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Between Boston & Beersheva - a balance sheet of the settlement freeze skirmish
Adam Keller
Occupation Magazine, Aug. 25. 2009
[A version of this article to be published in french by Pax Christi]

`The manner in which we are conducting relations with the American administration is causing strategic damage to Israel` was the urgent warning sounded in the beginning of August by Nadav Tamir, Israel`s consul general in Boston - a veteran, well-respected career diplomat. Tamir warned his superiors that the Netanyahu Government`s pubic spat with the Obama Adminstration, on the subject of freezing West Bank settlement construction, has alienated a significant number of American Jews, and that Israel is increasingly seen in the US as having `an obdurate government` like those of Iran and North Korea`.

The head-on confrontation between Obama and Netanyahu was hardly a surprise to anybody. Last November the US clearly moved to the left - while a few months later Israel moved to the right, empowering the Israeli version of the same neoconservatism which had just been totally discredited in Washington. But there was a fundamental difference between what occurred in the two countries. Obama was carried to power on the crest of a popular groundswell, arousing hopes of a magnitude which American society had not seen for many decades. In contrast, Netanyahu seemed – even to those who had just voted for him – a rather mediocre and lackluster leader, who had gotten by default the power which slipped out of the hands a predecessor equally mediocre and lackluster (and a manifest failure).

Some of the more fanatic and/or screwball among the menagerie of parties and political formations in Netanyahu`s ramshackle governing coalition would have liked to respond with total rejection to Obama`s demand of a total freeze of settlement activity on the West Bank. But the great majority of Israelis, having a healthy appreciation of just how vital to Israel is the American lifeline, are in no mood for such grandstanding .

Netanyahu`s response to Obama`s Cairo Address was `The Bar Ilan Speech`, where Israel`s PM at last uttered the explicit words `a Palestinian State`, though hedged about with numerous reservations and provisos. Thereby, Netanyahu inscribed himself among what passes for `the political center` in Israel, i.e. those who speak a lot of their wish for peace with the Palestinians, and do little or nothing about it (much as Olmert and Livni did during the previous cabinet`s three year term, which saw a lot of useless negotiations and two bloody wars).

The Bar Ilan speech went well among the Israeli public. In the polls a majority was of the opinion that Netanyahu had caved in to American pressure, and the majority was also of the opinion that caving in to American pressure was the right and proper thing for him to do. Yet just how far would the American pressure go? The hot war of words on settlements between the White House and the PM`s bureau in West Jerusalem became gradually muted, reduced to negotiations carried out in relative obscurity between Israeli envoys and Obama`s envoy George Mitchell. Obama was reported to seek from the Arab countries some `quid pro quo`, in the form of `acts of normalization with Israel` in return for the settlement freeze. Saudi Arabia – the most important of them - responded that normalization was a prize which Israel would only earn by actual withdrawal and settlement removal, not a mere freeze. The upsurge of democracy demonstrations which followed the questionable elections in Iran, and their brutal suppression, seemed to have considerably derailed the opening of dialogue on Iran`s nuclear plans, a central plank of Obama`s plan for the Middle East. And AIPAC, the Israeli lobby on Capitol Hill – initially shaken and disoriented by the new president`s implacable attack on the settlements – seems to start recovering some of its still-formidable power. In all, as August wears on Netanyahu and his aides seem to breath easier, which is far from good news to those of us still harboring the hope that Israel would once upon a become a peaceful country; truly integrated in its Middle East environment.

On August 20 Neve Gordon – peace activist and lecturer at Be`er Sheba University – published an article in the Los Angeles Times, stating that `The words and condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have yielded no results, not even a settlement freeze, let alone a decision to withdraw from the occupied territories`. Therefore, Gordon felt compelled to call upon `foreign governments, regional authorities, international social movements, faith-based organizations, unions and citizens` to all suspend cooperation with Israel until Israel ends occupation of the Palestinians, so as `to save Israel from itself`.

There is still room for hope that Neve Gordon`s outcry would ultimately prove immature, and that Barack Obama`s entry on the Middle Eastern scene – which aroused so much hope, just a few months ago – would not end as one more on the long pile of broken reeds. Supposedly, Obama intends the squabble on settlement freeze to be the prelude to a new round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – one where Israel would not again `eat the pizza while negotiating on how it would be cut` (to quote veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Arekat). And it has been leaked (though not officially stated) that President Obama intends the state of Palestine to come into being during his present term.

As the years since the Madrid Conference and Oslo Agreements show, negotiations in themselves are worth very little, without a strong and active international involvement to keep the government of Israel to the strict and narrow course. And the results of the initial skirmish over the settlement freeze will greatly influence what is to follow.



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