by Mitchell Plitnick
Sometimes I just cannot begin to imagine what it’s like to be an Arab citizen of the United States, much less a Palestinian one.
There are many people with personal connections to Israel and to Gaza who are frightened, safely sitting in the US and worrying about their friends and family in [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Sometimes I just cannot begin to imagine what it’s like to be an Arab citizen of the United States, much less a Palestinian one.
There are many people with personal connections to Israel and to Gaza who are frightened, safely sitting in the US and worrying about their friends and family in that region. A lot of them draw comfort from their communities and from the various sources, mostly social media, where they can find not only reports, but also messages of sensitivity and solidarity for their people (often at the expense of the other). But the experience is still very different for Jews and Arabs. Especially in Washington, DC, a Jewish-American citizen can always take comfort that no matter how worried she may be about her relatives in Be’ersheva or Ashkelon or Sderot, the US government is expressing support for Israel. But a Palestinian citizen? Not so much.
Right now, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is pushing nearly identical bills through the House of Representatives, which has already passed one, and the Senate. The bills — both “Sense of Congress” bills, which express a view but bring about no concrete action – declare absolute support for Israel, call Hamas’ violence “unprovoked,” and, in the Senate version only, call on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the Palestinian unity government.
What can that feel like to a US citizen who has relatives or friends in Gaza?
While Hamas’ indiscriminate firing at Israeli civilians is reprehensible and criminal, claiming its attacks were unprovoked is simply incorrect. As I detailed previously, the attacks were not only provoked, but the provocation was clearly planned by the Netanyahu government. This isn’t exactly ancient history; all this began just a few weeks ago. But the narrative in Washington, in most of the mainstream media, and in much of Israel has been completely turned on its head. Israel’s actions in bringing about these events have been forgotten.
The Senate, probably more keenly aware than most House members that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s goal from the beginning was to dismember the Palestinian unity “government,” added that clause to its call. But what is really striking here is not just the usual one-sidedness of an AIPAC-backed resolution. That is, of course, expected.
What is truly stunning is the stark absence of any mention of the people getting killed. None of those people, so far, are in Israel. At this writing, the death toll in Gaza stands at 174 people, of whom at least 32 are children. 80% of those killed are estimated by the United Nations to have been non-combatants.
No one who pays any attention to the politics of Israel-Palestine would expect Congress to blame Israel for those deaths. No one would expect Congress to comment on the illegal bombings of private homes by Israel, which have killed dozens of innocents. No one would expect Congress to question whether this entire operation constitutes “legitimate self-defense” as permitted by international law.
But even Congress, as intertwined with AIPAC as it has been for so long, could be expected to express some regret at the loss of life. In the past, congressional statements have included such regrets, often saying that they are inevitable because of Hamas’ actions, its embedding itself in civilian areas, etc. They could have done this again. But even that gesture, it seems, is too much for this Congress.
What message does that send to Palestinian-Americans? To all Arab citizens?
It sends the message that Arab life, and especially Palestinian life, is not just cheap, it’s meaningless. It sends that message not only to those citizens, but to all US citizens, and it communicates to the entire world that the deaths of Palestinians are not worth any notice by the United States.
But by allowing AIPAC to speak for us all through our Congress we are allowing the collective voice of the United States to scream to the world that the immeasurably greater destruction raining down on innocent Gazans means nothing to us. The only consolation, and it is microscopic, is that the bills have received fewer co-sponsors – 41 in the Senate and 166 in the House — than what AIPAC bills normally acquire. So far it has received insufficient support for an immediate vote, and has been referred to the Foreign Relations Committee. AIPAC will be pushing the committee hard to get it through.
If it comes to the Senate floor, it will almost certainly pass. Yet no matter how supportive of Israel one may claim to be, it is hard to imagine the moral justification for a statement from Congress that offers, at this time, exclusive support for Israel, where, thankfully, no one has been killed, while not even mentioning Gaza, which has lost 174 people and counting. Is this really a message that the majority of Americans would want to send to the rest of the world? I think not.
Photo: Children play atop a bullet-riddled building in Gaza on April 10, 2011. Credit: UN/Shareef Sarhan
by Marsha B. Cohen
Reuven Rivlin has just been elected Israel’s 10th president. A member of Israel’s parliamentary body since 1988, he served as Speaker of the Knesset from 2003-06 and again from 2009-13. Today, Israel’s parliamentarians, by secret ballot, elected him to a 7-year term after two rounds of voting.
