Middle East envoy George Mitchell is returning to Israel this week for the first time since the election of the Netanyahu/Lieberman government. Ynet is reporting the the goal of the trip is for Mitchell to figure out if the Obama administration can really believe what they've been hearing from the new right-wing government and their desire to trash the two-state solution. A source in Washington told Ynet, "It's one thing to hear statements in the
press, it's another to hear it in a one-on-one meeting."
It seems other officials have already made up their mind. In the aptly titled article "Borderline outcast?," the Financial Times reports one international official's response to hearing Avigdor Lieberman:
Taking the stage this month at the handover ceremony in Jerusalem, [Lieberman] delivered a scathing critique of the previous government’s efforts
to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians to create an independent
state.Although
the two-state solution dominates diplomacy to resolve the Arab-Israeli
conflict, now more than 60 years old, Mr Lieberman asked: “Does anyone
think that concessions and constantly saying, ‘I am prepared to
concede’, and using the word ‘peace’ will lead to anything? No, that
will just invite pressure and more and more wars.” Officials and
diplomats were shocked. “We all felt that we are in for one hell of a
ride,” says one official present. Mr Lieberman “was effectively saying:
‘I am exactly the guy you thought I was.’ ”
The US seems unwilling to acknowledge this truth yet, so its current strategy is to keep asking the same question about the two state solution until it gets a different answer. Good luck.
The FT article goes on to show why the US shouldn't expect any surprises. Daniel Levy, director of the New America Foundation's Middle East task force, helps explain that Israel's current policies are driven by a desire to uphold a system of inequality in Israel/Palestine:
Daniel Levy, director of the Middle East task force at the New America Foundation in Washington, says of the decline in Israel’s reputation: “Part of this is a structurally inbuilt logic of an occupation that becomes increasingly aggressive, in order to maintain itself and a settler population that is increasingly radicalised.
“Both of these lead Israel to take harsher measures and in turn Israeli society becomes less humane and liberal; and in order to justify itself, it becomes ever more immune to international criticism.”
As we've said many times on this site, this isn't just an issue of Netanyahu or Lieberman, but the inevitable violence of upholding a system of Jewish exclusivity over a Palestinian population. Now only if Mitchell would bring this up on his trip – that would be an interesting conversation!
