One takeaway message from the Obama-Abbas meeting is that the realists are getting heard in the Obama administration. Much has been made of Hillary Clinton’s recent hardball approach with Israel regarding settlements. On Wednesday she told reporters that the administration “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” In the press session after his meeting with Abbas, President Obama began to make clear why this urgency exists (emphasis mine),
From the first week that I arrived in
this office, I insisted that this is a critical issue to deal with, in
part because it is in the United States’ interest to achieve peace;
that the absence of peace between Palestinians and Israelis is a
impediment to a whole host of other areas of increased cooperation and
more stable security for people in the region, as well as the United
States. And so I want to see progress made, and we will work very
aggressively to achieve that.I don’t want to put an
artificial timetable, but I do share President Abbas’s feelings and I
believe that many Israelis share the same view that time is of the
essence, that we can’t continue with a (inaudible) with the increased
fear and resentments on both sides, the sense of hopelessness around
the situation that we’ve seen for many years now — we need to get this
thing back on track.
The Guardian is reporting these comments as “Obama: halt to new Israeli settlements is in America’s security interests.” I’m not sure if I see things that sharply, but it is clear that the Obama administration sees the peace process as being more central to its regional strategy, and self interest, than recent past presidents.
This idea is reinforced by Laura Rozen’s reporting on her blog The Cable who quotes an Israeli associate of Netanyahu saying his response to Clinton was, “What the hell do they want from me?” Rozen also quotes a former senior Clinton
administration official who describes the change in US policy,
“This is a sea change for Netanyahu,” a former senior Clinton
administration official who worked on Middle East issues said. The
official said that the basis of the Obama White House’s resolve is the
conviction that it is in the United States’ as well as Israel’s
interest to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “We have significant,
existential threats that Israel faces from Iran and that the U.S. faces
from this region. It is in our mutual interest to end this conflict,
and to begin to build new regional alliances.”
Rozen makes the important point that pressure is being put on Netanyahu by both the White House and Congress, whereas in the past Netanyahu had tried to play one against the other. And yet, none of this has been translated into direct pressure on Israel, yet. When Obama was asked after the Abbas meeting “if Israel keeps declining to accept the
two-state solution and to freeze the settlement activities, how the
U.S. would intervene in the peace process,” he dodged the question. Without firm pressure from the US it is doubtful that Israeli policy will change. Ali Abunimah makes this point in the New York Times article on the meeting,
“Hillary Clinton’s statement was notable because the language was stronger than we’ve heard in years,” said Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of ElectronicIntifada, a Web site that analyzes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “And clearer than we’ve heard in years. But the burden of proof is still on them. If it’s just going to be strong statements, that’s not enough.”
I agree. But I’d like to think it’s a beginning.