A native [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Reuven Rivlin has just been elected Israel’s 10th president. A member of Israel’s parliamentary body since 1988, he served as Speaker of the Knesset from 2003-06 and again from 2009-13. Today, Israel’s parliamentarians, by secret ballot, elected him to a 7-year term after two rounds of voting.
A native born Israeli who speaks fluent Arabic, Rivlin (known as “Rubi” or “Ruvi”) comes from a family that claims 50,000 members worldwide, 35,000 of whom live in Israel. Rivlin’s father, Yosef Yoel Rivlin, was a scholar of Semitic languages who translated the Qur’an and One Thousand and One Nights into Hebrew. His cousin, Lilly Rivlin, who spent most of her life in the U.S., is a progressive writer and film maker. Her 2006 film, “Can You Hear Me?: Israeli and Palestinian Women Fight For Peace,” documented the joint activist efforts of Israeli and Palestinian women.
There are many paradoxes in the views of this right-wing Likudnik — hardly known outside of Israel — that explain why some of the most progressive Israelis respect him and believe he will be a suitable nonpartisan representative of the State of Israel in his largely ceremonial role as president.
1. Rivlin believes in democracy, free speech and political pluralism. He has vehemently opposed the witch hunts targeting progressive Israeli organizations, and resisted demands by right-wing politicians that the activities of left-leaning human rights groups in Israel be halted and outlawed. According to Dimi Reider of the progressive Israeli news site, +972:
As Speaker, Rivlin’s commitment to parliamentary democracy (and democracy in general) saw him turn time and again against his own party and its allies, stalling most of the anti-democratic legislation pushed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Lieberman’s Israel Beitenu, while at the same time trying to instruct his fellow right-wing legislators about the dangers of nationalist populism.
“Woe betide the Jewish democratic state that turns freedom of expression into a civil offense,” Rivlin wrote in an article slamming the Boycott Law passed by the Knesset in 2011. The legislation prohibited advocating any sort of boycott of Israeli products or institutions — economic, cultural, or educational — and made any person or entity proposing an Israel-related boycott subject to prosecution and liable for paying compensation, regardless of any actual loss or damage. Left-wing Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy praised Rivlin’s courageous stance, berating the reputedly “dovish” Shimon Peres who defeated Rivlin’s 2007 presidency bid:
Rivlin has been revealed as Israel’s honorary president; Peres, as its shameful one. The man from the right wing dared do what the man supposedly from the left did not. In the test of courage and honesty, the highest test of any elected official, Rivlin defeated Peres by a resounding knock-out.
(Earlier this year, in mid-February, Israel’s High Court considered a petition seeking to overturn the Boycott Law, but did not issue a ruling.)
2. Rivlin has consistently condemned the anti-Arab racism pervading Israeli society. He was incensed after learning that Arab construction workers on the Knesset grounds had red Xs painted on their protective helmets to distinguish them from foreign workers, and insisted on the immediate removal of the distinguishing marks. “We cannot allow the use of any markings that could be seen as a differentiation between people on the basis of race, ethnicity and religion,” he declared.
Rivlin has castigated the race-baiting and Islamophobia exhibited by supporters of the Beitar soccer team and the team’s discrimination against Muslim players. “Imagine the outcry if groups in England or Germany said that Jews could not play for them,” he said. He has also opposed proposals for the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem by radical Jewish settlers and condemned “price tag” attacks. In September 2013, Rivlin criticized the election slogan “Judaize Jerusalem” of the far-right United Jerusalem list, calling it a “disgrace” and “incitement,” and called for an investigation over whether the slogan constituted a criminal offense.
3. Rivlin opposes making civic and political rights for Israeli Arabs (or, as many prefer to be known, “Palestinian citizens of Israel”) contingent upon their serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). ”These calls are populist at best and carry a tone of incitement at worst,” he declared. At the same time, Rivlin endorsed civilian service projects that would help alleviate the high unemployment rate among young Arab men and improve the quality of life in their own communities. “I believe that the creation of a civil service layout within the Arab sector is a step that could benefit the Arab sector and the Israeli society at large. The Arab sector needs manpower and young volunteers can support that cause,” he said.
