Cory Booker displays his political identity

Cory Booker just reinforced my underwhelming impression of him as a politician and potential Presidential candidatee. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian of The Young Terms explain in Cory Booker Has Media Debacle 08/09/2018. I was surprised to see him with that sign in the first place.

Cory Booker is a ConservaDem.

Gideon Levy says Netanyahu told the truth about no two-state solution

Israeli peace advocate gives re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backhanded praise for his pre-election statement flatly rejecting a two-state solution (Netanyahu will be remembered for speaking Israel's truth Haaretz 03/22/2015):

I would like to say thank you to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Thank you for telling the truth. Last week you were revealed as the first Israeli prime minister to tell the truth. For at least 25 years most Israeli statesmen have been lying, misleading the world, the Israelis and themselves, until Netanyahu arose – he of all statesmen – and told the truth. If only this truth had been told by an Israeli prime minister 25 years ago, maybe even 50 years ago, when the occupation was born. Still, better late than never. The public rewarded him for this truth, and Netanyahu was elected for a fourth term.

Netanyahu said last week that if he were to be reelected, a Palestinian state would not be established on his watch. Plain and simple, loud and clear. This simple, pure truth was the case for all his predecessors as well – all the prime ministers, peace lovers and justice seekers from the center and the left, who gave false promises. ...

After all, one had to deceive the Americans, bluff the Europeans and cheat the Palestinians, fudge things for the Mideast Quartet and lie to some Israelis. One also had to play for time, to build settlements and get rid of every possible Palestinian partner – Yasser Arafat, who was too strong; President Mahmoud Abbas, who is too weak; and Hamas, which is too extreme. One has to play for time, so the Palestinians become more extreme and everyone understands that there’s no one to talk to. [my emphasis]

This is why I'm leery of the strategy that the Obama Administration is sending up trial balloons on, of the US using the two-state solution to put diplomatic pressure on Israel.

Whatever its short-term advantages of highlighting the irresponsible warmongering of Netanyahu and his Republican allies, it also means that the Obama Administration is pretending the current reality is something other than the fact that Israel now faces the basic choice of being a democratic state that is no longer Jewish either officially or by majority, or being a Jewish apartheid state that is undemocratic.

At this point, it's hard to see how pursuing the phantom of a two-state solution that is no longer feasible actually advances the resolution of the long-standing failure to achieve a lasting peace settlement in Israel-Palestine.

Obama Administration sketches a new posture on the Israeli occupation - or does it?

The White House chose Peter Beinart to write their press release in the form of a news story on US policy toward Israel, Enraged by Netanyahu's rhetoric, White House officials believe Israeli-U.S. relations fundamentally changed Haaretz 03/19/2015. Via Beinart, the Obama Administration frames things this way. They complain about Netanyahu's comment about the Arabs voting and about his campaign comments about settlement policy in the occupied territories and his explicit rejection of a two-state solution.

This is a little much to swallow:

There is little President Obama considers more loathsome, administration officials note, than stoking racism to win votes. “Given our own history we have a unique perspective on the idea that minorities’ voting is not something to be condemned or feared,” said one administration official. The analogy is significant because the civil rights movement is Obama’s moral compass. For an administration official to compare Netanyahu to George Wallace or Bull Connor, even obliquely, says a lot about which side of history they believe he’s on. [my emphasis]

Does the "moral compass" that Martin Luther King, Jr. was following in this speech resonate with the President: Martin Luther King's Speech Against the Vietnam War, column by David Bromwich Antiwar.com 03/16/2008?

I'm guessing not.

Ironically, Antiwar.com calls itself "one project of our parent foundation, the Randolph Bourne Institute." But the link leads directly to the segregationist/"libertarian" Mises Institute.

The White House via Beinart floats the following policy options. First one:

... let the Palestinian Authority collapse and let Bibi deal with the calamity that follows. Early this year, Israel began withholding more than $100 million in tax revenue to punish Palestinians for trying to join the International Criminal Court. Since then, the Obama administration has been going around, cup in hand, trying to get European and Persian Gulf countries to give the Palestinian Authority the money to stay afloat.

Number two:

A second option is to allow the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution condemning settlements. In other words, to withdraw America’s veto. Administration officials insist that they will never cut military aid, since that would harm Israeli security. And they say Obama will go on meeting Netanyahu, as unpleasant as that may be. They also won’t support Palestinian efforts at the International Criminal Court, since that feeds Israel’s “delegitimization.”

Beinart doesn't mention it, but both the Cheney-Bush and Obama Administrations have been distinctly hostile to the notion of the ICC having jurisdiction over Americans. We're Exceptional, after all.

Not vetoing UN resolutions that Israel doesn't like, though, would be a notable change in the US diplomatic stance. Realistically, though, as long as "Administration officials insist that they will never cut military aid," Israel is unlikely to take such diplomatic slights that seriously as pressure.

And number three:

The third, and most dramatic, move would be for America to support a UN resolution outlining the parameters of final two state deal. Administration officials expect the French to push such an effort on the theory that UN parameters would attain the iconic status enjoyed by UN resolutions 242 and 388, and, eventually, become the basis for serious talks. The Obama administration would not sign a European-crafted resolution, which they suspect would make specific demands on Israel about territorial withdrawal and the division of Jerusalem while offering only vague language about Palestinian obligations on refugees and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

But there is a serious effort, which began last year, and has already involved extensive negotiations by people close to the administration, to Americanize a final status resolution. Such a resolution would endorse an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and making Jerusalem the shared capital of two states. It would acknowledge that the 1967 lines could be modified by land swaps, but to satisfy the Palestinians, perhaps declare that those land swaps be equal in size. To make the resolution more palatable to Israel, however, the US would insert clear language recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, essentially ruling out a large-scale right of refuge return and making Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank contingent on the performance of Palestinian security forces. [my emphasis]

Here's where I start to suspect that chronic Democratic stumbling may take over.

