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Obama and Kerry are spurred by ‘vainglory’ in pursuing talks — Finkelstein

Obama and Kerry at the White House, Dec. 2012, photo by Mandel Ngan for AFP/Getty images
Obama and Kerry at the White House, Dec. 2012, photo by Mandel Ngan for AFP/Getty images

Norman Finkelstein has an interesting piece up at the Chiseler on the peace negotiations, “Norman Finkelstein Asks: The End of Palestine?” based on talks he gave in Britain in March. Finkelstein notes that he also spoke in Turkey and Iran.

Some excerpts:

In all the commentary on the Kerry process, one question has been studiously avoided: Why has Kerry embarked on this mission now, and why has Obama lent his prestige to it?  The Israel-Palestine conflict is hardly a pressing concern: a surfeit of other crises has sidelined it on the international agenda, while Obama and Kerry already have their hands full with Iran and Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, China and Russia, and the fallout from the Snowden leaks and drone strikes.  Neither Israel nor the Palestinians (not that they count) beseeched Washington to intervene.  Except for the clinical diagnosis of Israel’s defence minister (“misplaced obsession and messianic fervour”), the only plausible explanation for the US administration’s interest is the mundane one of legacy.  The principal impetus behind the US initiative—embarrassing as it might be to the President and his Secretary of State, and deflating as it might be to everyone else—is personal vanity.  Like Clinton and Rice before them, Obama and Kerry seek historical vindication.  When harnessed to the machinery of a powerful state, vainglory can prove to be an irresistible force, and has often been the root of incalculable human misery.  If Obama and Kerry do not strike gold, however, it also means that, once their terms of office expire, the pressure coming from Washington will vanish, until and unless a genuine crisis arises…

It is no secret what the Kerry plan will look like.  If he is to have any chance of success, Kerry cannot fight a war on two fronts.  Israel constitutes a “strategic asset” of the US and can count on the clout of a powerful domestic lobby.  It is consequently in a far stronger position than Palestinians to resist Washington’s orders.  Judging by both official and insider statements, the Secretary of State has therefore appropriated Israel’s minimal demands as his own; the “Kerry process” refers to his efforts to foist these on the Palestinians.

On Israel’s motivation to participate.

Like the US, Israel does not currently have an urgent stake in ending the conflict.  Israel negotiated an agreement with Egypt at Camp David in 1977 because it had suffered a major military setback in the 1973 war, and feared the outcome of a second round.  It negotiated the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993 because it suffered a major public relations debacle during the first intifada, and worried about the army’s fighting ability if it got bogged down in policing the occupied territories…

On the pro side of the ledger, an agreement will free Israel once and for all of the albatross of the occupation, while enabling it to keep almost everything it wants, and ridding it of what it doesn’t (i.e., the Palestinian people); it will normalize relations with the Arab world, opening up new vistas for regional trade, investment and military cooperation; it will enable Israel’s fuller integration with the EU, its largest trading partner; and it will further entrench the US-Israeli “special relationship” by placating the Washington establishment, much of which has also grown weary of the occupation.  If a treaty is signed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be the toast of the town in Tel Aviv, Washington, Paris, London, and Berlin, and bag a Nobel Peace Prize into the bargain.  If, on the other hand, he refuses to play ball, Netanyahu will incur the wrath of the US and EU.  For a person of Netanyahu’s outsized ego, the potency of these incentives shouldn’t be underestimated…

Finkelstein is good on the “Jewish state” recognition demand, and suggests if it were a genuine demand, Israel could just change its name tomorrow to The Jewish State of Israel, ala The Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.

It is widely speculated that Netanyahu threw in the “Jewish state” demand to sabotage the Kerry mission.  The likelier explanation is that, if he extracts such recognition, this ideological victory and—the yet more satisfying flipside—humiliation of Palestinians will win over to the Kerry plan his right-wing governing coalition and natural constituency.  (The same motive might impel Netanyahu to make acceptance of the Kerry plan contingent on Obama’s release of Jonathan Pollard, a cause célèbre on the Israeli right.)  The danger lurks that Palestinians might be painted into a corner, such that the more Netanyahu holds out on this demand, the more it becomes framed, including by Palestinians, as the defining issue…

Even if Netanyahu is forced to dissolve the current government, he (or another prime minister) can still form a new left-centre coalition in order to ratify the agreement.

I’m leaving out Finkelstein’s attack on the BDS movement as feckless; it includes his assertion that Palestinians are alone in the world, his mockery of the Scarlett Johansson campaign, and his analysis that European sanctions have nothing to do with BDS (the Europeans aim to support Kerry, he says, and by celebrating the European moves, BDS activists are celebrating a blow against Palestinian freedom). He is, IMHO, engaged in a feud on this question; though you can read his argument at the link.

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I like Finkelstein as a person, but some of his views are really strange.

One is beginning to notice a pattern of duplicity among some leading Jewish progressives regarding Israel. At first they present themselves to the world as fearless and principled critics of Israel and Zionism, they establish themselves as leaders and moderators of that conversation, and then they use the influence they have acquired to mount often sleazy apologetics for the Israeli government. Have some or most of them been “ops” from the very beginning, executing a long-range game plan?

Obama and Kerry have been committed to solving the I/P problem because they realize that the failure to do so will likely have disastrous strategic consequences for the United States and Israel down the line if it is not fixed now. This moment in history is probably the last opportunity to fix the problem before it becomes unfixable.

It turns out that quite a few progressive anti-Zionists or non-Zionists are really liberal Zionists who are really Likud Zionists who are running interference for the grand project of building Jewish dominated Greater Israel — they are, quite simply, Zionists — passionate Jewish nationalists. After observing the peculiar gyrations of Benny Morris, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, M.J. Rosenberg and others one wonders — which progressive critics of Israel are the real deal? Which have been presenting a false face to the world? Is Norman Finkelstein just a more left-wing variation on Aaron David Miller, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk? In the end, a clever saboteur of all efforts to stop or slow down Zionism’s messianic scheme to build Greater Israel?

Have many of us been hoodwinked?

The insulting rhetoric here (“vanity,” “vainglory,” etc.) is straight out of the neocon playbook.

Fool me once….

“Judging by both official and insider statements, the Secretary of State has therefore appropriated Israel’s minimal demands as his own; the “Kerry process” refers to his efforts to foist these on the Palestinians.”

It’s nearly down to the wire. Abbas is, what age 79? Israeli papers are saying Abbas has threatened to declare the PA an “occupied government.” That suicide of PA sovereignty would demolish Oslo? Some Israeli leaders are responding, “Abbas can go if he wants to, no problem.” Wouldn’t Israel then be fully responsible for the Palestinian people? And wouldn’t those settlements look even more illegal?

Kerry’s best moment was when he sequenced “poof.” How many trips has taken to Israel pursuing the holy grail? A dozen? How much time spent by the sole superpower’s secretarial head of state? Where did Gaza fit in his framework planning? Motivation does seem to be vainglory, as Finkelstein deduces. Guess I will go read his full article.

Normalization of the evil has long been a Israeli doctrine.
Past success lures to the encore moment .

“He is, IMHO, engaged in a feud on this question; though you can read his argument at the link.”

Some of this on both sides smacks of classic lefty moral purity disease–it’s not enough for people to agree on a great many issues and disagree on others. No, you’ve got to destroy the other person, etc… Finkelstein has a little of this in him, and and in general I think it’s something that afflicts lefties (including me, not that I matter). We’re so used to being the dissenters against the hypocritical mainstream we sometimes turn that same skepticism against each other.

That aside, he makes a good case for feeling pessimistic about the situation.