Thursday, July 09, 2009

For Obama, The Honeymoon’s Over

Maale Adumim, outside Jerusalem: An illegal settlement to some; to Israelis, a “legitimate” Jewish city for “an indigenous people returning home.”

Jewish Week - 7/8/09 - by Jonathan Mark Associate Editor

It was a New York wedding like all others, and no other. The veil was about to cover the bride’s face, evoking the time Jacob was snookered, expecting Rachel, getting Leah. “What do you think?” said one guest to another. About the bride? “No, Obama.” His voice was low, conspiratorial. The joy and sport of last year’s campaign (even heated campaigns can be fun) has given way to cold calculation. The guest, who voted for Barack Obama, now feels like Jacob in the dead of night.

In The Wall Street Journal, Alan Dershowitz writes that because of his call for a total settlement freeze many “supporters of Israel who voted for Barack Obama now suspect they may have been victims of a bait and switch ... the Obama campaign went to great lengths to assure these voters that a President Obama would be supportive of Israel. This despite his friendships with rabidly anti-Israel characters like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and historian Rashid Khalidi.”

Some critics thought Obama was taking a harder line with Israel than even Yasir Arafat did in the 1993 Oslo Accords. (According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Oslo contained “no prohibitions on the building or expansion of settlements.”) Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl believes that “pressuring Israel made sense at first,” but went off-track when it became absolutist, including Jerusalem. “The absolutist position is a loser for three reasons,” writes Diehl. It allows Arabs to remain intransigent while waiting for the freeze; no Israeli coalition could survive an unconditional freeze; and, as at Oslo, the Arabs never asked for it. Arab negotiators, writes Diehl, had always “gone along with previous U.S.-Israeli deals by which construction was to be limited to inside the periphery of settlements near Israel — since everyone knows those areas will be annexed to Israel in a final settlement.”

In November, Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote. By May, his administration began exerting heavy public pressure on Israel alone for an unprecedented West Bank freeze on all “natural growth” — all construction and even family growth, even in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter. By June, one poll found that only 6 percent of Israelis said Obama was “pro-Israel,” according to the Jerusalem Post. This president “may be the most hostile president ever,” said the Zionist Organization of America in a recent press release.

It was a West Bank wedding like all others, and no other. But Yehudit and Yosef’s story really began almost nine years ago, when Palestinians stormed Joseph’s Tomb (Kever Yosef) and its adjacent Od Yosef Chai yeshiva. Yehudit’s father, Hillel Lieberman, then 36, hearing that the holy places were in flames, left his shul in nearby Elon Moreh, hoping to rescue the Torah scrolls. Hillel’s body, still in his tallit, was pumped full of bullets and discarded.

There are now swastikas on Joseph’s Tomb, but it’s quieted down. Elon Moreh and Yitzhar, where Hillel is buried, are two of the settlements that will surely be surrendered to the Palestinians. But, the family wonders, after these settlements are turned into Anatevka, could they ever visit Hillel’s grave, or would it be mutilated and forbidden, like Joseph’s?

Elyorah Lieberman, Hillel’s sister, a New Yorker, said in a telephone interview, that Yehudit and Yosef had been looking for an apartment in Yitzhar but there were none. Construction had slowed to a crawl. There was one apartment in Yitzhar that wasn’t quite available but wasn’t quite used. Yael, the bride’s mother, begged the landlord to have a heart. Yitzhar was a place of burial, said Yael; it should be a place of life. The owner agreed, not to a lease but for now.

Tonight, in defiance of the United States, Yehudit and Yosef will sleep in Yitzhar. The settlement’s “natural growth” has grown by two.

“Elon Moreh,” said Elyorah, “was in the [biblical] territory of Joseph, who saved the economy of the world. Meanwhile, the American economy is in shambles. Obama should remember God’s promise to Abraham, ‘Those who bless you will be blessed, and those who curse you will be cursed.’ God runs the world, not Obama.”

A serious percentage of American Jews seem to be to be tiring of it all. According to an American Jewish Committee poll last year, the number of Jews feeling “very” or “fairly distant” from Israel has grown to 31 percent, nearly one-third of American Jews.

When the poll was released, sociologist Steven Cohen told the JTA news service that the AJC numbers reflected his sense that “the intermarried and children of the intermarried are dragging down the Jewish people’s commitment to Israel,” he said. “Commitment among the in-married is as high as it ever was, but we are moving to two populations.” And yet, Rabbi Charles Sheer, in-married, Orthodox, describes himself as “somewhat on the left,” skeptical of the settlement movement. Nevertheless, he has a daughter and three grandsons on the West Bank — make that four, a new grandson, Nadav Yosef, was born in May. Efrat’s “natural growth” just grew by one.

