Washington’s rush to recognize the new Hamas-backed Palestinian government is only the latest in a dismal series of missteps, failures and betrayals
Mere hours after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a government backed by the Islamic extremist Hamas group, the US State Department legitimized the arrangement, declaring that it would work with the new government because it “does not include members affiliated with Hamas.”
What was
saddest about Washington’s insistence on accepting Abbas’s paper-thin
veneer over his government’s new nature — his “technocrat” ministers
were all approved by Hamas — is that it represents only the Obama
administration’s latest abrogation of leadership, logic and leverage at
Israel’s expense. Rather than rushing to embrace a Palestinian
government in which an unreformed Hamas is a central component, what was
to stop the US conditioning its acceptance on a reform of Hamas? What
was to stop Washington saying that it would be happy to work with
Abbas’s new government, the moment its Hamas backers recognized Israel,
accepted previous agreements and renounced terrorism? Not a particularly
high bar. What was to stop the US making such a demand, one of
tremendous importance to its ally Israel? Only its incomprehensible
reluctance to do.
Unfortunately,
however, such lapses and failures are not the exception when it comes
to the US-Israel alliance of late. This administration has worked
closely with Israel in ensuring the Jewish state maintains its vital
military advantage in this treacherous neighborhood, partnering Israel
in offensive and defensive initiatives, notably including missile
defense. It has stood by Israel at diplomatic moments of truth. It has
broadly demonstrated its friendship, as would be expected given
America’s interest in promoting the well-being of the region’s sole,
stable, dependable democracy. But the dash to recognize the Fatah-Hamas
government was one more in a series of aberrations — words and deeds
that would have been far better left unsaid or undone, misconceived
strategies, minor betrayals.
1.
So, yes, where Hamas is concerned, you’d think that an ally would not
legitimize, as part of the Palestinian government, an organization bent
on the destruction of Israel, an organization declaredly refusing to
change that goal, an organization with a proven, mass-murdering
track-record.
2. Going back to the
start of the latest failed peace effort, you’d think an ally would
listen to the advice of well-meaning experts warning that attempting to
do the same thing that failed in the past in the belief that it will
turn out differently — in this case, strong-arming two hostile,
untrusting parties into an acutely sensitive and complex agreement in a
very short period — is the definition of insanity. Rather than setting
an impossible nine-month timeframe for negotiating a permanent accord,
when all reasonable evidence and past experience showed that this would
fail, it would have been better for the US and its international allies
to start working systematically, investing time, money and leverage in,
among other spheres, education and media, in order to create a climate
conducive to progress. Peacemaking is going to require a gradual
process, grass-roots change; there is no quick fix. Every credible,
peace-supporting voice on the ground here told the Americans exactly
this before they set out. And was ignored. And now we all have to brace
for the dangerous consequences of the all-too-predictable failure.
3. While we’re
talking about producing a more conducive climate, you’d think an ally
would use its regional clout and leverage to work with partners in the
region to rehouse Palestinian refugees, first of all in Gaza, where
there is no Israeli military or civilian presence and no reason for the
festering wound to be artificially maintained. This is humanitarian work
of the highest order, to which no organization or individual genuinely
committed to the well-being of the Palestinian people could object. It
would be opposed only by those whose ostensible sympathy for the
Palestinian plight is outweighed by their hostility to Israel.
4. You’d think
an ally would have made plain to the Palestinians that their demand, as a
precondition for renewing peace talks, that Israel set free terrorists
who have killed large numbers of its innocent citizens was outrageous
and unacceptable, certainly at the outset of negotiations. Perhaps such
prisoner releases might have some justification as the concluding act of
a successful process. By contrast, freezing the expansion of
settlements in areas that Israel does not envisage retaining under a
permanent accord is a win-win — beginning the needed process of spelling
out to Israelis, to the region and to the international community
Israel’s vital territorial red lines. But this, the Americans did not
demand. In short, a smart and firm ally would have rejected Abbas’s
demand for killers to go free rather than pressing Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu to accept it, and insisted on at least a partial
settlement freeze. Think you need to save us from ourselves? That’s the
place to start.
5. Elaborating,
you’d think an ally would want to distinguish between isolated
settlements in the heart of Palestinian territory and Jewish
neighborhoods in Jerusalem. By lumping all “settlements” together, and
relentlessly criticizing all building, you alienate the Israeli middle
ground, which supports the retention of Jewish neighborhoods built over
the pre-1967 lines in Jerusalem, on the one hand, and would relinquish
most West Bank settlements in the cause of a viable peace treaty, on the
other. So the lack of subtlety and nuance on the settlement issue winds
up complicating America’s own efforts to broker progress.
