by Robert E. Hunter
President Barack Obama spent three days in the Near East, a whirlwind visit like a genie from the Arabian Nights, kicking up dust and making his presence felt. But what did he achieve?
Two substantive matters stand out: $200 million promised to the King of Jordan to [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
President Barack Obama spent three days in the Near East, a whirlwind visit like a genie from the Arabian Nights, kicking up dust and making his presence felt. But what did he achieve?
Two substantive matters stand out: $200 million promised to the King of Jordan to deal with that country’s horrendous refugee program stemming from the Syrian Civil War and the “trailer talk” between Israeli Prime Minister “Bibi” Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with the US president as a facilitator. Related to the Israeli attack on a Turkish vessel carrying supplies to Gaza in 2010, this was one of those classic diplomatic imbroglios in which neither side is prepared to be the first to back down. Obama’s role was thus instrumental, a true honest broker.
What else? Atmospherics, mostly, and mostly on the Israeli side, where Obama has been accused of being insensitive to Israeli feelings, in part because of his poor relations with Netanyahu, and not visiting the Holy Land during his first term as president. This is not just the stuff of a relationship on the rocks; it also impacts Obama’s ability to advance US interests in the Middle East in two ways. First, in US domestic politics, where, like it or not, the supporters of Israel (more particularly, supporters of its government) are a major force to be reckoned with, not just on Arab-Israeli issues, but also on the full range of Middle East issues and the president’s domestic agenda. Second, what the US does with Israel and what it’s able to get Israel to agree to do is the starting point for any progress in its relations with the Palestinians. Israel occupies most of the disputed land, after all. Even more importantly for the United States, Israeli cooperation also provides flexibility for the US President, including in his domestic politics, to deal with other matters in the region — matters far more critical at the moment than the Israel-Palestine issue — especially in regard to Syria and Iran.
Hence, the president was quite right in doing what he should have done a long time ago: demonstrating, to the extent that it can be done through words and the symbolism of his Israeli visit destinations, that his heart is in the right place. Hard-boiled Israeli leaders — and they are paid to be so, especially with Israel’s objective circumstances — clearly believe that Israel’s capacity to rely on US security guarantees depends on Israel being seen by US leaders as strategically important. In the Cold War, where the US and the Soviet Union mostly chose sides, Israel’s strategic connection to the US was obvious. That has been far less clear since the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979, which vastly reduced the risk of an Arab war on Israel (and hence the risk of a US-Soviet nuclear confrontation), and then the collapse of the Soviet Union. Israel has sought since then to identify areas in which its strategic interests are at least compatible with those of the United States. This helps to explain why Israel emphasizes the threat from Iran far beyond what objective US analysts see in terms of a potential direct threat to the US, just as Israel and its supporters in the US were instrumental in pressing the United States to invade Iraq a decade ago.
But at heart, the US commitment to Israel’s security and future is not about strategy — after all, the US was committed to Vietnam and then walked away and is doing the same now with Afghanistan. The US commitment is “of the heart”, and has to extend far beyond the US Jewish community, which is a small fraction of the US population. In fact, support for Israel as a democracy, as a haven for survivors of the Holocaust and as a productive Western society with Western values, is both broad and deep in US culture and society. This is the most solid basis for Israeli confidence in America’s commitment. And reinforcing that sense of identification does not come out of a strategy text book but out of demonstrations of the unprovable: repeated reassurances of American love for Israel and what it represents, in hearts and not heads.
Of course, this is deeply frustrating for most Arabs, including virtually all Palestinians. This was underscored on Obama’s trip, when he limited himself largely to “words” and not “music.” He made little effort to connect with this people, who have labored under Israeli occupation for nearly 46 years, in terms that they could relate to emotionally.
Nevertheless, Obama did say many of the right things — Israeli settlements on the West Bank are “counterproductive” (but not “they should be stopped and maybe even rolled back in places”) and a two-state solution is important for everyone including Israel. In making the latter case eloquently to Israeli young people during his Jerusalem speech, Obama also added another point: the founding generation of Israeli leaders is passing from the scene, and a new generation needs to chart Israel’s future. It was not an accidental comment. In fact, this may be Obama’s “long game” — not that he’s expecting to be the one decisive player in resolving the standoff, but that perhaps over time, young Israelis and Palestinians will be able to do it themselves. In fact, as confirmed by public opinion polling in the two communities, the people want to go in that direction; it’s the leaders who haven’t found their way.
