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President Obama’s recent speech (which I wrote about here and here) has an important subtext: it suggests that although the US has “unbreakable” bonds with Israel, Israeli and US interests are increasingly divergent.

Two areas of divergence seem to be Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Regarding Iran, Obama suggests that he will offer incentives for Iran to stop nuclear weapons development, such as assistance in developing peaceful nuclear power — although Iran has rejected this in the past. He is making overtures to improve the relationship by such things as inviting Iranian representatives to 4th of July celebrations.

• The best interpretation is that he thinks that his charm will succeed where others failed.

• The worst is that he judges that stopping Iran is not worth the price the US would have to pay to do so or to allow Israel to do so — in other words, he has already accepted that Iran will go nuclear and is developing policies that take this into account.

Israeli policy is that Iran must be stopped. Estimates vary, but Israeli analysts have said that the point of no return will be reached within a year — and Obama has said in the past that he will try ‘engagement’ for a year before getting tough in an unspecified way.

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama believes that a Palestinian state should be established in the very near future. He seems to think that Hamas can be persuaded to accept the Quartet conditions of recognition of Israel, ending violence and accepting prior Israel-Palestinian Authority (PA) agreements — despite the fact that it continues to categorically reject them — thus clearing the way for Hamas to participate in the PA.

• As in the case of Iran, the  best interpretation is that Obama is again depending on his charm (and General Dayton’s arming and training Fatah forces) to make a sheep out of the Hamas wolf. Unfortunately this plan is guaranteed to fail.

• The worst interpretation is that he knows this but has committed privately to either Iran or Saudi Arabia that he will force a Palestinian state into being in return for some unspecified quid pro quo — possibly something to do with Iraq.

Evidence that Obama is serious about forcing a state into being as quickly as possible is the surprising demand for Israel to stop natural growth in established settlements. Interestingly, I don’t think this is aimed at Israel or the Netanyahu government. While it would have little or no effect on the outcome of any negotiations, Palestinians have been disingenuously claiming that ‘settlement activity’ is a major obstacle to peace, and a freeze would remove one of their excuses for not negotiating.

Israeli policy is that given a weak PA which is unable to control Hamas (and will probably be taken over by it), it would be disastrous to establish a state today, because it would immediately become a base for terrorism — exactly like Gaza.

Both of these issues are tied together by the so-called ‘linkage’ theory. President Obama has said that “solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will provide the tools to effectively engage Iran and fight terrorism”, and this is his main reason to push for a Palestinian state now. This argument is too weak to take seriously.

Israel, on the other hand, points out that Hamas, Hezbollah, and a Syrian missile (and possibly nuclear) buildup are backed by Iran, which means that peace efforts will fail unless this support is removed. And if Iran provides a nuclear umbrella for its proxy armies, they will be even more difficult to defeat.

These policies may serve some short-term US interests — perhaps involving extrication of American forces from Iraq — but in the long term, an American retreat will permit Iran to move from being a regional bully to a major world power. And it will not be a friendly one, as the political and social characteristics of revolutionary Shiite Islam are starkly opposed to the enlightenment values of the West.

Israel and the US, on the other hand, do share the values of democracy, freedom of expression, rights of women and minorities, etc. Israel is the only nation in the region that the US can absolutely depend on as a military ally and intelligence source. The establishment of a Hamas-dominated Palestinian state would complete the encirclement of Israel by hostile, Iranian-sponsored forces. And there is no question that a Palestinian state created today would soon come under control of Hamas. If the US nevertheless brings this about, Israel’s long-term survival is put in question.

Technorati Tags: Obama administration, Middle East, Israel, Iran, Palestinians

As always, nobody understands the Mideast conflict better than Barry Rubin.

He has written two posts about Barack Obama’s Cairo speech that are must-reads: “Speaking Flattery to Power” and “Good intentions plus misunderstanding equals failure“.

I want to print them out and nail them to the White House door. But I suppose that like anyone else, the President and his advisors have difficulty hearing voices with which they don’t already agree.

Although you really should read all of Rubin’s articles, here are a few of his comments.

On Obama’s understanding of the Palestinians and the likelihood that his approach will end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

Turning to Palestinians, he uses an appealing image but one so wrong that it undermines Obama’s entire approach. The Palestinians, he says, have “suffered in pursuit of a homeland” for more than 60 years.

But if that were true the issue would have been solved 60 years ago (1948 through partition), 30 years ago (1979 and Anwar Sadat’s initiative) or 9 years ago (Camp David-2). What has brought Palestinian suffering is the priority on total victory and Israel’s destruction rather than merely getting a homeland. This is the reason why the conflict won’t be solved in the next week, month, or year.

On Obama’s demand that Palestinians should give up violent ‘resistance’:

“Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed,” citing the American civil rights’ movement as example. This sounds noble but it is silly because it ignores the social and ideological context.