This stance assumes that the Democrats and the Obama Administration would put their two-state position up against the de facto Republican-Likud position of Greater Israel.

But can we really assume that a two-state solution, even with the best imaginable will on all sides, is a realistic option any more? I very seriously doubt it, though if it could be pulled off in a comprehensive settlement, I would be happy to see it. But it doesn't look very feasible. Robert Perry writes in Netanyahu Unmasks Israel Consortium News 03/18/2015:

The truth is that the two-state solution has been a fiction for at least the past two decades, dying in 1995 with the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But the two-state illusion still served important political purposes both for Israelis, who would pay it lip service while continuing their steady encroachment on Palestinian lands, and for U.S. politicians who could point to the mirage as an excuse not to pressure Israel too hard on its human rights violations.

Yet, whenever any U.S. official actually tried to reach that shimmering oasis of a two-state solution, it would recede into the distance. Then, the Israelis would rely on their friends and allies in the news media and politics to blame the Palestinians. Now, however, the illusion of Israel seeking such an outcome in good faith has been lost in Netanyahu’s anything-goes determination to keep his office – a case of political expediency trumping strategic expediency.

Assuming the two-state solution is dead, what we're looking at is basically the choice that Jimmy Carter and others have described: (1) A predominately Jewish Israel with Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories as the subjected population in an apartheid state; or, (2) constructing some version of Greater Israel that would make the occupied territories part of Israel and make the Palestinians there full citizens, which would mean a non-Jewish majority in the not-too-distant future.

And choice, in other words, between a Jewish state that practices apartheid or a democratic state that is not Jewish-majority.

So what would it mean for the Obama Administration or a future one to "insert clear language recognizing Israel as a Jewish state" in a UN decision that would take on the force of international law? That would put the United States more on the apartheid side of that choice.

And if absorbing the occupied territories makes them part of Israel, what would it mean to make "Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank contingent on the performance of Palestinian security forces"?

That resolution only makes sense in terms of a two-state solution, where "Israeli" and "Palestinian" were still two separate things.

But without a final settlement on the nature of the state, doesn't recognizing Israel de jure as a "Jewish state," and giving them the right to have their army in the occupied territories until Israel determines that there is no remaining terrorist threat, mean locking the status quo into place in all essential aspects?

That one is a puzzler to me.

Israel, the US, Palestinians and Iran

Mitchell Plitnick grumbles about the focus on an anonymous American official's "chickens**t" comment about Israel's Bibi Netanyahu. (Netanyahu and Obama: Name-Calling and its Discontents LobeLog Foreign Policy 10/31/2014) He then proceeds to use it repeatedly himself in his article.

Plitnick isn't just tossing around insults, though. He's making an informed evaluation of the leadership style of Obama and Netanyahu. And he emphasizes that the real problem between the US and Israel is not the personalities of their leaders, but rather real differences in interests and policies. He also makes this useful observation about how that affects the options for American leaders:

[Obama] is a president with a non-confrontational style trying to govern with what is, arguably, the most defiant and combative Congress any president has ever had to deal with. And he is dealing with an Israeli government that is pursuing a very different strategy than its predecessors. The Israel of today no longer cares about the majority of the Jewish community in the United States. This Israel, correctly, determined that its ultimate desire to completely thwart a two-state solution and maintain an apartheid system over the Palestinians would never be acceptable to most American Jews. But most US Jews weren’t the ones providing the political power and, more importantly, the funding for congressional campaigns and for settlements in the West Bank.

The Jews that do provide these things, as well as the Christians, are right-wingers, either in their general politics or at least on Middle East policy (including policy toward the entire Arab world, Iran and Turkey). They are now the only ones Israel cares about. More liberal-minded devotees are not, at this stage, providing that much support for Israel, either economically or financially. Those of them who do provide this support will continue to check their otherwise liberal values at the Israeli door. The rest are not, in the estimate of the Netanyahu government, worth the compromises that must be made to garner their support. [my emphasis]

Plitnick cites this news report by Ron Ben-Yishai, Easing Gaza restrictions is the new two-state solution Ynet 10/11/2014 about current Israeli-Egyptian plans for keeping a lid on the Palestinians. He doesn't think it's like to succeed. But he emphasizes that the Obama Administration is supporting that effort:

This seems like another doomed plan, one that harkens back to old Israeli beliefs that Palestinian nationalism will eventually just go away. But we must recognize that this is happening with the silent approval of the United States. Egypt, in particular, would not work with Israel on such a plan if it believed that the United States would object. More to the point, the plan is also intended to provide the US with what it wants most: Palestinian silence. What American policy has always represented is the complete lack of importance placed on the welfare of the Palestinians, or anyone else (including ordinary Israelis) in the region, for that matter. The entire issue is only relevant insofar as it affects more “important” US concerns.