But none of this actually moves anything forward in the Middle East. The Secretary of State, John Kerry, will assume the burden of being lead US negotiator, a poor use of his time overall, given that the chances of moving the “peace process” forward are so poor. They come up against the fact that, when push comes to shove, psychologically, Israel is not willing — understandably so — to take risks for peace in view of grave uncertainties about Egypt, Syria, and Iran. And the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mohammed Abbas, can take no risks for peace as long as Israel keeps Gaza isolated and its people, lacking economic hope, dependent on Hamas.
At least with his trip, Obama has taken limited steps that had to be taken in regard to the Middle East as a whole — with the reconciliation between Turkey and Israel, and the reassurances of where his heart lies to Israel. But the administration still lacks an overarching perspective on the region. It has no real strategy (does anyone?) regarding a way forward on the Syrian civil war. There is no visible planning about the aftermath. The administration does not seem to be taking seriously the rising, if slow-rolling, civil war throughout the region between Shi’a and Sunni states and communities, and Washington is unwilling to tell Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE to stop their nationals from funding Islamist fundamentalism in Syria and elsewhere and where the US suffers directly — including in terms of combat casualties – in Afghanistan and Pakistan, from what these three countries tolerate among their rich supporters of religious extremism. The United States also continues to lead a policy of continued isolation of Iran while refusing to engage in negotiations that meet the first test: the consideration of legitimate Iranian security interests, as well as those of the United States and Israel — a sine qua non for success. He argues that “all options are on the table,” but a serious approach to negotiations is not one of them. Obama has thus, like his two predecessors, given a critical hostage to fortune: that keeping the US out of a war with Iran — which the American people do not want, and which would be even more destructive to US interests than the misbegotten invasion of Iraq — depends not on independent US decision-making, but on the good sense of two other countries, Israel and Iran. No great power should ever get itself into such a predicament.
The key issue now is whether the US president will take a step back, engage the best that there is in the US professional community on the Middle East; bring the right people into the government; consult with others outside; and for the first time in his presidency, develop a coherent, viable strategy for the region as a whole that is consonant with the deepest and most critical US interests in the region.
At the very least, in looking at the Middle East and his administration’s approach to it, President Obama needs to fashion a team of hard-nosed thinkers and doers, akin to what Franklin Roosevelt did in World War II and various administrations did during the Cold War. As the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Ernest King, said in 1942: “When the going gets tough, that is when they send for us sons of bitches.” Obama needs to view the Middle East and US interests through a similar optic and bring in the first team.
Photo: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama holding a joint press conference at the Prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem. March 20, 2013. Credit: Kobi Gideon
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
US President Barack Obama has arrived in Israel.
Greeted by Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (who wore a blue tie that almost exactly matched Obama’s), the US president was quickly ushered to view an Iron Dome battery set up at the airport. [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
US President Barack Obama has arrived in Israel.
Greeted by Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (who wore a blue tie that almost exactly matched Obama’s), the US president was quickly ushered to view an Iron Dome battery set up at the airport. When asked by a security coordinator to follow a red line leading from the tarmac to view an on-site video about how the anti-rocket system works, Obama reportedly quipped, “Bibi always tells me about red lines.” During a photo with the Iron Dome crew — its development generously funded by the US – Obama said, “All of you are doing an outstanding job. We’re very proud of you.”
For those wanting to follow Obama’s trip, tweets by veteran Israeli journalist Chemi Shalev are faster, much more informative — and a lot more fun — than the official media coverage. The international press corps of 500 is meanwhile awaiting even the hint of script-deviation like starving feral felines. As one Shalev tweet put it, “On both Israeli and US networks, Obama critics out in force to make sure he doesn’t leave too good an impression.”
