If you want to understand the power imbalance between the United States and Israel, the farce over the former U.S. consulate in Jerusalem is a good place to start.
The consulate served as the U.S. embassy to Palestinians, in a historic building in West Jerusalem, but it angered Israel that the U.S. consulate empowered Palestinians in Jerusalem. So Trump closed the consulate in 2018, folding its function into the U.S. embassy to Israel. The Palestinians felt deeply insulted by the move, and they promptly “severed contacts with Washington.”
Then Joe Biden came into the White House and his secretary of state Tony Blinken promised that the U.S. would reopen the consulate (but not reverse Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem).
The Biden administration has done nothing to follow through on the promise, and now the reports are that it has shelved the plan, and Palestinian officials regard this as a betrayal and may renege on promises they made to the Biden administration, according to the Times of Israel.
[A]mid strong pushback from Israel and a foreign policy agenda weighed down by other issues, the Biden administration has effectively shelved plans to reopen the consulate, sources told The Times of Israel last month.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan insisted during a visit last month that the Biden administration still intends to reopen the Jerusalem mission, but three sources familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that no plan has been crafted for how to make good on the promise.
So once again Israel is dictating U.S. policy toward Palestinians, and the White House is simply folding. As it has done in the face of endless Israeli expansions.
“If you needed proof that a two-state solution is dead, here it is,” Khaled Elgindy of the Middle East Institute, tweeted last month. “If the US can’t even muster up the will to reopen its own consulate, how does anyone imagine this or any US administration will convince Israel to divide Jerusalem, handover all/most of the West Bank and evacuate at least 200,000 settlers?”
The farce was exposed at the State Department yesterday when Said Arikat asked about Palestinian frustrations with the Biden administration, “because you guys are not moving forward on promises that you made in the past.” Ned Price then offered vague bromides about the administration continuing to find ways “to seek to make real this belief that Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve equal measures” of “security, prosperity, and freedom.”
The actual diplomacy of the consulate is pretty depressing: Blinken is beseeching the Israelis and they’re not giving an inch, according to Yossi Alpher at Americans for Peace Now:
Blinken has also pressured for Israel to relent and allow Washington to reopen a consulate in Jerusalem dedicated to liaising with the PA. Prime Minister Bennett, under heavy pressure from his right-religious mainstream base, firmly opposes reopening the consulate, which President Trump closed in 2018. Bennett’s associates describe him as annoyed by constant Biden administration pressure over the Palestinian issue.
You’d think if you give someone $4 billion a year, they’d be more responsive to your needs. So maybe time to cut funding? The Democratic Party base wants to do just that, but Biden ignores the base.
The Palestinians see the consulate question as Israeli interference in U.S. policy on Jerusalem. From Barak Ravid’s newsletter this week:
According to one Palestinian official, [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas told [Jake] Sullivan [in December] that the U.S. was giving Bennett veto power over its bilateral relations with the Palestinians. The White House declined to comment for this story.
Between the lines: The Palestinians see the reopening of the consulate as a political signal about the U.S. position on the future of Jerusalem.
Yossi Alpher’s account at Americans for Peace Now suggests just how much Biden has bent over backwards for the new Bennett government. The Biden administration accepts that Defense Minister Benny Gantz “holds the Palestinian file.” So the Biden administration is deferring to a man who bragged about bombing Gaza back to the Stone Age and who lately designated six leading Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist”-linked organizations. On that matter, too, Biden has shown a disinclination to use any political capital against Israel: at first the administration opposed Gantz’s designation, now it shuts up and says nothing.
The Times of Israel describes other ways that Biden has brushed Palestinians off:
Ramallah has also for months been requesting an in-person meeting between Biden and PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian officials confirmed. It took five months from his January 2021 inauguration for Biden to take a call from the Palestinian leader; Israeli premier Naftali Bennett met Biden in Washington in August.
Biden officials say a meeting with Abbas will take place eventually, but have avoided providing a timetable…
And of course the two-state solution continues to be the holy grail in Washington, even as no one who’s been to Palestine thinks that’s possible; and the Bennett government bluntly opposes the creation of a Palestinian state. Just like every other Israeli government before this one. So Biden mumbles about settlements, but Israel just continues to expand the colonization of occupied lands.