So, the Obama administration will likely allow Israel to proceed with its plans, even if it doesn’t believe those plans are likely to succeed. This is evident in the lack of material response to Israel’s direct challenge to the international consensus on a two-state solution. [my emphasis]

Even if he's overstating the case on American indifference to the fate of the Palestinians, his argument that the immediate point of greatest tension between the two countries is Iran is plausible:

If Congress persists in pressuring the administration on its Iran policy, a pressure which most understand as directed by Jerusalem, Obama may well respond through the Palestinian issue. In that case, we might see a more direct counter to Israeli policies, such as a Security Council resolution condemning the settlements or even an “Obama Plan” basing a two-state solution on the 1967 borders and sharing Jerusalem. That would be a turn of events not seen in decades, but Israel has also never worked so hard to undermine US goals on foreign policy matters as it has on Iran. [my emphasis]

Some lessons so far from the latest Gaza mini-war

The last I looked at the news, there was a cease-fire in the latest Gaza war. Who knows whether it will last? It's another violent and depressing chapter in the long transition from the now-seemingly-dead possibility of a two-state solution to an Israel that includes the West Bank and Gaza and will face a choice between remaining a democracy and remaining a majority Jewish state.

Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, makes the following useful observations about the beginning of this round of conflict last week (The latest Gaza catastrophe Aljazeera English 11/18/2012)

The assassination of Jabari came a few days after an informal truce that had been negotiated through the good offices of Egypt, and quite ironically agreed to by none other than Jabari acting on behalf of Hamas. Killing him was clearly intended as a major provocation, disrupting a carefully negotiated effort to avoid another tit-for-tat sequence of violence of the sort that has periodically taken place during the last several years.

An assassination of such a high profile Palestinian political figure as Jabari is not a spontaneous act. It is based on elaborate surveillance over a long period, and is obviously planned well in advance partly with the hope of avoiding collateral damage, and thus limiting unfavourable publicity. Such an extra-judicial killing, although also part and parcel of the new American ethos of drone warfare, remains an unlawful tactic of conflict, denying adversary political leaders separated from combat any opportunity to defend themselves against accusations, and implies a rejection of any disposition to seek a peaceful resolution of a political conflict. It amounts to the imposition of capital punishment without due process, a denial of elementary rights to confront an accuser.

Putting aside the niceties of law, the Israeli leadership knew exactly what it was doing when it broke the truce and assassinated such a prominent Hamas leader, someone generally thought to be second only to the Gaza prime minister, Ismail Haniya. There have been rumours, and veiled threats, for months that the Netanyahu government plans a major assault of Gaza, and the timing of the ongoing attacks seems to coincide with the dynamics of Israeli internal politics, especially the traditional Israeli practice of shoring up the image of toughness of the existing leadership in Tel Aviv as a way of inducing Israeli citizens to feel fearful, yet protected, before casting their ballots. [my emphasis]

As Falk points out, Israel is legally an occupying power in Gaza bound by the laws governing such occupations. But:

It is truly alarming that now even the holiest of cities, Jerusalem, is threatened with attacks, but the continuation of oppressive conditions for the people of Gaza, inevitably leads to increasing levels of frustration, in effect, cries of help that world has ignored at its peril for decades. These are survival screams! To realise this is not to exaggerate! To gain perspective, it is only necessary to read a recent UN Report that concludes that the deterioration of services and conditions will make Gaza uninhabitable by 2020.

That UN report (p. 16), Gaza in 2020: A liveable place? (2012) finds:

In the absence of sustained and effective remedial action and an enabling political environment, .... the daily lives of Gazans in 2020 will be worse than they are now. There will be virtually no reliable access to sources of safe drinking water, standards of healthcare and education will have continued to decline, and the vision of affordable and reliable electricity for all will have become a distant memory for most. The already high number of poor, marginalized and food-insecure people depending on assistance will not have changed, and in all likelihood will have increased.

To ensure that Gaza in 2020 will be "a liveable place", on-going herculean efforts by Palestinians and partners in such sectors a energy, education, health, water and sanitation, need to be accelerated and intensified in the face of all difficulties.

Robert Fisk in We are all Israelis now: its brutality, unlike Syria's, is fought in the name of the West's war on terror The Independent 11/20/2012 suggests that Hamas fell into a trap that the Israeli government set for them:

It’s odd, the way they all get away with it. Lord Blair, whose 92 Business Class trips to the Holy Land have produced a peace beyond all peace, is now talking about how it’s in everybody’s interest to have a truce – is his face getting a bit skeletal, or is that my imagination? – and a truce, I suppose, we shall have, well over 100 Palestinian and three Israeli dead too late. But is it all worth it? Was the murder by Israel of Hamas’s military leader Ahmed al-Jabari in fact not staged to provide an excuse to bomb all those new missiles that Hamas has acquired?

That wise old Israeli owl Uri Avneri – he is 89 years old – thinks this is just the trap that Hamas fell into by launching its preposterous "Gates of Hell" rocket attacks in revenge for Jabari’s death. The whole Operation "Pillar of Defence" was about destroying Hamas’s weapons – not about the largely ineffective missiles themselves. ...

One of the new Israeli lines on the war runs like this. Israel kills "terrorists" by the score along with a handful of “collateral damage” innocents – and the world rages against Israel. Yet isn't the Syrian regime killing Syrian innocents by the thousand every month? Where are the mass protests, the venting of wrath at Bashar al-Assad? What hypocrisy! But of course, this is in itself a hypocrisy. We know the old "Hama rules" of Syria; no one asks us to support them. And comparing Israel’s brutality to that of the Assad regime is playing the old Lord Blair game: we weren't perfect in Iraq – but we weren't as bad as Saddam.