One way to do this is by framing Obama’s trip to Israel as a sincere, half-hearted or futile attempt to make amends for appearing to have slighted or offended Israelis for not visiting sooner. Few could guess that Obama is only the fifth of the twelve sitting US presidents since 1948 — the year Israel was recognized by the United Nations as a state — to visit Israel while in office, as the Jerusalem Post points out. Richard Nixon dropped by in June 1974, a mere 55 days before his resignation from the presidency in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Jimmy Carter came to promote the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979. For his trouble, Carter became the least popular and most reviled American president among Israelis, while Nixon — for reasons that would seem bizarre to most Americans — is recalled fondly. Bill Clinton made three trips to Israel during his first term and one during his second. George W. Bush, on the other hand, waited until he was practically out of office to make two visits in 2008.
Beyond providing fodder for Fox News (which is polling its viewers as to whether or not Obama’s lighthearted comment “It’s good to get away from Congress!” was, in Steve Doocy’s words, a gaffe or a laugh), today’s itinerary has mainly involved photo ops and platitudes. Obama’s arrival speech affirmed that the Israel-US relationship is not only strong, it’s unshakeable, and that’s because it’s based upon “shared democratic values” and the mutual desire for peace and justice in the world. This sentiment will doubtlessly be the dominant theme in the president’s speech at the International Convention Center.
The itinerary for the second and third days of Obama’s Israel trip has been carefully crafted by his Israeli hosts in consultation with “American Jewish leaders”, designed to affirm the national narrative of the Jewish state at the most sacred shrines of Israel’s civil religion, defined by Myron J. Aronoff as “a special type of dominant ideological superstructure which is rooted in religion and which incorporates significant elements of religious symbol, myth and ritual that are used selectively.” The Iron Dome system is not merely a high-tech device resembling a tilted crate that can intercept incoming rockets. Its component for intercepting larger missiles, referred to as the “Magic Wand,” is known in Israel as “David’s sling.” According to its civil religion, Israel — the fifth or sixth largest arms dealer in the world and the recipient of 60% of all US foreign military assistance — views itself as the young shepherd boy David, deftly wielding his slingshot against the Philistine giant Goliath. Iron Dome (kipat barzel in Hebrew–literally “iron skullcap”) fuses myths of the biblical past with the high-tech present.
On the second day of his visit, Obama will tour the Israel Museum, guardian of the evidence upon which Israel’s eternal and inalienable right to the strategic sliver of territory between the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas is predicated. Never mind that it has changed hands dozens of times during the past 5,000 years, belonging for centuries at a time to various empires: Egyptian; Assyrian; Babylonian; Persian; Greco-Macedonian; Roman; Byzantine; Arab and Turkish. Three to four thousand years ago, the aboriginal Canaanite population was colonized by Arameans and Hyksos, Phoenicians and Philistines. But according to the Israel Museum, in the past, present and future there is only one people that matters — those whose mythic claim to the land is unequivocally affirmed by the texts that are protected within the innermost sanctum of the Shrine of the Book.
At that same museum Obama will be shown a 50:1 scale model reconstruction of the “Second Temple Jerusalem,” a first century Roman city whose construction began during the reign of Herod. The construction of the Temple itself was completed in 53 CE, five decades after Herod’s death and only seven years before its destruction by Roman legions in the wake of a violent civil war among Jewish factions who were fighting one another within the supposedly sacred precinct. Finally, it’s anticipated that Obama will view an exhibit of Israel’s successes as an ultramodern powerhouse at the forefront of scientific achievement.
Obama will also meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Allowing Abbas to meet with Obama anywhere within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem — which have tripled since the initial “reunification” of the city in 1967 — might constitute an admission that Palestinians have a claim to Jerusalem, and that cannot be allowed. The distance between Ramallah and the northernmost “neighborhoods” within the boundaries of “united Jerusalem” is just a few miles.
On his last day in Jerusalem, Obama will lay wreaths in memory of Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem and at the the grave of the “father of political Zionism,” Theodor Herzl. Obama will also lay a wreath at the gravestone of former Labor party Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin was murdered in 1995 by Yigal Amir, a religious Jewish nationalist. Sentenced to life in prison plus six years, Amir was allowed to marry, and after a failed attempt to smuggle out his sperm in order to impregnate his bride, was granted conjugal visits. A circumcision ceremony for his son was held at the prison on the anniversary (according to the secular calendar) of Rabin’s assassination. No longer in solitary confinement, Amir is a popular figure among members of the Israeli right, which have been urging for several years that Amir be released from prison.