4. An unabashed proponent of the one state solution, Rivlin advocates giving full Israeli civil and political rights to West Bank Palestinians in a single-state scenario. Most Israeli liberals and hardliners alike oppose any one-state solution that would make Palestinians Israeli citizens. They complain that Rivlin’s stance would create a situation in which Israel could not be both Jewish and democratic. That’s because allowed to vote, Arabs would would eventually outnumber Jews and Israel could no longer be a “Jewish state.” To prevent this, most liberals still advocate a two-state solution, while right-wing hardliners want to expel as many Arabs as possible from the West Bank and Gaza while depriving those who remain of Israeli citizenship. Nevertheless, the notion that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may no longer be viable is gaining traction on Israel’s progressive left.
5. Rivlin has pledged to Arab citizens of “green line” Israel that they won’t be forced to become part of a Palestinian state in the event of a “land swap” deal that exchanges Israeli Arab cities and towns for Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. In 2009, Rivlin infuriated Israeli hardliners when he made his first official visit as Knesset Speaker to the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, Israel’s second-largest Arab municipality in “green line” Israel. Rivlin assured the town’s residents they would not be subjected to “ethnic cleansing.”
6. Rivlin defended the rights of Arab Knesset members when parliamentarians from his own party and others were determined to take them away. In 2010, he joined prominent civil libertarians in objecting to Knesset Member (MK) Hanin Zouabi being stripped of her parliamentary privileges. As punishment for her involvement in the Gaza flotilla’s attempt to break the Israeli boycott of Gaza, MKs voted to strip her of her right to leave the country, take away her diplomatic passport, and deny her legal fee payments, refusing to allow Zouabi to say anything in her own defense. “Let her speak!” roared Rivlin at the shrieking MKs. Although disagreeing with Zouabi’s stance, Rivlin upheld her right to defend herself, stating, “I believe that everyone should have the right to speak their minds, even if what they say hurts me.” (In 2008, Rivlin had also opposed – and temporarily thwarted — taking away the pension of MK Azmi Bishara of the Arab Balad party, who fled Israel when he was charged with treason. Rivlin argued that until Bishara was convicted of a crime, his pension was untouchable.)
Before today’s election, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the hawkish, Russian-dominated Yisrael Beiteinu party, stated he would not support Rivlin because of his opposition to creating committees for investigating human rights organizations, and Rivlin’s defense of Arab parliamentarians’ rights.
7. Rivlin disapproves of Netanyahu’s ongoing criticism of the negotiations between world powers and Iran over its nuclear program. “We must not contradict the United States regarding the deal with Iran,” Rivlin wrote in a post to his Facebook page. “A conflict with the United States is against Israel’s vital interests.”
8. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did everything he could to prevent Rivlin’s election. After preventing the re-election of Rivlin as Knesset Speaker last year, Netanyahu tried to thwart Rivlin’s ascent to the presidency by frantically searching for a viable alternative candidate; proposing the outright abolition of the position of Israel’s president; and trying to postpone the presidential election. In a 2010 interview Rivlin had criticized Netanyahu’s leadership style:
“[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s worldview states that ‘the majority can do anything, that the leader can demand whatever he wishes of those who entered the Knesset because of him and he can force his opinion on them.’ That is something that can greatly harm democracy and lower the Knesset’s standing to rock bottom.”
9. Rivlin has attracted both respect and support from members of Israeli opposition parties. MK Ilan Gilon of the Meretz party declared he would be supporting Rivlin while other Meretz members took an anyone-but-Rivlin stance. Even before the withdrawal of long-time Labor party stalwart Benjamin Eliezer from the presidential race due to financial impropriety investigations, Labor MK Shelley Yachimovich announced she would be crossing party lines to vote for Rivlin because he was “the most appropriate and suitable candidate for the position.” Her words of praise did not stop there:
He is an exemplary democrat, honest and uncorrupted, modest in his personal manner and statesman-like in his conceptions and public conduct. One doesn’t have to speculate on how he will behave as president. Even as someone from the right-wing, whose opinions are often the opposite of mine, he passed the test, standing like a solid rock in defense of democracy.”
Photo Credit: J-Street.