No. Israel claims to hold the same values as the supposedly moral West. It says that it is fighting "terrorism" in our name as well as its own. It says it is fighting like us. It is playing by our Western rules. We are all Israelis now; that is what we are meant to say.

Helena Cobban in Obama admin wilfully blind on Gaza crisis? Just World News 11/21/2012 reminds us that the US position has become more and more uncritical toward Israel over time:

Time was, back in the old days, when there were people in the White House and in positions of influence in the State Department who understood the broad dynamics of Middle Eastern politics and who had a well-grounded sense of what, broadly speaking, the American people's interests in the region were. Back in the day, "even-handed" used to be a term of praise for U.S. officials involved in the sometimes complex work of negotiating issues between Arabs and Israelis.

Oh boy, how that has changed. With the rise of AIPAC's influence over all relevant branches of the U.S. administration (except for some remaining small pockets of resistance in some portions of the Defense Department), kowtowing to Israel became the order of the day. "Even-handed" even came to be understood as a slur expressed against those who were insufficiently zealous in the cause. Too deep and granular an understanding of the dynamics of a region that is host to some 300 million Muslims and just 6.5 million Jewish Israelis came to be seen by everyone in the self-referential bubble that is Washington as a clear career-ender. (Exhibit A: Amb. Chas Freeman, and the humiliation meted out to him in March 2009. But there are numerous other examples, too..)

A self-imposed blindness became the order of the day in Washington.

And today, that blindness matters.

Because, as she notes, the Arab Awakening has significantly shifted the political perspective of countries like Egypt on Israeli-Palestinian issues.

And she takes a dim view, a little too dim perhaps, of past American peace efforts. But at this point, it does seem pretty clear that official Washington has given up any hope or real effort toward a lasting peace settlement, two-state or otherwise:

For 39 years now, ever since the Geneva Conference of December 1973, Washington has successfully maintained its monopoly over all Arab-Israeli peace diplomacy. The record of this tenure has been especially poor regarding the crucial Palestinian strand of the effort. Over the past 39 years, the Israelis have implanted 500,000 settlers into the occupied Palestinian territories. They have maintained total control over all of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. They have killed several tens of thousands of Palestinians-- between Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank-- and have displaced hundreds of thousands more from their ancestral homeland. They have completely transformed the human geography of Jerusalem. They have refused any attempts by the eight million or so Palestinians living in exile to return to their homeland. Palestinian acts of violence over that period have killed some hundreds of Israelis.

Every so often throughout the past 39 years-- and especially in the aftermath of a flare-up of tensions-- Washington would trot out some version or another of a new "peace initiative", or even (heaven forbid!) a peace "process", involving the Palestinians. All of it was flim-flam, smoke and mirrors whose main effect (and in some cases, also the intention) was to give the Israelis more time to continue their colonial taking of the Palestinians' land and resources. [my emphasis in bold]

Juan Cole also points to the new role of Egypt in Morsi Emerges as Key Power Broker in Gaza Conflict Informed Comment 11/21/2012:

Egypt’s President Muhammad Morsi, a member of the same Muslim Brotherhood that gave birth to Palestine’s Hamas movement, has emerged as a key broker in the Gaza crisis. President Obama is said to have called him for the third time in 24 hours on Tuesday!

Morsi sympathizes with the stateless Palestinians, who are being kept without a state and without basic human rights by the right wing Israeli government. But more, he sympathizes with Hamas itself, which the US and Israel have branded a terrorist organization. Because the US has put Hamas on the terrorist list, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton cannot talk to the government of Gaza (which seems rather stupid), and Morsi is therefore a key interlocutor. ...

... Morsi as president makes part of the big difference between Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008-09 and today’s assault. In 08-09, the Palestinians had no real support from Egypt and of course the Israeli government and the Bush administration had it in for them. Hosni Mubarak and his right hand man Omar Sulaiman hated Hamas. When Israel attacked Gaza, they quickly closed the Rafah crossing and Egyptian troops actually shot dead two Palestinians trying to flee into Egypt from the bombing.

Egypt, at some 82 million (nearly the size of Germany), is the most populous Arab country, and it is still something of a thought leader for the Arab world. It has the biggest and best army in the Middle East, though there are virtually no Egyptians who would welcome war.

Tags: gaza offensive, israel, palestine

Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu on the Gaza operation

I think it's safe to say that Hillary Clinton articulated complete support for Israel's operation against Gaza, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets Israeli PM Netanyahu 11/20/2012:

Ari Shavit writes in End the war while you're ahead Haaretz 11/19/2012 that the current conflict started producing diminishing returns for Israel on about Day 3. Or maybe even negative returns:

The first day of Operation Pillar of Defense was quite successful. The Hamas military chief was assassinated and Hamas' long-range rocket capability was impaired, sending the radical Palestinian group into shock. The second day went pretty well too: Iron Dome proved its worth, Israeli civilians proved their steadfastness and Israel showed that it still enjoys a fair amount of international legitimacy and domestic cohesion. ...

If the operation had ended four days ago, the message that would have been received in Gaza, Beirut, Damascus and Tehran would have been clear and sharp: Israel has excellent intelligence, decisive aerial capabilities, resolute leaders, brave citizens and surprising international support. It's not worth messing with Israel. You'd be better off letting it live its life without provoking the country or awakening it again from its slumber.