To the sounds of these clanging and clashing symbols, Barack Obama becomes the fifth sitting US president to visit Israel.
Photo: President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel talk before their bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, March 5, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
To say that President Barack Obama’s visit this spring to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan is the proverbial gamble is an understatement. He may end up (rightly) congratulating himself on his wisdom and courage in taking this step and doing so at this time — and [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
To say that President Barack Obama’s visit this spring to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan is the proverbial gamble is an understatement. He may end up (rightly) congratulating himself on his wisdom and courage in taking this step and doing so at this time — and being thus recognized as a truly valid recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize conferred on him 3 years ago. Or, he may deeply regret venturing into such troubled waters and ending up, like so many of his predecessors, with not much to show for his pains in trying to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
In any event, he has now embarked on a course that he must see through to the end or risk making matters worse, possibly for the regional parties and certainly for the reputation of the United States. Yet if he is prepared to do so — with demands that will match anything else in foreign policy that he has done in his presidency — the payoff will be immense, not just in the Levant but throughout the Middle East.
The lack of success in creating a viable Palestinian state, at peace with Israel and with both peoples living in mutual security, is not from a lack of effort from many senior, talented and dedicated people in the 34 years since President Jimmy Carter’s summit at Camp David with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin launched what were then called Autonomy Talks for the Palestinian territories.
Nor is the lack of success in producing what is known as the “two-state solution” a failure of ideas. These have been fussed over for decades, but have come down pretty much to a consensus on a few cardinal points, looking toward “Final Status.” These were best put in a brief statement by President Bill Clinton in December 2000, following the abortive Second Camp David Summit and a scant four weeks before he left office. They can be found here.
In brief, they propose a swap of land between Israel and the West Bank, so that about 80 percent of Jewish settlers on the West Bank would be incorporated into Israel; the state of Palestine would have contiguity (which implies some link to Gaza); Israel could keep troops in the Jordan Valley for a 3-year transitional period, plus long-term warning stations; arrangements would be made for Jerusalem that boil down to there being two capitals in one city with respect for everyone’s religious sites; there could be any one of five Clinton-suggested approaches to dealing with Palestinian refugees, with at least some being admitted into Israel proper; and Palestine would be a “non-militarized state” with an “international force for border security and deterrent purposes.” With a colleague, I later proposed that this “international force” be NATO, and that idea has gained currency.
Compared with the reams of negotiating documents and the years of talk, this is a simple formulation. It is also recognized by almost everyone who has actually been engaged in these negotiations — as I have — as probably the best that can be achieved and a balanced approach from which all can gain and that could, finally, bring the conflict to an end.
These Clinton Parameters, the obvious solution, were advanced 12 years ago, yet the conflict continues. The reason is manifold: part has been a general lack of political will to move forward, especially with the complex — if not tortured — politics in both Israeli and Palestinian societies; part is the natural human difficulty of taking a leap in the dark after decades of stasis; and part is what else has been happening. And it is this “what else has been happening” that Obama cannot avoid addressing during his visit and that will still be there when he departs, no doubt after applying his well-honed skills of inspiration, intelligence, and honest application to tough problems. This will be so even though opinion polling has long shown that a majority of Israelis and Palestinians want the conflict to be over and done with.
Obama will no doubt reassure all parties of US commitment to be engaged until the job is done — and if he is not prepared to “walk the walk” as well as “talk the talk”, he should stay home — ; to provide reassurances to Israel about its security and to Palestinians about the importance of what they call justice; and to call on peoples and political leaders to seize this particular moment. This should include a major address to the Knesset and some form of symbolic (as well as substantive) encounter with the Palestinians.
Then to the “what else is happening.” On the Palestinian side, Hamas’ control of Gaza and the on-again, off-again nature of its relations with the Palestinian Authority led by Mohammed Abbas on the West Bank are far from propitious, if not now impossible to resolve. Abbas will also insist, once again, that the US president get the Israelis to stop settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to ease significantly the isolation of Gaza.
