Obama and Israel's Illegal Settlements: Total Surrender

If the Obama administration is capable of caving or breaking pledges on tax policy, Guantanamo, Don't Ask Don't Tell (there is such a thing as an executive order, Mr. President), it shouldn't be surprising that the pattern carries over to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Between Obama's prevarications and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's non-existence on the matter since pretty much the first winter of the administration, the last two years are proving as empty of accomplishments, even of nominal accomplishments, as the eight years of the Bush administration. And those eight years on that score had until then been the low point of American influence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict going back to the Johnson administration (when Israel could do no wrong in official American eyes).

The latest dismal non-accomplishment from the Obama administration was its attempt to extend what had, in any case, been a non-Israeli freeze on settlement building in occupied territories. Israel had declared the 10-month freeze (which expired at the end of September) last year. But the freeze never applied to construction already in progress. And it never applied to East Jerusalem, where plans and construction have been particularly intense. To make the point, Israel approved 900 new illegal units in Arab Jerusalem, a year ago, just as the alleged freeze was getting started. When that supposed freeze ended, Obama tried to sell Israel on a 90-day extension (s if he were dealing with, say, extending unemployment benefits). Obama proposed sending Israel a fleet of F-35s (which go for $100 million apiece), the U.S. Air Force's newest and most advanced fighter jet, sold to no one else in the world, among other weapons. And he promised that after the freeze expired, he wouldn't press for another one.

After initially seeming interested, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Benjamin Netanyahu cooled to the offer, realizing that his cabinet would not go for it. It wasn't as if the Palestinians were interested, either, since the 90-day "extension" also did not include Arab Jerusalem. Nor was it likely that 90 extra days would get the United States the sort of breakthrough that eluded it the previous 10 months, the previous two years or, for that matter, the previous 30. Keep in mind that when Obama took office, his original demand was to freeze all settlement activity everywhere, without conditions, as a pre-condition of his own for talks between Israelis and Palestinians. That barely happened in September, and when it did, the Israelis made no formal offers. Palestinians kept threatening to declare a unilateral Palestinian state. They're still threatening that. But so far, without much decisiveness.

Meanwhile, true to form (because never let it be said that Israelis won't honor the spirit of provocation when given a choice between that and conciliation) the Israeli government in early November, literally hours before Netanyahu flew to the United States, published plans for 1,000 new housing units in occupied Arab Jerusalem. Just as Netanyahu had when he was prime minister the first time and Bill Clinton had just become politically more vulnerable from the Lewinsky affair, Netanyahu was coming to the United States feeling empowered, ready to play lord to the American president. It didn't work with Clinton--Bill Clinton, that is. It worked like a charm with Obama.

This week, Obama dropped his chatter about a 90-day extension. In the words of an Israeli analyst, he looked at day 91, and got worried. "Administration officials," Ethan Bronner writes in The Times today, "came to the realization that the issue of settlements was one among a clutch of difficult ones: Jerusalem, borders, security and Palestinian refugees. Any one of them placed ahead of the others would become a roadblock to progress. Now it was settlements, but if the issues were sequenced in another way, a different problem would surely arise. So they decided to re-examine the sequencing."

The mind-boggling part of this narrative is this phrase: came to the realization that the issue of settlements was one among a clutch of difficult ones. They just came to that realization? If so, it's no wonder that the Obama administration has been as hapless in the face of the Palestinian Israeli conflict as it has been in the face of the various right-wing intifadas, from tea parties to more traditional GOP obstructionists, it's been facing at home since the summer of 2009.

Then again, there's no surprise here when Obama's foreign-policy team leader is the Queen of the Hapless: Hillary Clinton. I've said it many times before. I'll continue saying it, because she vindicates the judgment at every turn. Hillary Clinton's domestic policy pedigree is stellar. In foreign policy, she is a duller version of Condoleezza Rice, who herself was among the least effective secretaries of state of the post-war era. Let me give just one recent example. Clinton was asked by The Economist to offer a sum-up of American intentions in foreign policy in 2011. She obliged in the magazine's "The World in 2011," an annual, thick-papered punch of predictions and pontifications by various pontiffs.

Clinton's piece was called "Way to lead." And he first paragraph was this homage to dark stellar matter: "Today international affairs are ore complex than ever. New actors are influencing events, from emerging powers and developing nations to multinational corporations and terrorist networks. In this changing landscape, some are asking whether America still has what it takes to remain a beacon for global peace and prosperity. Looking ahead to 2011 and beyond, I can answer unequivocally: the United States can, must and will continue to lead."

besides the fact that those lines could have just as easily been written in 2000, in 1990, in 1980 or in 1970, besides the fact that it makes baseless assumptions ("more complex than ever" according to whom? what "global peace and prosperity"?) and even more specious presumptions ("the United States can, must and will continue to lead," she says, channeling John McCain), what is Clinton actually saying, of substance, in The Economist, that a well-intentioned starry-eyed junior class president in a Kansas high school couldn't have said? Sure it's just the opening paragraph. But it's supposed to convince you to read on. Even when you do, there isn't much there.

At least Clinton's words are an accurate reflection of American foreign policy on her watch, particularly American policy regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There hasn't been a there there. The vacuum is getting more vast. Sooner or later, something is going to give. It won;t be the politics of the White House or those of the Knesset. It'll be the tempers of Palestinians. With two intifadas behind them, the third isn't likely to be as restrained. Nor is the Israeli response. Prevarication has its price.

See Also:

• Netanyahu Jabs at U.S.: 900 More Illegal Apartments in Jerusalem
• Briefing: Israeli Settlements and Outposts in the West Bank
• It's the Settlements, Stupid