But just as in 2006 [Lebanon] and again in 2008 [Gaza], Israel did not stop in time. Israel did not quit while it was ahead. And so, over the past three days, the impressive achievements of Operation Pillar of Defense have faded away while the operation's negative consequences have become more clear-cut. Israel's ability to strike at Hamas militants from the air was significantly reduced, while the harm it caused to innocent civilians significantly increased.

And the likely result? "Israel must now decide which of two bad options is better: a tough cease-fire or a bad ground war. There will be no clear victory in the Gaza Strip."

Aaron David Miller takes note of how the current military operation is highlighting the increased prominence and influence of Hamas in Palestinian politics (How Hamas Won the War Foreign Policy 11/19/2012):

Tensions and differences [among the Palestinians and their allies] still persist. But the Arab -- really Islamist -- Spring has created a major new realignment.

The real diplomatic coup for the Palestinians isn't Abbas's effort toward winning statehood recognition at the United Nations. It's the victories and growing influence of Islamists in Arab politics, which have given Hamas greater respectability and support. Two of Israel's most important Middle East friends -- Turkey and Egypt -- are now running interference for Hamas as their own ties with the Israelis have gotten colder. And these new allies aren't outliers like Iran and Syria. They are friends of the United States and very much in the center of the international community.

It's testament to the weakness of Abbas and the PLO that it is Hamas's rockets, not Abbas's diplomacy, that has placed the Palestinian issue once again on center stage. The Palestinian president is nowhere to be found. [my emphasis]

He concludes with the state of the longer-term non-peace: "The conundrum is crystal clear: Hamas won't make peace with Israel, and Abbas can't. The way forward is much less so."

In Brain-dead on both sides Foreign Policy 11/19/2012

On the whole, this latest series of clashes reveals the utter lack of imagination and strategic foresight on both sides. It is a pointless exchange of violence that will not alter the basic strategic situation one iota. The fighting may enhance Netanyahu's chances for reelection, but he was likely to win anyway. It may further enhance Hamas' stature and underscore the impotence of the Palestinian Authority, but the latter's growing irrelevance was already understood, if not openly acknowledged. But it brings neither side closer to achieving its core objectives. [my emphasis]

In The myth of Israel's strategic genius Foreign Policy 11/19/2012, he calls attention to the danger for the US of taking Israel's flawed strategic approach as some kind of model, saying that the current "foolish" Gaza operation is "part of a long pattern rather than an isolated incident. And one obvious lesson is that U.S. leaders shouldn't allow U.S. Middle East policy to be overly influenced by an ally whose strategic judgment is often even worse than our own."

Robert Danin looks at the perspective the Islamist government of Egypt appears to be taking in the current situation, which of course is still highly volatile, in The Crisis in Gaza CFR.org 11/20/2012:

I think it's shown us that there is durability to the Egypt-Israel peace treaty. When this crisis erupted, Egypt withdrew its ambassador for consultations, which is the minimum diplomatic step one can take to express displeasure. And throughout, the Egyptians have played the key role as the intermediary, being able to both, you know, talk to Hamas as well as the Israeli government. And you have Israeli and Hamas mediators in Cairo.

So Egypt has emerged as the -- as the central point here -- the fulcrum here for diplomatic activity. And so it shows us that the peace treaty is intact, but it's -- but -- which is not to say it's not under strain. And I think one of the reasons that the Egyptians were very keen to avoid a ground offensive is very much for fear that if there's a ground offensive and then consequent violence and bloodshed, that this will then lead to popular pressure on the Egyptian government to abrogate the peace treaty or at least take steps in that direction. And that's something that the Egyptian government, even under the Muslim Brotherhood, does not want to do.

Tags: gaza offensive, israel, palestine

Pillar of Defence: Israel's latest military operation against Gaza

I don't have much that I can say about the latest Israeli military attacks in Gaza, which has been given the operational name Pillar of Defence. The Palestinians have been left stateless for decades, and it looks like any hope of a two-state solution is gone, though diplomatic miracles can happen.

But diplomatic miracles require serious commitment by the relevant leaders, and we have an intransigent Israeli leadership that's essentially fully supported by the United States, including both major parties. Their only real options now for the long term seem to be apartheid, for which much of the infrastructure is in place, or an Israel no longer constituted as a Jewish state in the way that it has been since its founding.

John Mearsheimer writes about Pillar of Defence in A Pillar Built on Sand LRB Blog 11/16/2012:

Nevertheless, Pillar of Defence will not achieve its ultimate goal of getting the Palestinians to abandon their pursuit of self-determination and accept living under the heel of the Israelis. That is simply not achievable; the Palestinians are never going to accept being consigned to a handful of enclaves in an apartheid state. Regrettably, that means Pillar of Defence is unlikely to be the last time Israel bombards Gaza.

Over the long term, however, the bombing campaigns may come to an end, because it is not clear that Israel will be able to maintain itself as an apartheid state. As well as resistance from the Palestinians, Israel has to face the problem that world opinion is unlikely to back an apartheid state. Ehud Olmert said in November 2007, when he was prime minister, that if ‘the two-state solution collapses’ Israel will ‘face a South-African-style struggle’, and ‘as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.’ One would think Israel’s leaders would appreciate where they are headed and allow the Palestinians to have a viable state of their own.