In 2005, Rabbi Sheer, a New Yorker, had loving but passionate disagreements with his West Bank son-in-law, Avi Abelow, about the Gaza withdrawal. Abelow was the producer of “Home Game,” a highly acclaimed documentary, sympathetic to the settlers, about the last “annual” basketball tournament in Gaza’s Gush Katif; a tournament that ended with everyone losing their homes.

“Looking back, Avi was right,” said Rabbi Sheer. “Israel gained nothing. Withdrawal turned out to be a total disaster.” Rabbi Sheer says he still favors land for peace, but not land for “suicide.” Even “the most liberal left-winger has to see,” said Rabbi Sheer, “that after the withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, you’d have to be meshuga, it’s committing suicide,” for Israel to weaken itself in return for nothing but a promise, an almost messianic belief in the reversal of Arab attitudes.

The rabbi, who contributed financially to Obama’s campaign, now has mailed a letter to the White House protesting the “heavy-handed” pressure that’s “putting the screws to Israel alone.”

Rabbi Sheer now thinks Obama’s policy borders on the “abusive. I’m both disappointed and frightened by it.”

Yossi Klein Halevi never thought of himself as a “settler.” He and his wife have lived for more than 25 years, and raised three children, in the Israeli capital, the same Jerusalem that Obama always said would forever be “unified,” until he said it wasn’t.

Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, and author of “At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land,” said, by telephone, that “Israelis don’t want to hear the word ‘peace’ anymore from Arab leaders. Israelis finally caught on that when Palestinians say peace they mean peace without a Jewish state.” Israel wants peace and legitimacy as a Jewish state.

“Based on his Cairo speech, Obama doesn’t have a clue why Israel is legitimate. We’re not here because of the Shoah,” the justification cited by Obama, explained Halevi. “We fight the way we fight because of the Shoah. We may bomb Iran because of the Shoah. But we’re legitimate because we’re an indigenous people returning home,” home to Jerusalem, to Elon Moreh, to Efrat, to Hebron, disputed though they may be.

“There are no more one-way Israeli concessions. That’s finished. The majority of Israelis would accept a temporary suspension of all building in the territories,” said Halevi, but “what we need in return from the Arab world are a simultaneous and tangible granting of legitimacy and normalization. What we need from Obama is to honor previous American commitments. Until Obama does that, I see no reason for Israel to honor previous commitments or to make any move, either to the Palestinians or the Americans. “The perception in Israel,” said Halevi, “is that Obama is wimping out when it comes to the world’s dictatorships, and is getting tough with only one country — and that’s us. Israelis don’t like that. There is a growing sense of contempt for Obama’s weakness,” perceived in his dealings with Iran and North Korea. “There have been some devastating cartoons in Israeli newspapers, one had Obama dressed like a scarecrow with birds shaped as missiles and rockets, laughing and sitting all over him. His slow response to what was happening in Iran was a major blow... the accumulated damage to his credibility here has been enormous. So if there’s a showdown, most of the Israeli public will stand with Netanyahu.”
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The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition

'US does not expect Israel to act unilaterally'
Jul. 7, 2009
HILARY LEILA KRIEGER JPost correspondent and herb keinon , THE JERUSALEM POST

Amid ongoing tension between the US and Israel over settlements, the Obama administration is stressing that it does not expect Israel to act alone and that Arab states must take meaningful steps in tandem with Israel.

"We're not expecting that the Israelis do something for nothing," a senior State Department official told The Jerusalem Post, following Monday's meeting between US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, which failed to fully bridge the differences concerning settlements.

The official, who is familiar with Mitchell's thinking, gave a wide range of measures the administration was pressing the Arab states to take to reignite the peace process and reassure Israel its demands were not one-sided.

The gestures being proposed include Arab leaders taking trips to Jerusalem as well as receiving Israeli leaders in Arab capitals; Arab countries opening interest offices and increasing trade ties with the Jewish state; Arab states allowing over-flights of Israeli aircraft, which would cut down on passengers' travel time; and joint Israeli-Arab sponsorship of cultural and humanitarian projects.