Biden is showing no resolve on the Palestinian issue for an obvious reason: domestic politics. Any effort to take Israel on will be met by furious opposition from the Israel lobby inside Biden’s own party, and he believes that lobby has vast resources that are necessary for any political campaign. “In a political system addicted to funds and fundraising, Jews donate as much as 50 percent of the funds raised by Democrats and 25 percent of the funds raised by Republicans,” rightwing Israel supporter Gil Troy wrote in 2016.
Biden is afraid that Republicans will be successful at shearing off pro-Israel money– because look, Mike Pompeo and others are now groveling for the lobby’s support. This is why Biden has shut down the progressive discussion of Palestine inside the Democratic Party and will do nothing to help Palestinians publicly beside some pieties now and then.
If Israel can successfully extort $4 billion a year from the US, it makes sense that it can also extort some policy decisions. The general mechanics of this are pretty clear – a huge financial carrot in one hand, and a huge punishing media stick in the other. This ensures a steady supply of compliant servants in office.
Perhaps it is time for a huge wave of Congressional candidates dedicated to telling voters the facts about Israel and Palestine. They would know they will probably be defeated in the primaries, but that would be okay. The goal would be to end-run the Zionist control of information on a mass scale. Every seat in Congress could be targeted. And to be bi-partisan, both parties could be targeted. We have seen that the controlled press is not going to raise this issue, but Congressional candidates can. And part of the press’s job is to report on political candidates.
Candidates would be well-prepared to present the facts of the situation, door to door and meeting by meeting. Some of them will break through into local media. Such a movement itself would draw some attention and media coverage. And I suspect there are even a lot of people in local media (and some national) who are ready for a story on which to hitch such a discussion.
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https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/emma-watson-smeared-racist-israeli-diplomat
“Emma Watson smeared by racist Israeli diplomat” by Nora Barrows-Friedman, Electronic Intifada, Jan. 6/22
“Israel’s former envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, smeared actor Emma Watson as an anti-Semite after she reposted a photo to her Instagram account of a Palestine solidarity demonstration with the words ‘Solidarity is a verb.’
“Danon is a far-right politician who has called for Palestinian ‘national suicide’ & has a lengthy history of racist incitement against Arabs & Africans.
“Earlier this week, Watson – known for her role as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films – posted the image, which was originally made by the Bad Activist Collective, a leftist media activist organization. The image accompanied a quotation about solidarity by Sara Ahmed, a British-Australian scholar & writer.
“Watson’s post has so far received more than 1.2 million likes. As of Wednesday, Watson’s post remains active.
“In the past, other high-profile figures have deleted their posts or released apologetic statements after expressing support for Palestinians.
“Meanwhile, activists, journalists & human rights defenders have admonished Danon & pointed out the use of false accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry in order to shut down support for Palestinian rights.
“This attempt by Israeli leaders & their supporters to accuse Watson of anti-Semitism is just a part of a gasping effort by Israel and its advocates to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish bigotry.
“But it isn’t working.
“In October, for example, best-selling author Sally Rooney was subjected to similar smears after she refused to allow an Israeli company to buy the Hebrew translation & publication rights for her latest novel.(cont’d)
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“Pro-Israel media and lobby groups attempted to portray her decision as a boycott of the Hebrew language – a predictable insinuation that her solidarity with Palestinians is motivated by prejudice.
“Rooney has not backed down.
“Act.IL, the Israeli government-funded app that sends its users on ‘missions’ to bully, harass and smear cultural figures, students, activists and scholars who express support for Palestinian rights, attacked Rooney.
“This week, Act.IL launched a similar, desperate campaign against Watson.’The app urged its users to comment on social media ‘to show Emma Watson that Hamas, as a terrorist organization, is the true enemy, both for Palestinians & for Israelis.’
“Jewish Voice for Peace rebuked Israel’s app for manufacturing a public support campaign as the apartheid state continues to lose ‘the culture war.'”
They control us and we know it.
“The storyline about the 2ss is that there are two peoples here that don’t get along and can’t share a state. It’s been the same storyline since roughly 1937,”
No, the storyline is that there are two peoples, one of which refuses to get along with the other and never wanted to share a state. That one is not the Palestinian Arabs.
(Same reason as before for making this a separate comment. Will MW ever fix its crappy comment system?)