Presumably Olmert meant finished as a Jewish state.

Stephen Walt points to the early similarities of the Pillar of Defence operation to the Operation Cast Lead operation against Gaza in 2008-9, What if powerful Palestinians were bombing weak Israelis? Foreign Policy 11/15/2012.

One reason that US policy toward Israel's military actions in Gaza is so supportive and uncritical, despite the fact that they are a real problem for the US in the Muslim world, is that disproportionate and lawless behavior has become increasingly normalized in American actions. Gareth Porter's report on the leveling of an Iraqi village is an illustration of this: Broadwell Defended Petraeus’ Village Destruction Policy Inter Press Service 11/15/2012.

Tags: israel, palestine

More on Obama's UN speech and the Palestinian statehood issue

This is a discussion from Al Jazeera English of Obama's speech this past week to the UN posted to YouTube 09/23/2011, which deals specifically with Obama's latest formulation of his Administration's stance on Israel-Palestine. The most interesting part to me begins around 9.15, where we see Obama's various presentations on the issue, beginning with his January 2009 condemnation of the Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories - "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements" - and ending with last week's virtual endorsement of the Israeli hardline position.



This seemingly extreme swing in Obama's position recalls an observation by David Bromwich, "Obama has always preferred the symbolic authority of the grand utterance to the actual authority of a directed policy: a policy fought for in particulars, carefully sustained, and traceable to his own intentions."

Bromwich has focused on Obama's seeming overconfidence in the power of his own rhetoric (The CIA, the Libyan Rebellion, and the President Huffington Post 03/31/2011):

One of Barack Obama's first acts as president was to say that Guantanamo must go. It did not go. Soon after, he said that the Israeli settlements must go. They expanded. Obama made his peace in the end with Guantanamo and the Israeli settlements. He restarted the military tribunals at Guantanamo -- a feature of the Bush-Cheney constitution which he once had explicitly deplored -- and recently went out of his way to defend the Guantanamo-like abuse (compulsory nakedness and sleep deprivation) inflicted on an American prisoner, Bradley Manning, in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico. One had come to think of "X must go" assertions by Obama as speculative prefaces to a non-existent work. His words, in his mind, are actions. When he speaks them once or twice, he has done what he was put here to do. If the existing powers defy his wishes, he embraces the powers and continues on his way. [my emphasis]

Of course, Bromwich doesn't actually know what's going on in Obama's mind. But he is making a plausible assumption in observing that Obama seems to overvalue the power of his words, especially when his own actions visibly contradict them.

Robert Fisk was appalled by Obama's speech, as he explains in A President who is helpless in the face of Middle East reality The Independent 09/23/2011. He refers to it as Obama's "pathetic, humiliating UN speech on Wednesday in which he handed US policy in the Middle East over to Israel's gimmick government."

For the American President who called for an end to the Israeli occupation of Arab lands, an end to the theft of Arab land in the West Bank – Israeli "settlements" is what he used to call it – and a Palestinian state by 2011, Obama's performance was pathetic.

As usual, Hanan Ashrawi, the only eloquent Palestinian voice in New York this week, got it right. "I couldn't believe what I heard," she told Haaretz, that finest of Israeli newspapers. "It sounded as though the Palestinians were the ones occupying Israel. There wasn't one word of empathy for the Palestinians. He spoke only of the Israelis' troubles..." Too true. And as usual, the sanest Israeli journalists, in their outspoken condemnation of Obama, proved that the princes of American journalists were cowards. "The limp, unimaginative speech that US President Barack Obama delivered at the United Nations... reflects how helpless the American President is in the face of Middle East realities," Yael Sternhell wrote.

And he adds these observations:

How come, let's ask, that the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, flew from Tel Aviv to New York for the statehood debate on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's own aircraft? How come Netanyahu was too busy chatting to the Colombian President to listen to Obama's speech? He only glanced through the Palestinian bit of the text when he was live-time, face to face with the American President. This wasn't "chutzpah". This was insult, pure and simple.

And Obama deserved it. After praising the Arab Spring/Summer/ Autumn, whatever – yet again running through the individual acts of courage of Arab Tunisians and Egyptians as if he had been behind the Arab Awakening all along, the man dared to give the Palestinians 10 minutes of his time, slapping them in the face for daring to demand statehood from the UN. Obama even – and this was the funniest part of his preposterous address to the UN – suggested that the Palestinians and Israelis were two equal "parties" to the conflict. [my emphasis]

The conservative Jerusalem Post reports that there is a huge majority support among Israelis for Israel accepting a UN recognition of an upgraded status for Palestine (Poll: 70% of Israelis say Israel should accept UN decision 09/21/2100. The title rounds up; the story reports it at 69%).

Other commentators have expressed justified concern about Obama's current position on the Israel-Palestine conflict, including the following.

MJ Rosenberg, On Israel and Palestine, Obama Is Rick Perry Media Matters 09/23/2011: "For the first time since the U.N. conferred statehood on Israel 63 years ago, the sitting U.S president told the world body that the United States will back Israel, right or wrong."

Jim Lobe, Politics Throws Palestine Under the Bus Inter Press Service 09/24/2011: "President Barack Hussein Obama, as his right-wing and Islamophobic critics like to call him, said nothing to which even the most right-wing faction of Netanyahu's government could object."