Fatah believes it got control of the West Bank and leadership of the Palestinian people through violence and killing. Hamas in Gaza; Hizballah and Syria in Lebanon; and Iran’s Islamist regime as well as the Muslim Brotherhoods believe that “resistance” works.

From the standpoint of Palestinian leaders, violence and killing are not failures. Moreover, violence and killing are commensurate with the goal of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian leadership, which is total victory. Their main alternative “peaceful” strategy is the demand—shared by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas—that pretty much all Palestinians who wish to do so must be allowed to live in Israel. A formula for more violence and killing.

None of this is rocket science. All you need to do is listen to what the Palestinians say and watch what they do, instead of wishfully imposing liberal Western ideals on people who don’t share them. Why are our politicians incapable of doing this?

On his implication that the major onus will be on Israel:

Obama’s phrases were carefully crafted. He called on Palestinians to stop violence, show their competence in administration, and accept a two-state solution, living in peace alongside Israel. Hamas was commanded to be moderate. Yet he in no way seemed to condition Palestinians getting a state on their record. His administration may think this way but he didn’t make that clear.

Middle Eastern ears won’t hear this aspect–which is part of the reason they may cheer the speech—in the way Washington policymakers intend. Inasmuch as the United States now has more credibility for them it’s because they hope it will just force Israel to give without them having to do much. When this doesn’t happen, anger will set in, intensified by the fact that the president “said” the Palestinians are in the right and should have a state right away.

Everything specific concerning Israel’s needs and demands–an end to incitement, security for Israel, end of terrorism, resettlement of refugees in Palestine—weren’t there. While Israel was specifically said to violate previous agreements on the construction within settlements issue—an assertion that’s flat-out wrong—there was no hint that the Palestinians had done so.

This, too isn’t rocket science. Maybe the reason is just that it’s much easier to pressure Israel, a real state with responsibilities (and which is dependent on the US for essential military equipment) than to affect the behavior of non-state entities that are supported by Iran.

On the relationship of the West to the Muslim world:

The first problem is that Obama said many things factually quite untrue, some ridiculously so. Pages would be required to list all these inaccuracies. The interesting question is whether Obama consciously lied or really believes it. I’d prefer him to be lying, because if he’s that ignorant then America and the world is in very deep trouble.

If he really believes Islam’s social role is so perfect, radical Islamists are a tiny minority, Palestinians have suffered hugely through no fault of their own, and so on, then he’s living in a fantasy world. Unfortunately, we are not. The collision between reality and dream is going to be a terrible one.

The second problem is the speech’s unnecessarily extreme one-sidedness. Obama portrays the West as the guilty party. Despite a reference to September 11—even that presented as an American misdeed, unfair dislike of Islam resulting—he gave not a single example of Islamist or Muslim responsibility for anything wrong in the world… [my emphasis}

So if Muslims are always the innocent victims, isn’t [sic] Usama bin Ladin and others correct in saying that all the violence and terrorism to date has been just a “defensive Jihad” against external aggression and thus justifiable? Why should anything change simply because Obama has “admitted” this and asked to start over again?

And on Obama’s contrition:

In the Middle East if you say you’re to blame, that communicates to the other side that their cause is right and they’re entitled to everything it wants. If you apologize, you’re weak. Sure, [although] some relatively Westernized urban liberals will take what Obama said [as he intends], I doubt whether radical states and political forces, as well as the masses, will do so.

The main ingredient in the Obama speech was flattery. There is a bumper sticker that says: Don’t apologize. Your friends don’t need to hear it and your enemies don’t care.

Obama’s situation might be described as: Don’t grovel. It scares the hell out of your friends and convinces your enemies you owe them big time.

Obama may think he’s reversing the rhetorical mistakes of the bellicose George Bush. Unfortunately, he’s gone way too far. I needed my anti-nausea pills for some of this.

It is depressing to see that the administration’s ‘new’ approach is already doomed. It took Bill Clinton 8 years to understand that Yasser Arafat was not Mahatma Gandhi; let’s hope that Barack Obama is a quicker study.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Cairo speech, Muslims, Barry Rubin, Israel, Palestinians

By Vic Rosenthal

There’s a lot to talk about in President Obama’s long-awaited Cairo speech (the text is here). I’ll stick to the part about Israel and the Palestinians. Start with this:

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust…

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.

The implied equivalence — even the mere comparison — is obscene. Nobody shot and gassed six million Palestinians to death, and European Jews did not start and lose a war against Germany. The fact that the head of the dominant Palestinian clan at the time (and the closest thing to a national leader they had), Haj Amin al-Husseini, was a friend and admirer of Hitler adds to the irony. What was Obama thinking?

Note also the discussion of “sixty years…occupation”. Of course Obama would say that he meant the occupation since 1967…wouldn’t he?

Apparently the theme of the speech is making equivalences. Here’s another:

For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It is easy to point fingers – for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: the only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

I suppose there’s no hope of getting beyond false symmetries. Politics is the art of saying “both sides, blah, blah”, someone said. But let’s look at these aspirations:

• Israel aspires to live in peace in the Middle East as a Jewish state. Its history of readiness for compromise shows that borders are less important than peace and security.