6. Trapped in the inevitable deadlock, with that
nine-month deadline fast approaching, you would think that an allied
president would eschew giving an interview to the American media essentially accusing the prime minister of leading Israel to disaster
at the very hour that said prime minister was on his way to a meeting
at the White House. For one thing, such withering public comments are
hardly likely to bolster the prime minister’s faith in the
president’s judgment and solidarity — and thus are likely to undermine
efforts to build his trust. For another, it’s downright rude.
7. And when it all went conclusively pear-shaped,
you’d think an ally would respect its own rules about not leaking the
content of the negotiations. Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly
urged the two sides to keep the content of their talks confidential, yet
it was his own special envoy, Martin Indyk, reportedly, who gave a
lengthy briefing to Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea, a respected
columnist but one who is hardly empathetic to Netanyahu, which yielded
an article that unsurprisingly placed overwhelming and at least somewhat
unwarranted and distorted blame for the collapse of the process on the
prime minister.
8. You’d think an ally would man up about its own
dismal role in the frictions and misunderstandings that doomed the talks
at the end of March. “The prisoners were not released by Israel on the
day they were supposed to be released, and then another day passed and
another day, and then 700 units were approved in Jerusalem and then poof
— that was sort of the moment,” Kerry told the Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations in early April, by way of explanation for the impasse.
Actually, “the prisoners were not released on the day they were
supposed to be released” because Israel opposed freeing Arab Israeli
convicts, whose fate it reasonably considered not to be any of the
Palestinian Authority’s business. That issue only became problematic
because Kerry had earlier misled the Palestinians into thinking that
Israel was prepared to set them free. Furthermore, the announcement of
the reissuing of an old tender to build 700 homes in Gilo was not a
critical factor in the collapse — “poof” — of the talks.
9. No matter how frustrated or defensive Kerry might
have been feeling, you’d think a friend of Israel would know better
than to lob the toxic term “apartheid” into the public debate over
Israel’s future. Israel’s embattled democracy provides equal rights for
its 25 percent non-Jewish minority, who enjoy freedom of religion,
assembly and press. Arabic is an official language in this country. An
Israeli Arab judge sent our president to jail. That’s only part of the
story, of course: Ruling another people is already deeply corrosive; if
we cannot separate from the Palestinians, if we annex the West Bank,
still graver dangers await. Warning Israel privately of the threats
posed to our democracy is the duty of a concerned friend. But publicly
invoking the spectacularly loaded term “apartheid” in critiquing Israel
is the lowest of blows — a gift to enemies who can be counted on to
seize upon such comments to distort Israel’s reality and delegtimize its
very existence.
10. Further afield, you’d think an ally would maintain
an empathetic silence rather than repeatedly tell the world that Israel
has struck weapons shipments in Syria en route to Hezbollah. This when
Israel was deliberately avoiding acknowledging responsibility for such
actions because of concern that President Bashar Assad would be provoked
into counterattacks at Israel.
11. To the south, you’d think an ally would avoid
rushing to support Islamic extremists (see a pattern here?) when they
come to power in a neighboring state. The fact that the Israel-Egypt
peace treaty survived the Muslim Brotherhood’s brief period of misrule
in Cairo is a critical and inadequately appreciated success, achieved despite Washington’s foolish embrace of the short-lived Morsi government.
12. And finally, you’d think a powerful ally would
insist that a state that calls for, and works toward, the destruction of
Israel be denied the capacity to achieve that goal. There is simply no
justification for allowing Tehran a uranium enrichment capability. It
lied to the international community about its nuclear program. It built
secret facilities to advance towards the bomb. It has no “right” to
enrichment. It can receive nuclear fuel, like well over a dozen nations
worldwide, from legitimate nuclear powers for its ostensibly peaceful
nuclear program. The central goal of US policy in this regard should not
be merely denying Iran nuclear weapons but denying Iran the capacity to build
nuclear weapons. Iran can be relied upon to abuse any leniency in this
regard, with immense consequent threat to Israel and others in the
region. The Obama administration’s curious disinclination to use its
economic leverage to achieve a deal that dismantles Iran’s nuclear
program leaves Israel in real danger, undermines the security of other
US interests in the region, and risks sparking a Middle East nuclear
arms race — the very opposite of the president’s cherished vision of
eventual nuclear disarmament.
You might think the above list is the least that Israel might reasonably expect from the US administration.
But no. The peace process has collapsed and Israel is getting a
disproportionate amount of the blame. Hamas, committed under its own
charter to the obliteration of Israel, is now part of an internationally
recognized Palestinian government. And the P5+1 nations, led by the US,
are working toward a deal that will enshrine Iran’s uranium enrichment
capabilities. Israel may not be a perfect ally, but we deserve better
than this.
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