Gideon Levey, Past his sell-by date Haaretz 09/25/2011 on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's UN speech:

Netanyahu, peddler of emotions, did not shrink from or forget anything, save reality. Abraham the patriarch, Hezekiah, Isaiah, pogroms, the Holocaust, 9/11, the children, the grandchildren and, of course, Gilad Shalit - all fodder for the tear wringer that assuredly didn't bring forth a single tear anywhere on the planet, with the possible exception of a few Jewish nursing homes in Boca Raton, Florida. There, perhaps, people were still moved by this kitschy death speech.

And, he could have added, American Christian Zionists who cheer happily for anything that may bring more war in the Middle East.

Levy continues:

On Friday night the final curtain fell on Netanyahu's masked ball of a two-state solution. Hiding behind the curtain are darkness and gloom. And in that lies an event of historical performance: It proved to the world that Israel wants neither an agreement nor a Palestinian state, and for that matter not peace, either. See you at the next war.

Tags: barack obama, israel, palestine

Daniel Levy on the Palestinians at the UN

President Obama's UN speech this week underlined the decreasing possibility of a two-state solution being worked out for Israel and Palestine.

Daniel Levy writes The Palestinians are the new Jews in Haaretz 09/22/2011, reminding us once again that the Israel-Palestine conflict is discussed in a far greater range of opinion in Israel and the Israeli press than we normally see in the US press. Although, as Stephen Walt points out, the fact that Tom Friedman, who is considered a Very Serious Person despite his general fatuous superficiality, is talking about the unwholesome effect of the Israel lobby on US politics is a sign of a change in the American discussion. (Well, Duh... Foreign Policy 09/18/2011)

Israel at its birth was considered a model society, far more than Palestine at its birth. It bequeathed the world socialist and feminist values, the kibbutz and the moshav, absorption of immigrants and equality of women - a lighthouse of equality and social justice. The Palestinians are now in an inferior position: Their society is more corrupt and less egalitarian than ours, nor did they establish a state-in-the-making for themselves, with impressive institutions such as the ones we had.

But here the situation has become reversed beyond recognition. Israel of 2011 is no longer considered a model society in any area. With quite a number of corrupt Israeli politicians in prison or on the way there, with capitalism that is quite swinish and an occupation that is quite brutal, the story of the great national and social success of the 20th century is now considered a story of missed opportunity of the 21st century. The path to repairing this fateful missed opportunity must now be by way of a new partition plan.

The Palestinians bled for 63 years and paid the price for the fateful mistake of their leaders' opposition to the 1947 partition plan; the Israelis must not now have regrets for another 63 years and pay a high price for their stubborn and surprising opposition to the 2011 partition plan. Look at them and look at us. They are what we once were.

Matthew Taylor (Gideon Levy (unintentionally) lays bare the contradictions of liberal Zionism Mondoweiss 09/22/2011) is at least somewhat unfair to Levy when he writes:

But there's a huge elision in this comparison –– no direct statement that the early Zionist political program was predicated on a premeditated campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous non-Jewish population. This is where liberal Zionism consistently runs afoul of reality, a stubborn unwillingness to come to grips with or even acknowledge the crimes of 1948.

The last paragraph of Levy's quote above shows that he does very much recognize the injustice done to the Palestinians and he does reference it back to 1948, not to 1967.

[Much later update, 10/11/2025. Weiss in that comment was referring to Gideon Levy the journalist, not Daniel Levy, the diplomat.]

Philip Weiss, whose Mondoweiss blog incorporates his surname, thinks a two-state solution is no longer feasible. "And now the two-state dream-- once the fantasy of 'leftists,' in the words of former Obama Treasury aide Stuart Levey back in 1985-- is a shell, destroyed by the militant right wing."

Weiss is optimistic that American Jews will become increasingly vocal against Israeli policies in the occupied territories:

It is true that the great majority of American Jews are still wed to Zionism, but our liberal intelligentsia is shocked by what Zionism has produced: Barack Obama imitating a fool, Rick Perry, to gain the approval of a racist, Avigdor Lieberman. An American Jewish spring is in the air.

He also cites an article by Henry Siegman, Palestinians Declare Independence from U.S. The National Interest 09/22/2011, who argues that the Palestinians' diplomatic action at the UN "is likely to be transformative, changing the rules of the game for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking." He means that the "peace process" that has dragged on sporadically for decades without producing a conclusive end, will now proceed differently:

The real meaning of the Palestinians' decision to defy the United States is that they will no longer accept their occupier’s role in their quest for statehood. They demand national self-determination as a right—indeed, as a “peremptory norm” that in international law takes precedence over all other considerations—and not as an act of charity by their occupiers.

The American insistence on aborting the Palestinians’ initiative and returning them to a peace process in which their fate remains dependent on Israel is shameful. It stains America’s honor. It will not succeed, for the Palestinian decision to defy the American demand is itself a declaration of independence; that genie cannot be returned to the bottle.

On the ground, little will be changed by a UN affirmation of Palestinian statehood. But nothing will be the same again in the Palestinians’ dealings with Israel and the United States. The notion that Israel will decide where negotiations begin and what parts of Palestine it will keep is history. It is sad that America, of all nations, has failed to understand this simple truth, even in the wake of the Arab Spring. Sadder still is Israel's continuing blindness not only to the injustice but also to the impossibility of its colonial dream. That dream may now turn into a nightmare as the international community increasingly sees Israel as a rogue state and treats it accordingly.

