Israel wields ‘significant US domestic power’ to foil peace process — NY Review of Books

The latest New York Review of Books contains an excellent analysis of the failed peace process by Nathan Thrall: “Israel and the U.S.: The Delusions of Our Diplomacy.” The thrust of the piece (which will be no surprise to those who read Rashid Khalidi’s book) is that the US perpetuates the conflict even as it insists on mediating it because it fails to pressure Israel to allow the creation of even a “small, poor, and strategically inconsequential Palestinian state.”

Thrall says three schools of US mediators have all failed to stop a Greater Israel. The three schools are neocon obstructionists like Elliott Abrams; those who say we can only get two states by embracing Israel, like Dennis Ross, Israel’s lawyer; and those who say we can only get two states by putting pressure on Israel, like Barack Obama and Aaron David Miller. But Obama’s school has been discredited by “holding power.”

Thrall concludes by arguing that a few “radical steps” undertaken by the U.S. could force Israel to accede to a weak Palestinian state that would end the dangerous status quo. What are those steps?

[T]he US could condition ongoing support on unilateral changes that are consistent with partition… The US can exert influence on Israel to greatly reduce the presence of occupation in this territory and grant far more Palestinian control there.

At the same time, the US could reverse its opposition to the formation of a unified PLO leadership. Without such leadership no stable Israeli–Palestinian coexistence can be reached and no PLO leader can avoid the accusation of being “too weak” to make peace, as Obama recently said of Abbas. The US could also remove its threats against Palestinian accession to international treaties and institutions, including the International Criminal Court. Membership in such organizations would serve as a protection against the possibility of binationalism and bolster the Palestinian statehood that the US professes to support.

Sanctions and the ICC. Pretty good. But the US won’t take these “radical steps,” Thrall says. Why not?

The potential benefits of creating a small, poor, and strategically inconsequential Palestinian state are tiny when compared to the costs of heavily pressuring a close ally wielding significant regional and US domestic power. Even if the steps I have mentioned were taken, they would be no guarantee of a peaceful future. But unlike current policies, they at least offer the possibility of a better one.

That’s the end of Thrall’s piece. So in the last paragraph we are informed that Israel wields “significant… US domestic power.” Thrall is of course talking about the Israel lobby. There is only the scantest reference to this factor elsewhere in the piece. As I used to say, the occupation is an American Jewish Zionist achievement. John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt have made a similar argument; but their groundbreaking book on the Israel lobby has never been reviewed by the New York Review of Books. Tony Judt said the same thing: Countries around the world see the “bizarre spectacle of a small, unimportant country in a dangerous region leveraging the most powerful country in the world to its own advantage, but to the detriment of the interests of its protector.” It’s time that our liberal press addressed this core element of the intractable conflict.

P.S. The expanded version of Thrall’s piece, here, includes this line: “U.S. pressure on Israel during Obama’s first year in office consisted mostly of reprimands, which were more costly to Obama’s domestic political agenda than to Netanyahu.” Yes, and why– because of the importance of the Israel lobby in the Congress.