On the Israeli side, current preoccupation is not with Palestine peacemaking, but with a trifecta of Iran, Syria and Egypt, all of which involve real or potential Security with a capital “S.” In Israel, Obama will no doubt be pressed, and pressed again, to confirm that “containment” of an Iranian nuclear capability is unacceptable to the United States and that all options — including the use of military force — are “on the table.” That will certainly not make negotiations any easier with the Iranians, in whatever form and whatever timing they take, and it will be even more difficult for Obama to change the US negotiating position to something that might have a chance of working — e.g., by recognizing that US, Israeli, and Iranian security concerns must all be accounted for. Prime Minister Netanyahu will also underscore Israel’s continuing concerns with attacks coming from Gaza and Iranian support for Hezbollah. And he will want the US strategic commitment to Israel to be further bolstered in concrete military terms.
Israel is also deeply concerned by the civil war in Syria, which, depending on what happens when President Assad departs (assuming that that will happen,) could turn that country into what Lebanon has so often been — a haven for attacks by Hezbollah and maybe others on Israel. President Obama can offer reassuring words, but the US may have little to offer, including in forestalling a larger, slow-burning civil war between the region’s Sunnis and Shi’ites, a byproduct of the misguided US invasion of Iraq a decade ago. And Israel is meanwhile very carefully watching what is happening in Egypt, where the 1979 peace treaty has been the bedrock of Israel’s strategic confidence ever since.
Nothing that President Obama says or does on his trip to the region will change fundamentally any of these factors. And, as usually happens when any positive possibility seems to be emerging in Arab-Israeli relations, a terrorist incident during the president’s trip is highly likely, further stimulating the fears of all those who would like to move forward, and undercutting moderate politics.
All this is the bad news. The good news — or at least potentially hopeful news — is that for the US to become again engaged in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking is an essential ingredient: despite talk over the years that “we Americans can’t want peace more than the parties,” it has been proved repeatedly that only the US can press the parties forward. (That statement includes whatever other members of the so-called Quartet that the US fostered in 2002 — the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia — will try to do but where they have no capacity to be of much consequence.) It is also true that, when the US commits its prestige and that of its president, “things happen.” This effort is also coming at the start of Obama’s second term, whereas Bill Clinton got engaged seriously only when he was about to leave office — and thus was in no position to put US political muscle behind any forward progress.
Experience also confirms that serious negotiations on Final Status can only truly begin when the US plunks down for consideration the draft text of a complete treaty, perhaps for presentation purposes doing it jointly with the other three Quartet members. At the very least, President Obama needs to outline parameters for a settlement during this trip — whether he just calls them “Clinton” or a more proprietary “Obama” Parameters. He will need to paint himself into a corner in terms of his own personal commitment to success, however long and hard the slog may be.
There is some other news regarding Obama’s spring trip, the impact of which has yet to be proved; it raises questions about why he is acting so soon, other than to splash a big rock in the pool and thereby get everyone’s attention that “the US is back.” Happily, he has appointed a Secretary of State, John Kerry, who is deeply committed to success on this issue, calling failure a “catastrophe.” Yet, by the time Obama goes to the region, Kerry will not have had time to even put his State Department Middle East team together and get his key officials confirmed by the Senate. The NSC staff in the White House will have had to be beefed up with top-notch people in this area; and the nominated Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, who will need to offer strong backing — especially to reassure Israel of US strategic and military engagement — is not yet even in office. There is also precious little time before the president leaves for the Near East, for the White House to do the essential prior consultations with the Congress and key US constituencies, especially leadership of the Jewish community, if his trip to Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan is to be – as it must now be – about substance and not just symbols.
For Obama to offer more than his own commitment and symbolism of “being there,” he must be ready to take one further step, if Kerry is to be spared having to spend a massive amount of his time and energy on the Middle East account, which regularly eclipses other priorities. That is to appoint a senior-level negotiator who will do what it takes for as long as it takes. The one person with experience who could also provide the necessary political clout as Obama’s personal emissary is obvious: former President Bill Clinton.
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