The grim liklihood of a Goodhair Perry or Mitt Romney President can scarcely to expected to make things better. But, as Weiss puts it, "Obama piped the hard-right Israeli line for the purposes of winning an election." The Israel-Palestine issue is one on which the American political system has also failed across the board.

Zbigniew Brzezinski on the PBS Newshour yesterday (U.S. Standing in Mideast May Pivot on Palestinian Statehood Bid 09/21/2011) argued that with the Arab Awakening and the protracted impasse on Israel-Palestine, the US influence in the Mideast will likely decline in a major way:

I think what's happening in the Middle East is clearly a sea change in the direction of continued decline, accelerating decline, and eventually termination of the central role that the United States has been playing in that region since the end of World War II. We were welcomed into the Middle East by the Arabs because they saw in us a party that wasn't part of this imperial colonial tradition of the British and the French that were dominating the region.

But over the last 50 years or so, they have become increasingly dismayed by our unwillingness to address seriously the problems particularly arising out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think this week may be decisive. If we don't recoup, I think we will really be witnessing in the near future the end of the American role in the Middle East. And that will be disastrous for the United States in the first place, in the longer run for Israel. [my emphasis]

I'm not sure what he means when it says a decline (or "the end") of the US role in the Middle East would be "disastrous." If it means that we don't invade countries like Iraq or Iran, don't get involved in civil wars in places like Libya or Syria, and stop firing missiles from drones into various countries, that sounds like a significant improvement to me!

Tags: israel, palestine

Saudi Arabia warns US on Palestine UN vote: political theater or serious warning?

From Aljazeera English 09/15/2011:



Tags: israel, palestine, saudi arabia

Saudis threaten US over Palestinian state

Such diplomatic pieces are never entirely what they seem on the surface. But former Saudi Arabian intelligence chief and one-time Ambassador to the US Turki al-Faisal (Prince Turki bin Faisal bin Abdul Aziz al Saud) threatens the US with serious negative consequences if the Obama Administration vetoes UN recognition of a Palestinian state this fall in Failed favoritism to Israel Washington Post 06/10/2011:

As the main political and financial supporter of the Palestinian quest for self-determination, Saudi Arabia holds an especially strong position. The kingdom's wealth, steady growth and stability have made it the bulwark of the Middle East. As the cradle of Islam, it is able to symbolically unite most Muslims worldwide. In September, the kingdom will use its considerable diplomatic might to support the Palestinians in their quest for international recognition. American leaders have long called Israel an "indispensable" ally. They will soon learn that there are other players in the region - not least the Arab street - who are as, if not more, "indispensable." The game of favoritism toward Israel has not proven wise for Washington, and soon it will be shown to be an even greater folly.

Commentators have long speculated about the demise of Saudi Arabia as a regional powerhouse. They have been sorely disappointed. Similarly, history will prove wrong those who imagine that the future of Palestine will be determined by the United States and Israel. There will be disastrous consequences for U.S.-Saudi relations if the United States vetoes U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state. It would mark a nadir in the decades-long relationship as well as irrevocably damage the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and America's reputation among Arab nations. The ideological distance between the Muslim world and the West in general would widen - and opportunities for friendship and cooperation between the two could vanish.

We Arabs used to say no to peace, and we got our comeuppance in 1967. In 2002 King Abdullah offered what has become the Arab Peace Initiative. Based on U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, it calls for an end to the conflict based on land for peace. The Israelis withdraw from all occupied lands, including East Jerusalem, reach a mutually agreed solution to the Palestinian refugees and recognize the Palestinian state. In return, they will get full diplomatic recognition from the Arab world and all the Muslim states, an end to hostilities and normal relations with all these states.

Now, it is the Israelis who are saying no. I'd hate to be around when they face their comeuppance. [my emphasis]

Prince Turki is currently head of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia. One presumes this is a semi-official statement of Saudi policy.

One doesn't have to be any kind of fan or supporter of Israeli intransigence or their West Bank settlement policy to resent what can hardly be taken as anything other than a reactionary monarchy threatening trying to dictate US foreign policy.

But that's also the world in which we live. And as long as the United States retains its dependence on oil, Saudi Arabia will be in a position to make such threats with credibility, whatever the real meaning of this one is. That's no secret. It's been painfully obvious ever since the Arab oil embargo of 1973-75. And both political parties have in practice accepted that as a feature of our national position and our foreign policy ever since. And there's no sign the Obama Administration has the intention of trying to change that in any substantial way.

MJ Rosenberg suggests in a tweet that this may in part represent an effort by the Saud family to avoid a spread of the Arab Awakening to their kingdom: "Saudi understand the easiest way to secure regime is to be the ones who deliver Pal state. Smart." In another, he reminds us that the Saudis have enough power if they choose to use it to make Turki al-Faisal's threat more than hot air: "Guess what? US and US president need Saudis a lot more than either needs AIPAC."

The Bush family has long been very close to the Saudi royal family, as Craig Unger explained in some detail in his House of Bush, House of Saud (2004.) Maybe the two former Presidents Bush will intercede with their old friends to get them to back the hell off from threatening the Untied States. We can take it for granted that both Bushes would put American patriotism ahead of any vulgar financial considerations, can't we?

This is a video of an hour and 40 minutes of a lecture Prince Turki gave 04/23/2009 at Cornell, What We Expect From America: A Saudi Perspective:



Tags: israel, palestine, saudi arabia