]]>by Yarden Katz
Every few years, a call to boycott Israeli academic institutions gains enough momentum to make a brief wave in the media, before it enters the cycle of condemnation. After making the rounds, the boycott gets predictably denounced by major organizations, followed by widespread reiteration of support for the state [...]]]>
by Yarden Katz
Every few years, a call to boycott Israeli academic institutions gains enough momentum to make a brief wave in the media, before it enters the cycle of condemnation. After making the rounds, the boycott gets predictably denounced by major organizations, followed by widespread reiteration of support for the state of Israel. It diverts the public’s attention from the main issues of justice in Palestine, stands no chance of convincing a mainstream audience, and sets the stage for right-wing opponents. Still, a minority of academics dutifully roll their boycott stone up the endless hill of opposition again, only to see it rolled back down again. And roll down it should, because the current ASA-supported academic boycott of Israeli universities is, in my view, unprincipled, ineffective, and hypocritical.
The usual cycle of condemnation has been seen in the backlash to the recent American Studies Association (ASA) appeal, which called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The relatively small list of individuals who signed the petition was overshadowed by official condemnations of the move by Harvard and Yale and the cancellation by four other universities of their membership in the group. A slew of other universities, including Yale, Princeton, Brown and NYU denounced the boycott, while the president of MIT, Rafael Reif, issued a statement that rejected it since it “fundamentally violates the principles of academic freedom” and contradicts the “longstanding practice of fostering active engagement with international academic institutions and open dialog among people from all nations.” Reif’s simple logic is correct: the boycott is entirely unprincipled if one is committed to academic freedom. Indeed, the academic boycott campaign has actually served to divert attention from the critical issue of Israeli violations of the human rights and international law to the otherwise unrelated question of academic freedom.
Moreover, the academic boycott ignores the fact that students and faculty within universities have historically served as key sources of resistance to arbitrary and abusive regimes. Although a small minority, there are Israelis within academia who organize opposition to the occupation and seek to advance justice for Palestinians. This voice of dissent should be harnessed to educate the population and influence policy, as in previous struggles, rather than boycotted and isolated.
To learn about the case for academic boycott this time, I turned to the website for the US Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (USCACBI). A graphic on its front page urges a halt to the Cornell-Technion Collaboration (“STOP the Cornell-Technion collaboration in NYC – NO to war crimes + NO to Israel”).
What could be so malicious about a scientific collaboration between two academic institutions offering a joint academic curriculum? The Cornell-Technion website states that the collaboration’s goal is to “create better health care information systems, mobile health care applications, and medical devices,” and that the joint venture “aims to increase the efficiency and sustainability of urban environments at all scales.” It will also provide a Masters of Science program for students. Could this be a misleading veil? Is this academic alliance secretly a destructive effort to further deny the rights of Palestinians? The hyperbolic languageon the campaign’s website is so far- fetched that it invites easy dismissal by its opponents. Extraordinary claims require real evidence, and the campaign fails to provide any substantiating the notion that this collaboration is anything but ordinary, similar to other collaborations between U.S. universities and universities throughout the Middle East and elsewhere. It’s transparent that the Cornell-Technion collaboration was not singled out for its substance, but rather for being a well-funded and visible collaboration. But that hardly justifies the hyperbole displayed on the site.
Meanwhile, important actual developments take place in the world. With the advent of peace talks, Netanyahu is planning to continue building settlements that further encroach on Palestinian territory and rights and are totally illegal under international law. The international community is overwhelmingly against the settlements, and Israel’s strongest ally, the United States (or a unified European coalition) has the power to end them with real economic pressure. It is straightforward to make a mainstream case for why settlements are illegal, why they infringe on the rights of Palestinians, and why they actively undermine hopes for any eventual peace settlement of the conflict. Critical matters like these are effectively sidetracked by the brouhaha over the academic boycott and by the long line of Israel advocates who are eager to take advantage of the opportunity to express their unconditional support for its government. In that respect, the academic boycott is not only ineffective, but also counter-productive.
Moreover, opponents of the academic boycott will rightly point out the hypocrisy of academics who sign it. A recent book by historian Craig Steven Wilder documented the ways in which major U.S. universities — including the Ivy League Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown universities — benefitted from the slave trade. More recently, institutions like MIT have contributed to weapons development and the planning of unjust wars, while benefitting handsomely from Pentagon and other government contracts. In one way or another, virtually all major American universities have contributed to or benefitted from injustices committed by their government. Thus, the appeal to punish one set of significantly younger, less influential institutions (like Israeli universities) can easily be depicted as hypocritical by its foes — especially when the call is made by those currently employed by major U.S. universities with richly tainted histories. These common-sense arguments against the academic boycott and its destructive effects have been made repeatedly by Noam Chomsky, among others.
