i see a linkage between these changes and the floating of the story about iran over the past 10 days or so. the shift is pretty significant, at least in appearance: the administration is demanding an end to the settlement program. netanyahu's government has refused to stop it. the obama administration then said it was "willing to press the point." but the release of infotainment about this tussle was timed out around yesterday's meeting with abbas... anyway, we're at an interesting moment....rhetorically and in terms of the way israel is framed which follows from that, there is a shift. there is certainly a shift away from the unconditional support of the israeli right/wholesale spinelessness of the bush people. but how far things will move really....it's hard to say at this point. first test will be finding out what "pressing the point" means. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-29-2009, 07:23 AM	#8 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	it certainly has been the way the game is played. but i don't remember other administrations making the fact of the settlements and their expansion into a central problem, particularly not so early in the game. personally, i think that israel really fucked up when it went into gaza at the end of the bush period because the bush period was coming to an end. i think they drained away whatever remaining resonances there might have been around the language that the right had used since at least sharon's term as prime minister to box in the united states by co-opting the discourse of "terror" (because israel had long exploited it in framing the palestinians and their political motivations, so in a sense this was easy)... gaza made reality visible. what's been happening in the west bank is not new; it is not a sudden development. but awareness of it in the united states seems to have changed. so long as the discourse of "terrorism" was operative, it seems that the realities on the ground for most palestinians could be erased behind it. gaza changed that. but it's still too early to know whether we're in a different game or the same one. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-13-2009, 08:53 AM	#2 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	how do you think the obama administration is going to change american policy toward israel? They aren't going to do much. I suspect we'll take a middle of the road position, where we kinda hint to Israel that he might, maybe, sorta, kinda consider a two state solution, but say it so softly that Israel may not even hear it. *what direction do you think the administration should* move in?** An immediate peace treaty (not just a ceasefire) halting hostilities will need to be signed right off the bat, with real consequences for breaking said treaty. For Israel: Revert to 1967 borders, stop supplying Israel with arms and send in nuclear inspectors. For Palestine: In exchange for the reversion to 1967 borders, Hamas will be held responsible for any rocket fire or gun fire into Israel or attacks on Israeli citizens. After a moment's breath to settle into old and legal national boundaries, we'll need to get Palestine back on a road to stability. This means allowing all food and medical supplies to move freely into Palestine. The obvious course of action is performance based lifting of the embargo. We, the "international community" (US, EU, UN and Russia) will set goals for stability in Palestine, such as developing infrastructure and certain amounts of time without attacks on Israel. Each time they meet a goal, we end the embargo on something. Call it socioeconomic positive reinforcement. The hope is that, after goods start to flow back into Palestine and poverty begins to shrink, the country will become a great deal more stable. what outcomes do you see as desirable for the region? Personally, I'd like to see Jerusalem made into international soil. The place is a powder keg and no one country should have control over it. I'd also like to see Palestinians given their state so that Israel's neighbors run out of excuses to call for it's destruction. If Palestine is free and is becoming a stable and reliable nation and Iran is still calling for Israel's destruction, we get to call bullshit. Finally, I'd like to see Zionism die out in my lifetime. It's radical religious fundamentalism and it has no place in the 21st century.

05-13-2009, 10:29 AM	#3 (permalink)
percy Addict	The US doesn't have enough money and gifts to buy Israel into accepting a two state solution. If Obama pushes hard over the next year or two in that direction, he will be a one term president. As far as borders go? They will keep expanding each day as more illegal settlements go up.

05-13-2009, 10:37 AM	#4 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	We don't need gifts with Israel, all we need is to demonstrate we're willing to stop sending them a giant check and tons of military supplies. We need to prosecute members of AIPAC. They've been misbehaving for quite some time, and it's time for punitive measures.