• Palestinians aspire to rule “from the river to the sea”. A Jewish state of any size in this area is unacceptable to them.

Again there is no comparison. Israel does not deny the principle of Palestinian self-determination (insofar as it can be realized without destroying Israel). But the Palestinians even deny that there is a Jewish people.

This explains why negotiations to produce a two-state solution have so far failed: Palestinians have always demanded conditions that would not allow Israel to exist as a Jewish state.

On the subject of Iranian nuclear ambitions, he said,

…any nation – including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the Treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I am hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.

A hint that he would like to see Israel, too, sign the treaty and give up her nuclear deterrent? Again we see the false equivalence: as if there is any comparison between Israel’s maintaining a true deterrent force in the face of regional hostility, and Iran’s intention to create a nuclear shield for its proxies!

Here’s a final juxtaposition:

To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, and to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.

So Hamas refuses to accept Israel’s right to exist, and demonstrates that with suicide bombers and Qassam rockets. “At the same time,” Israel ‘denies Palestine’s right to exist’ by …building homes within existing settlements! And some of these ‘settlements’ are better described as neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

This is expressed in a somewhat unfortunate way. Read literally — as the Arabs will do — this implies that any Jewish presence in the area of the 19-year Jordanian occupation is illegitimate and must ‘stop’.

But even if we understand it to refer to construction, then an addition to an existing building inside an East Jerusalem neighborhood is not distinguished from establishing a hilltop outpost in Samaria. Both must stop, according to the President.

As an aside, this is absurd. Jews lived in East Jerusalem until they were killed or expelled by the Jordanians in 1948, as part of a war of aggression and conquest waged by Jordan. After Israel retook the territory in the defensive 1967 war, Jews moved back. Now they are “illegitimate?”

Throughout, Obama struggles to equate Israel with ‘Palestine’, so he can justify taking from one to give to the other. Of course, ‘Palestine’ will never be satisfied until there is nothing left of Israel — but apparently he is unable to see this.

Technorati Tags: Obama, Cairo speech, Israel, Palestinians

Barack Obama in Saudi Arabia:

I thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek his majesty’s counsel and to discuss with him many of the issues that we confront here in the Middle East. — NY Times

Pardon me while I experience another “this is why he is President and I’m not” moment, because I would probably have said something like this:

I thought it was very important to come to the place which has used its huge oil wealth, made possible by the West and particularly the US,  to promulgate its hateful jihadist form of Islam throughout the world, a version of Islam which killed thousands of Americans on 9/11, and to seek the counsel of the hereditary despot of its corrupt royal family, the ruler of one of the most racist, antisemitic and misogynist states in the world and to discuss with him how to force the only democratic state in the region to make still more concessions to its enemies, who — as you know, since you financed them for years — cynically pretend to want a peaceful state, but really want to drive the Jews out of the Mideast.

The Times article continues,

On his Middle East tour, Mr. Obama is expected to press the Arab nations to offer a gesture to the Israelis to entice them to accelerate the peace process.

But in his meetings with the Saudi king, he should be prepared for a polite but firm refusal, Saudi officials and political experts say. The Arab countries, they say, believe they have already made their best offer and that it is now up to Israel to make a gesture, perhaps by dismantling settlements in the West Bank or committing to a two-state solution.

The Arabs’ “best offer” of course is the so-called Arab (or Saudi) Initiative, a plan which suggests that if Israel will take full responsibility for the conflict, retreat to pre-1967 borders including all of East Jerusalem and its holy sites, allow millions of hostile descendants of Arab refugees into what’s left, and acquiesce in the creation of a Jew-free Palestinian state  — then and only then the Arabs might think about something called ‘normal relations’.

Earth to racist, antisemitic and misogynist hereditary despot: unconditional surrender is a non-starter.

Speaking of gestures Israel could make, does the withdrawal from Gaza count? And how did that work out?

One more point about “committing to a two-state solution” and then I’ll go away. The Arabs are making a big deal about the fact that PM Netanyahu will not say the magic formula “I accept a two-state solution”. In my opinion, here is what he should say (or what I would say if I were Prime Minister of Israel):

Someday there could be a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel — if the day comes when Palestinians can live alongside Israelis in peace. But today and in the foreseeable future, with these Palestinians, with the explicitly genocidal Hamas and the less out-front but equally genocidal Fatah, this can’t happen. So let’s try to find a way for the peoples to live in nonviolent proximity with economic prosperity and maybe someday there can be a sovereign state.

I know Palestinian aspirations are important to them. But we are not going to commit suicide so they can realize them.

Actually, I”ll go away after you look at the following image from the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan. It sort of puts the Saudi point of view into perspective:

A Saudi perspective on our recent election

Technorati Tags: Obama, Saudi Arabia, Israel