Ultimately, it is economic pressure — justified by legal and human rights violations for which there is ample evidence and strong international opposition — that can help remedy the injustices in Palestine.
– Yarden Katz is a PhD student from Israel in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The so-called “renewed” Israel-Palestine peace process is turning out to be nothing more than an illusion, as many observers from across the political spectrum expected. But the United States is apparently intent on blowing more smoke to maintain that hallucination as long as possible. And the Palestinian Authority, typically, [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The so-called “renewed” Israel-Palestine peace process is turning out to be nothing more than an illusion, as many observers from across the political spectrum expected. But the United States is apparently intent on blowing more smoke to maintain that hallucination as long as possible. And the Palestinian Authority, typically, is falling into a trap.
US Secretary of State John Kerry’s idea to keep a tight lid on the proceedings was a good one if talks lead somewhere. If they don’t, the aggrieved side is likely to head to the media to air their grievances, feeling that the process is not getting them where they want and that public pressure is their only option. Doing so, however, will surely anger the United States and open the door for the party causing the leaks to end up with the lion’s share of the blame for the talks’ failure.
Amid reports of deep Palestinian dissatisfaction with the way the talks are going, the US seems to be offering the public the same long-view analysis that they did months ago. Not commenting on what is actually taking place between the Israelis and Palestinians in their discussions, a senior State Department official offered the view that the turmoil in Syria and Egypt is spurring the two sides toward compromise.
“Both sides have made clear to us and to each other that they do not want the turmoil to engulf them and that therefore it motivates them to try to resolve their conflict to prevent that from happening,” the official told reporters. This rationale was part of the explanation Kerry offered as he was bringing the sides together as to why this time would be different from previous rounds of talks. It fails, however, to address the matters that are bringing the talks crashing down, which are just like those problems from previous talks.
Palestinian negotiators have been telling reporters that Israel is insisting on a new interim agreement, where a provisional Palestinian state would be established on 60% of the West Bank and no settlements would be removed in the initial stage. That is a non-starter for Palestinians, and they were making that clear before the talks even resumed. For their part, the Israelis, and specifically Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been making it equally clear that they will not use the 1967 borders as a reference and are not seeking anything more than establishing a new interim arrangement. So, the new impasse was entirely predictable. And this gives the US view the air of a performance, hiding the very real evidence that these talks were doomed from the first and the US should have, and may well have, known it.
Kerry’s decree that both sides refrain from talking to the media suits Israel just fine. The talks progressing at a snail’s pace or making no progress at all is very much in Netanyahu’s interest. Should there be measurable progress, it would set off a firestorm of political controversy in Israel, and would jeopardize his coalition, which is sympathetic to Israel’s settler population in the West Bank and is overwhelmingly committed to blocking any compromise on the key issues of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. Netanyahu’s biggest concerns thus far have centered around his own people; his man in the negotiating team, Yitzhak Molcho, is there to restrain Minister of Justice and lead negotiator Tzipi Livni from actually negotiating too much. So he is more than content to abide by Kerry’s diktat about talking to the media.
But the Palestinian team has to be concerned about the perception among their populace that they’ve been dragged back to the table to talk and allow Israel to claim it is negotiating in good faith while new settlement construction continues apace. Israel certainly has not made it any easier for them, announcing several new expansion projects in key settlement areas in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And Israel’s refusal to recognize the 1967 borders as a starting point, and the US’ acceptance of that stance, gives the Palestinian people even more reason to see these talks as nothing more than a sham. The PA negotiators are desperate to find a way to get the United States to change this framework, but the US was playing an understated role from the beginning. That led to the first Palestinian complaint of US mediator Martin Indyk not being involved in the discussions. With US eyes fixed now on Syria and the soap opera playing around that issue on Capitol Hill, it is far less inclined to reconsider its approach to Israeli-Palestinian talks. So, they go to the media, leaking their complaints in the probably vain hope the US will care.
