D.C. ‘blob’ undergoes ‘sea change’ on Israel — amid peace process collapse and looming apartheid declarations

A battle that broke out during the Democratic primaries in 2020 is now heating up in Washington, over the idea of conditioning U.S. aid to Israel over its human rights violations. The issue has divided the Israel lobby, but the Democratic base is demanding limits on aiding the Israeli persecution of Palestinians.

The right-wing Israel lobby group AIPAC is clearly alarmed. It is issuing statements that all the money we give Israel to maintain the occupation is in the “US national security interest,” and circulating a bipartisan congressional letter led by Ted Deutch (D-FL), and Michael McCaul (R-TX) affirming the aid. Today that letter has 330 signatures, Jewish Insider reports. Highly disturbing; but Yousef Munayyer says the silver lining is that a decade ago it would have gotten 435 signatures.

Two Israel lobby groups that previously opposed conditions on aid, J Street and Americans for Peace Now, are now supporting the idea of restrictions. They endorsed Betty McCollum’s historic legislation in the House last week that Congress must stop ignoring the “unjust and blatantly cruel mistreatment of Palestinian children and families living under Israeli military occupation.” McCollum’s bill has only 15 cosponsors, but has gotten very broad support from civil society groups; and Senator Elizabeth Warren has also shifted, telling J Street that restrictions on Israel’s military aid are the “elephant in the room”:

“By continuing to provide military aid without restriction, we provide no incentive for Israel to adjust course.”

The sad truth here is that changes in American public opinion are not yet being reflected by the politicians. Polls show a majority of Democrats calling for more U.S. pressure on Israel than on Palestinians. Recent reports documenting Israeli apartheid, from the human rights group B’Tselem and the New York Review of Books, are shifting the discourse of Israel before our eyes (says Omar Shakir of HRW).

And right on time the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace issued a new report calling on the United States to stop defending Israel in international forums and begin enforcing laws that would restrict aid to Israel over human rights violations.

Carnegie aired an excellent discussion of its recommendations; and here are the key points:

–Let’s stop putting energy into the failed peace process, forget about two states or one state and instead use the “levers of U.S. policy” to emphasize human rights and “freedoms guaranteed by international law.” As human rights lawyer Zaha Hassan says, “There is no two-state solution open for the taking at the moment and likewise a one-state outcome that offers equal rights for all is just as unlikely… We only call for the… U.S. [to] support an outcome that insures equal rights for all those living under Israel’s control and jurisdiction.”

–American leaders argued that if they didn’t give Israel impunity for its human rights violations that would kill the peace process; but the peace process has failed. “The existing scaffolding is collapsing in front of our eyes and cannot deliver,” Daniel Levy said. “Business as usual is increasingly a hard thing for a Democratic administration to pull off…. This report is a modest contribution to catching up with reality.”

–The failure of the peace process has “undermined” U.S. interests in the region. The U.S. impunity policy obviously “incentivized” Israeli settlement activity, which boomed in an insult to international order. American defiance of the Geneva conventions, which bar settlement of occupied territory, has damaged the United States in world opinion.

–U.S. guarantees of impunity for Israeli actions have insured the growth of the rightwing in Israel, including the neofascist Religious Zionism party that now has six seats in the Israeli parliament. “The warped incentive structure… empowers ultranationalist parties,” Hassan said. “The trendlines in Israel are in the direction of greater authoritarianism and denial of civil liberties and equal protection. The resurgence of parties advocating Jewish supremacy have been mainstreamed… That these political parties now have seats in the Knesset seats should be alarming but not surprising.”

The surprise in these recommendations is that This is the blob talking. Beltway elites. Yes, on the liberal side, but the experts’ outspokenness reflects the movement in American opinion that is sure to show up in Congress before too long.

Some other observations from that webinar– thoughts confined to the left until recently:

Khaled Elgindy of Brookings said the peace process failed because it only increased the power imbalance between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

“That’s the opposite of what a peace process is supposed to do…. Asymmetry is what drives conflict, as long as one side is able to subjugate the other side with impunity,” he said. “A rights based approach is really the only way to deal with a power asymmetry that fuels conflicts.”

Salih Booker of the Center for International Policy said that the protest movement in the U.S. addressing structural racism will inevitably come to bear on the “unlimited military support to Israel that is a major part of U.S. foreign policy.”

“The largest mass movement in American history is focused… on ending American apartheid… and the focus of this movement is not just ending racism and militarism in the U.S. but beyond the U.S. borders as well…. They will welcome this focus on human rights,” he said.

Booker said that J Street’s change on conditioning aid shows a much wider shift. “This is the future. There is increasing public and congressional efforts to make U.S. policies toward the Israel Palestine conflict conform with U.S. law, with U.S. values, and with U.S. human rights obligations.”

Booker likened the shift to the American rejection of South Africa that took place in the 80s. There was a “sea change” during Ronald Reagan’s second term; and today the discourse on Israel is shifting rapidly.

Lara Friedman of Foundation for Middle East Peace said that in the Congress restricting aid to Israel used to be a “redline of accountability no one wanted to touch,” but those days are over.

“There is clearly a shift in what is allowable in the consensus… what appears to be a sea change from 20 years ago till today in how people think about Israel.”

Friedman anticipated a battle over official antisemitism definitions that limit advocacy for Palestinian human rights. And Biden will not be able to escape the battle.

“The conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism has become something which really is poisoning the progressive party, the Democrats and progressives internally, it’s creating schisms particularly between people of color and the rest of the party, and Muslim Americans. It’s devastating and this is not something that the Biden administration is going to be able to somehow finesse,” she said. “The battle over the definition of antisemitism right now is about whether or not it’s OK to criticize Israel fundamentally.”

U.S. policy has damaged a rules-based international legal order by saying it applies everywhere but Israel.

What has made U.S. policy so burdensome and so politically difficult over many many years on Israel/Palestine is that everything is done on an ad hoc basis and essentially has to be justified every time and explained from some sui generis approach. [For instance] “It comes out of our love.” Each time you have to build an entire argument from nothing. Because essentially you’re trying to argue for why the normal rules don’t apply.

Daniel Levy said even the blob now recognizes that the “thoroughly atrophied and structurally-incapable-of-delivering peace process” has generated misery, and even the Biden administration will have to take Palestinian rights into account.

Levy appeared to affirm rumors I’ve heard that the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem’s apartheid finding of January — a “regime of Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea” — is about to be echoed by the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

“It should matter and I believe it does matter that the blue chip human rights organizations, in Palestine and Israel have made a designation of the reality on the ground being one of apartheid; and the global human rights organizations are apparently not far behind,” he said.

Levy dismissed the normalization accords between Israel and several Arab countries that Trump and the Israel lobby trumpeted last year– and that Biden and the liberal Zionist lobby have also endorsed. Those accords are enormously costly to the United States in political capital: The U.S. gives bribes and access to those Arab nations; and the U.S. hurts itself by undermining international law in the Sudan and in Western Sahara, in agreeing to overlook human rights violations.

“The U.S. is actually guaranteeing policies that it claims to disagree with,” Levy said.

The whole intent of the accords was to hurt Palestinians, and that intent will never be removed from it. “This was designed to be something that would be used to marginalize the Palestinians. If something is designed as a tin opener, it’s not something you can paint flowers with.”

Levy also bewailed the ways that U.S. policy is empowering “hardliners” and “extremists” in Israeli politics by freely allowing Israel to quadruple the number of settlers. “Maximum impunity skews the Israeli public discourse and decision making,” he said.