In “Obama will do (almost) anything for Israel,” MJ Rosenberg describes the Obama bargain with Israel. He won’t attack Iran. He will contain Iran, in the classic geopolitical manner. He will never admit that, because the lobby will go “ballistic” if war is off the table. But because Obama needs political capital (or thinks he needs it), he will never put any pressure on Israel to withdraw from colonized territory. So there will never be a two-state deal under Obama.
Obama is storing up capital for when he makes Israel very angry indeed. He is not going to war over Iran’s nuclear development. He will allow Congress to pile on sanctions and he will talk about keeping “all options” on the table but he is not going to war, either directly or by allowing Israel to drag him in. No, despite all the protestations about not relying on “containment” to deter Iran if it develops nuclear weapons, that is exactly what he intends to do. It works with every other nuclear power. It will work with Iran too.
Of course, any hints that Obama is going the containment route would cause Benjamin Netanyahu and his proxies here to go ballistic, so there are none—only the absence of the hysterical rhetoric about imminent threat that tends to precede any war and certainly preceded the invasion of Iraq.
And that is why Obama is not going to take any significant action to end the occupation. It is why pressure on Israel is out of the question, let alone linking U.S. aid to Israel to its changing its behavior toward the Palestinians. Obama is in the appeasement business: he will appease Israel and its lobby to keep them quiet on Iran. He will not give them the war they want, a war Obama knows would be absolutely catastrophic for U.S. interests (and, in fact, for Israel’s as well).
And so the Palestinians can expect no help from this quarter. Of course, Obama probably wouldn’t be leaning on the Israelis anyway. In the America of the permanent campaign, he is no more free of the need to placate AIPAC-affiliated donors today than he was before his re-election. His political strategists are always there to remind him just how much he needs those donors. But now, knowing that he will not give Netanyahu the one thing he wants above all else, they are certainly telling him to just forget about the occupation. And he is thinking: yes, I have bigger fish to fry.
The Palestinians are, as usual, on their own.
The first necessary step is abstention (or absence) in the UN Security Council on any resolutions regarding Israel. Everyone will understand exactly what that means and that will free countries to do what needs to be done to decouple from the psychotic state’s grasp. Israel needs the USA more than USA or Europe need Israel. In fact, Germany will now start labeling settler products. It begins.
Good post. Syria has been in the news so much, with Israel bombing them 3 times, I had been thinking the chaos in Syria had taken war with Iran off the table. What you are saying is very reasonable as it was very obvious Obama did not want to go to war with Iran. I could tell during the 2012 election how he was wavering between being tough on Iran and boxing himself into a corner. It would not surprise me at all if during Obama’s visit to Israel he made a back-door deal with Netanyahu to keep quiet about the expanding settlements and continue America’s unconditional support if Netanyahu would back off war with Iran. That is probably why we have not been hearing the drumbeat to go to war with Iran and why Israel is now focusing on Syria.
“He will not give them the war they want, a war Obama knows would be absolutely catastrophic for U.S. interests (and, in fact, for Israel’s as well).”
What if the Iran thing is just a smokescreen for the bots to hang on to the West Bank? I think it’s quite likely. An Israeli attack on Iran would be nuts. On the other hand, they really love the occupation. And they have form. Camp David.
President Obama may have no intentions of pressuring Israel but a third Intifada together with the gathering momentum of BDS could force his hand, especially if, as it now appears, the movement catches on internationally. As for the much vaunted Israel Lobby, its Israel-firstness leaves its members vulnerable to challenges to their patriotic bona fides. Put it all together and what have we got? Justice for Palestine, that’s what!
But the counter-point to this is that Obama doesn’t need to run for re-election anymore. Aside from immigration reform, what does he have left? His gun reform bill went nowhere. And immigration reform, or amnesty if we’re honest, is going to happen anyway. The GOP will not be elected to the highest office without a softening of the rhetoric and concrete public policy. (But even if that bill goes through, they will not go anywhere because their pro-1% policies is even worse than the dems are).
Also, the president decides who to go to war with.
I’m not saying that Obama would necessarily want to intervene in the I/P, but I think it’s more a case of hopelessness. He understands the limits of his powers in this regard.
Also, Susan Rice is only 48 years old. She’s now in the most powerful foreign policy position in Washington(the old position of Kissinger, which is more powerful than Kerry’s).
She’s been bending over backwards to the Israel lobby and if she has any ambition, and she has more than tons of it, she’ll likely try to avoid upsetting the lobby with an eye on the future. Maybe they’ll try to lamely go through the motions, like Kerry is now, but yeah, I think the deadlock happens less on Obama’s terms right now. He’s simply not as powerful as many would like to believe.
Which is what he got to learn the hard way early in his first term.