While the US is not very concerned about these Palestinian leaks for now, that is likely to change at one of two points. The first possibility could occur if the Syrian crisis diminishes in some way, Egypt doesn’t erupt again and there is a comparative calming. Then people might start paying attention to these sputtering talks and the Palestinian complaints could become a more prominent story. This doesn’t seem as likely as the second possibility: the talks fail and the blame game begins. That raises the question of whether the Obama administration will follow the example of Bill Clinton and blame the Palestinians. It might consider the devastating effect on any hope for peace that Clinton’s initial blaming of the Palestinians resulted in (he later modified his story, but by then it was too late and, in any case, a lot less people were paying attention). But Netanyahu will surely be portraying the Palestinians as the party responsible for the failure, and will be able to use as evidence the fact that they, publicly, went along with Kerry’s program while the Palestinians did not.
The fact that Kerry this week entreated the European Union to back off even their very meager ban on funding projects in and with Israeli settlements while the question of bombing Syria was raging says a lot about his disposition in these talks and the naiveté of the Palestinians in ever thinking the US would even try to get Israel to negotiate toward a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. There hasn’t been even the slightest hint of US pressure on Israel to make any concessions whatsoever, and this is why the Palestinians have run to the media, despite knowing that Kerry and Obama would be displeased. Unfortunately, US behavior in these revived talks has met and exceeded even the lowest expectations of fecklessness and fully reaffirmed its position as a thoroughly dishonest broker.
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by Mitchell Plitnick
Martin Indyk is about to be named the US representative for the resuscitated Israel-Palestinian talks, according to a report from Israel’s Channel 2.
This says a great deal about the US role in the “peace process” and, indeed, the conflict in general. Indyk was the key force in founding [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Martin Indyk is about to be named the US representative for the resuscitated Israel-Palestinian talks, according to a report from Israel’s Channel 2.
This says a great deal about the US role in the “peace process” and, indeed, the conflict in general. Indyk was the key force in founding the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which is, in essence, the think tank of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In fact, Indyk went from working for AIPAC to working for them as WINEP’s first Executive Director in 1985.
He went on to be Bill Clinton’s special assistant for the Middle East and senior director of Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council. His government service culminated in appointments as US Ambassador to Israel from April 1995 to September 1997 and again from January 2000 to July 2001. Indyk was as central as any figure to the construction — and failures — of the Oslo process, the Camp David II summit in 2000 and the following years of downward spiral.
Having said that, I have met Indyk on several occasions and have followed his more recent work as Vice President and Director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He knows the Middle East, he knows Israel and, unlike other key figures, has pretty decent knowledge of the Palestinians as a people and their leadership. And Indyk’s views these days are not exactly in line with those of AIPAC. If AIPAC’s views can reasonably be described as in line with Benjamin Netanyahu’s and Likud’s, Indyk would be closer to, say, Tzipi Livni or even the Labor Party. I believe he genuinely supports a two-state solution and recognizes at the very least that such a solution, to be sustainable, needs to meet the minimal requirements of most Palestinians and not rely on what the US might be able to force the PA to accept.
What that amounts to is that Indyk is probably the best representative we are likely to see from the United States. And therein lies the problem.
The inescapable truth is that Indyk’s baggage will magnify the already overwhelming pessimism surrounding the resumption of talks. Stephen Walt summed it up well in a tweet after this news reached the public: “Appointing Indyk as IP mediator is like hiring (Bernie) Madoff to run your pension. He had 8 years to do a deal in 90s and failed.”
Moreover, regardless of how liberal or more sympathetic to the Palestinians Indyk may be than, for example, former US Special Envoy Dennis Ross, he is still predisposed to favoring Israel in any negotiations. The Palestinians know this, the Israelis know it and so does every observer.
The key party who is well aware of Indyk’s bias toward Israel is, of course, AIPAC. The fact that Indyk is apparently being appointed to this position is a powerful indicator of the Obama administration’s determination to both renew talks and make sure they are conducted in a way that AIPAC does not object to. Can there be any clearer signal that the endgame of restarting talks was just that — resuming them without aiming for a resolution?
- Photo: Martin Indyk at the U.S. Islamic World Forum on May 31, 2012
]]>There’s been comparatively little pushback, which isn’t all that surprising as President Obama really needed to get [...]]]>
There’s been comparatively little pushback, which isn’t all that surprising as President Obama really needed to get out in the lead on such rebuttals. Now he has.
