Severely humiliated by hardline Netanyahu
Analysts: Obama needs fresh plan to restart Arab-Israeli peace talks after humiliating failure.
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration must devise a fresh plan to restart Arab-Israeli peace talks after losing face with a backtracking on its demands for a full Jewish settlement freeze, analysts said Monday.
President Barack Obama’s team has disappointed many Palestinians and other Arabs who long for it to fulfill both its initial tough stance on settlements and a broader pledge to improve ties with the Muslim world, they said.
During a Middle East tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought Monday to reassure Arabs after angering them with her weekend praise of hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to restrict illegal settlements as “unprecedented.”
The chief US diplomat insisted her administration still opposed settlements as strongly as before.
Disputing her claim is Aaron David Miller, who served as adviser on Middle East peacemaking in previous US administrations.
“Netanyahu … outmaneuvered us,” Miller said.
The “paradox,” he argued, is that an administration which began with a tough policy toward the Israelis and a “sensitive” one toward the Palestinians has now shifted the onus to the Palestinians.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel.
Around illegal 200,000 Jewish settlers are estimated to have moved into the dozen or so Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
There are about 300,000 more illegal Jewish settlers currently living in settlements the Palestinian West Bank.
The settlers adhere to radical ideologies and are extremely violent to almost-defenceless Palestinians.
Unlike settlements, Miller said, borders, the status of the disputed holy city of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and security for Israel are the core issues.
“They (the Obama team) need to do some fundamental rethinking about what their overall objective is and how they are going to achieve it,” Miller said.
Amjad Atallah, a former legal adviser to the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority, said the US shift on settlements has only weakened Abbas further and made him more reluctant than ever to enter peace talks with Israel.
“They (Palestinians) argue that if the United States was not prepared to back up what it said on settlements, why would it be prepared to back up what it might say on borders?” Atallah said.
The members of the US administration, believing in their powers of “moral persuasion,” were caught off guard, said the analyst with the New America Foundation.
“They thought once it got into permanent status negotiations, things would go relatively quickly. What they didn’t count on was the Israeli government’s intransigence,” he added.
Now that that has happened, “how do we go about re-establishing our street cred and what’s our strategy going forward?” he asked.
The administration now needs, Atallah said, to devise a diplomatic strategy that matches the “high-minded principled recognition” that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a central threat to US national security interests.
Instead, the United States is pursuing “a business-as-usual negotiating strategy” that can only ultimately lead to a worsening situation and even violence, he warned.
Obama, in failing to deliver on settlements, seems to have reinforced the Arab narrative that the “Americans are all in the pockets of the Zionists,” according to Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“It’s not going to be easy, but we need to find some way to change topic,” Clawson said when asked about how the US can revive talks.
Tags: Hillary Clinton praises Netanyahu!, Israel, Jewish settlements, Jewish settlers, Obama administration, United States
2 comments:
I agree with your statement that Obama needs fresh plan to restart Arab-Israeli peace talks after humiliating failure. Five months ago, on May 31, 2009, I wrote this on my blog: http://asanevoiceforpeaceinthemiddleeast.blogspot.com
Forty years of negotiation for peace has ended in the devastation of the Gaza War. Relying only on negotiations to achieve peace is not likely to succeed. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton tried their best to resolve the conflict through elaborate negotiations. I believe that there is a much better way to achieve peace in the Middle East. It involves only three simple steps:
1. President Obama should declare that his administration recognizes Palestine bounded by the 1966 (pre-1967) border, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
2. President Obama should ask both the United Nations Security Council and the UN General Assembly to vote for the creation of Palestine and declare that the UN recognizes Palestine bounded by the 1966 border. The UN should ask all occupying foreign powers to vacate Palestine. The Israelis who wish to continue to live in Palestine must apply for permission from the Palestinian government to live there as immigrants. After five years the Israeli settlers could become eligible for Palestinian citizenship just as immigrants to the US become eligible for American citizenship after five years’ residency.
3. The UN should ask Israel to relocate the wall Israel has built encroaching Palestinian ancestral land to its internationally recognized borders (1966 or Pre-1967).
Presto!
Other nations from around the world can start recognizing Palestine, and send their ambassadors to East Jerusalem. Let the US be the first nation to recognize the free and independent Palestine.
I know that there are ten thousand and one suggestions and peace plans for the Middle East on the Internet from various organizations and columnists and politicians for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. I know also that the chance of President Obama’s reading about my “Peace Plan” is infinitesimally small. But who can predict? Lightning does strike occasionally, when least expected.
I hope that President Obama will succeed in his efforts to resolve the conflict. Peace in that region is desperately needed. King Abdullah of Jordan has predicted that if Israelis and Palestinians do not sign a peace treaty soon, a major war will erupt in the region in 12 to 18 months. And President Obama seems to concur with that statement.
Yesh Prabhu, Plainsboro, NJ
The suggestions of Mr Prabhu to President Obama to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are clear and far-sighted. His views seem to represent a humane and a reasonable approach. I appreciate what he says and also support his suggestions.
Unfortunately, things for President Obama are not so easy. Even if he wanted to do as Mr Prabhu suggests, the power of Israel and Israeli/Zionist Lobby in the United States is too strong. Within his administration, pro-Zionists have the upper-hand - Biden, Clintons (Hillary + Bill), etc.
Many political observers must have noticed how during the course of the last few days the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has tried to nullify what President Obama had declared an important condition in resolving the conflict: Israeli freeze on its further settlements activity in the Occupied Palestinian land. But what happened? Clinton praised Netanyahu for his criminal land grab and pledged continued American support for Israeli colonization! Such are the facts about American power and its Middle East foreign policy.
What this shows is clear. The Neo-Conservatives, the Bushites, and Zionists control the foreign policy of the Obama administration. This is an important fact to remember for understanding the present situation. The American president has no magic wand to change all that even if he wanted to. But there are too many questions about Obama and Israeli/Zionist connection that need to be looked into.
The view that President Clinton tried his best to resolve the conflict is not correct. He was a strong pro-Israel Christian fundamentalist who tried his best to use his imperial power to impose the US-Zionist will on the Palestinian people. But PA President Arafat rejected such coercive pressure and deception. He was eliminated by the Zionists for good.
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