Diplomatic sources noted that they were focusing these normalization efforts on North African and Gulf states they believe most amenable to improved ties with Israel, as opposed to Saudi Arabia, seen as the custodian of Islam, whose prestige and influence in the region could ultimately prove key to sealing any deal with the Palestinians.

While there is little expectation that Saudi Arabia would take such steps at this time, the sources said, the idea was that Riyadh wouldn't prevent others from making such gestures; in other words, they want to "prevent the Saudis from being hostile" and using their privileged role to sabotage the nascent peace efforts.

In that vein, the administration has focused on Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa, countries which had ties with Israel that were broken off during the early months of the intifada and never restored, and Qatar and Oman, with whom Israel has had some official relations in the past, and the United Arab Emirates.

One diplomatic official described Morocco as being in the category of "low-hanging fruit" because of its relatively moderate government and previous relationship with Israel.

As part of the American effort to coax steps from Arab states, perhaps prodding Morocco taking a leadership role, US President Barack Obama sent a letter to Morocco's King Muhammad VI this past weekend saying he hoped Morocco would "be a leader in bridging gaps between Israel and the Arab world."

According to the letter, which the Moroccans made public, Obama reiterated that Israel had to "stop settlements, dismantle outposts, and remove roadblocks," while saying the Palestinians needed to continue "to build up their security forces to confront terrorism, ending incitement, and reforming their institutions to build a Palestinian state."

While the issue of settlements was a key part of the meeting between Mitchell and Barak, both sides said other issues, including those alluded to in Obama's letter, played a role in the conversation.

The US would like to reach a point where all sides were ready to announce that they would be taking major steps on these and related issues together.

"Our expectation is that everyone is in this together and that they have to take steps together," the State Department official said.

He indicated that one potential format for a such an announcement would be an international conference, though a more low-key form of dissemination, such as press reports or diplomatic cables, could also suffice.

However, the idea of an international conference to launch a renewed and reinvigorated diplomatic process, which has been bandied about for months, has not been grasped too enthusiastically by Israel because of a lack of clarity as to what the content of such a conference would be.

In the meantime, both sides reported making inroads during the recent Mitchell-Barak meeting in London.

"We've been making progress. It's not overnight progress. We're going to continue to have conversations not just with Israel, but with the Palestinians and Arab states across the region," the official said.

Still, he stressed that when it came to the settlement issue, "Our position hasn't changed at all."

The US has been calling for a stop to all settlement activity, including natural growth, as specified in the road map peace plan. Israel, however, has maintained that such a total freeze wouldn't be possible if normal life were to continue in these communities, and have reportedly offered a few-months-long temporary freeze as a compromise.

There is a possibility that a bridging formula could be found whereby Israel's temporary freeze is accepted under the rubric of restarting talks that include final status issues, of which settlements is one.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak briefed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Tuesday along with the inner cabinet, which includes Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and ministers Dan Meridor, Benny Begin and Moshe Ya'alon, on his talks with Mitchell.

While there was speculation that Mitchell will come to Israel next week and meet with Netanyahu, nothing has yet been announced or formalized.

Mitchell has also held meetings with several Arab officials, more in number and frequency than his parleys with Israel, according to his office, in an effort to revive the incipient ties that developed between Israel and more moderate Muslim states during the Oslo process in the 1990s.

Following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel developed tentative relations with some of the Persian Gulf states, opening trade offices in Qatar and Oman in 1996, and also developing trade ties with Morocco and Tunisia.

But within months of the outbreak of Palestinian violence in September 2000, Oman, Morocco and Tunisia cut ties. Israel's interest section in Qatar remained open, but at very low level and out of the public eye. In addition, both Egypt and Jordan recalled their ambassadors.

While Egypt and Jordan eventually returned their envoys, the ties with the other Arab countries were never restored, something the United States would like to rectify.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443747311&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Guest Comment: Disappointment in Obama's stance on Israel has led many in the US Jewish community to distance themselves from him, if not overtly expressing their disappointment. In trying to show his even handedness, Obama has resorted to demonstrating that he is making demands not just on Israel, but also on the Arabs. His demands, however, are mere window dressing, requiring nothing more than gestures that can be easily reversed. How about requiring that they Arab nations, or at least the PA recognize Israel as a Jewish state? After all, those are also only words.

Obama's efforts also avoid Saudi Arabia, the leader of the Arab pact. As the article points out, the Saudis are the guardians of Islam, the implication being that they cannot be approached. In other words, Islam is inconsistent with the Jewish presence in the Middle East. How racist is that? It's not even apartheid! Aggie

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