He has done so, not accidentally, in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the US’ leading “liberal hawks” on Iran, and a widely recognized pro-Israel voice who was once, in fact, a corporal and prison guard in the Israel Defense Forces.
Obama knew this was an interviewer who would focus on taking tough stands, who would surely be leading towards questions about how the United States was going to address Netanyahu’s concerns, but who also would, ideally, like to end up with an interview that both strengthened Obama and toughened the US’ stance toward Iran.
If that’s so, I’m not at all sure Goldberg got his wish.
The headline of the interview is a line Clint Eastwood could easily have uttered—“Obama to Iran and Israel: ‘As President of the United States, I Don’t Bluff.’” But just what is it that he’s not bluffing about?
In the interview, at least, Obama sticks quite hard to his established policy, and in fact defends it. He re-states his point that “all options are on the table,” but also implies that a military option is the choice of last resort.
Obama cleverly defends this by pointing out that
…the only way, historically, that a country has ultimately decided not to get nuclear weapons without constant military intervention has been when they themselves take [nuclear weapons] off the table. That’s what happened in Libya, that’s what happened in South Africa. And we think that, without in any way being under an illusion about Iranian intentions, without in any way being naive about the nature of that regime, they are self-interested. They recognize that they are in a bad, bad place right now. It is possible for them to make a strategic calculation that, at minimum, pushes much further to the right whatever potential breakout capacity they may have, and that may turn out to be the best decision for Israel’s security.
In other words, a military strike may set back the Iranian nuclear program, but it will also increase their perception that they really need the bomb, whereas diplomacy and pressure may convince them to decide on a different course, as has happened in other countries, including one led by a ruthless dictator.
All of this is couched in pro-Israel rhetoric, sympathy for concerns raised by echoes of the Holocaust in Israel, and a lot of tough talk. But in substance, the policy remains the same.
At several points in the interview, Goldberg raises, or implies, the issue of “red lines” which Netanyahu has urged the US to adopt and has enlisted friendly members of Congress to help him to push. Obama stands by the same bottom line he has consistently taken: that he would not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. This stands in stark contrast to the capability to produce one, something Iran might already have and a line that the Israeli leadership and their allies in Congress have been pushing for.
I come away from this interview with a sense that Obama is not anywhere near closing the door on an attack on Iran, but is also resisting the pressure to accelerate the possibility. He remains determined to find a way to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon (if such is the Iranian intent in the first place, a point Obama concedes publicly, but seems to be a conclusion he has not yet really jumped to) without using military force.
But the way Obama is phrasing this, and especially in his decision to make these statements to Goldberg – a man who will help create this framework – indicates that he is not inviting a disagreement with Netanyahu. Indeed, the rhetoric being employed in this interview would allow Netanyahu to return to Israel and brag that he got the Obama Administration to toughen its stance on Iran.
He did this by making it clear that the development of a nuclear weapon is a red line, one the US will not allow Iran to cross. This is not really a shift in policy, but it is a clarification, one that Netanyahu can use back at home to show that he has gotten the US to reaffirm and strengthen the military option. But it’s not actually a casus belli because there remains no indication that such development is underway. Indeed, Obama states that
…our assessment, which is shared by the Israelis, is that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt.
So, without shifting US policy away from that which it has been holding to all along, Obama gives Netanyahu what he needs to look good to his more hawkish supporters here and in Israel. It remains to be seen if the Israeli Prime Minister will leave it at that or try to embarrass Obama again as he did last year.
As a postscript, there is one other key take away from this interview: despite the length of the conversation with Goldberg, the Palestinians are not even alluded to, let alone mentioned by either him or Obama.
That is a sure sign of two things. One, the issue of the Palestinians is, barring some event which forces attention back to them, almost certainly off the table until after the election in November.
And two, with Fatah and Hamas continuing to work on reconciliation and with anti-Israel sentiment growing in a post-Mubarak Egypt that is currently unsure if its annual US aid will be discontinued or diminished (though I doubt either will happen now that the American NGO workers have been allowed to leave), the very serious strategic and possibly policy issues that are being raised are similarly on the back burner.
This could well lead to serious problems when they come to the fore. But at AIPAC this year, the Palestinian issue might not even exist.
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