Obama's Israeli-Palestinian agenda on track, but danger signs

Mon, 06/01/2009 - 8:54am

The Obama administration has done surprisingly well thus far in dealing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His team has aced the virtually inevitable early test of intentions and credibility over the settlements issue.  As my colleague Laura Rozen has reported, the Israeli team has been shocked to discover that Obama actually meant what he said about the need to stop settlements and has seemingly consolidated broad support in Congress for the position. Not so weak, naive, easily rolled, or exactly like Bush after all, evidently. 

Secretary of State Clinton, Middle East envoy Mitchell and others in the administration have reportedly been pounding home the importance of the settlements issue at every opportunity -- both in private and in what I would consider a well-coordinated strategic communications campaign.  General David Petraeus added his voice to the mix in a front page interview in the influential Saudi paper al-Hayat, saying that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would improve American security and weaken its adversaries. (Perhaps the imprimatur of Gen. Petraeus will sway some American skeptics as well?) 

As Obama leaves for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, he will thus benefit from the headlines and op-eds in the Arab press featuring his strong stand on the settlements.  His team has done an outstanding job setting the stage, establishing its credibility both with Israeli and Arab audiences and generating real momentum. It should help him get a receptive audience for the much-anticipated address, and allow him to point to deeds matching words (the most frequent Arab criticism of his outreach thus far).  

But the fundamental problems facing any actual progress remain as intense as ever. After all, while it's a crucial test of credibility and a vital first step, on the ground a settlement freeze at this point is like closing the barn door after the horses have already left, hitched a ride across the country, set up an independent urban rodeo business, gone bust and appealed for a government bailout package. It's hard to see this Israeli government making the necessary moves, so the more realistic goal for now may be to prepare the groundwork for rapid progress after the Netanyahu government falls.  And despite the appointment of a new Palestinian government under Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian side remains deeply and intensely divided, with few signs that the Hamas-PA stalemate or Gaza-West Bank divide will be broken anytime soon. 

But what worries me the most right now is a sudden, sharp escalation against Hamas which has created a crisis atmosphere and which seems likely to trigger some kind of violent retaliation.  Israeli air strikes against Gaza have escalated over the last week and a half.  On Thursday, the Israeli military killed a Hamas leader, Abd al-Majid Dawdin, at his West Bank home. Then yesterday, PA security forces pursued two alleged Hamas fighters in the West Bank, killing six in one of the bloodiest such incidents in years, and sparking a retaliatory crackdown and sharp words from Hamas in Gaza. Meanwhile, Hamas has refused to accept the legitimacy of Salam Fayyad's new government or any agreement with Israel signed by Mahmoud Abbas, and the Cairo talks on a Palestinian unity government appear to be close to dead. 

There are two ways to read this. First, it might be seen as an attempt to trigger a bloody Hamas retaliation either in Israel or the West Bank which would radicalize the political environment and divert the pressure to move on the peace front. The latter would be a deeply cynical, provocative move and I certainly hope that it isn't the case -- and that if it is, Hamas does not take the bait.

Or second, it might be seen as a coordinated attempt to demonstrate the capabilities and intentions of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank in order to reassure the Americans and Israelis, with an eye towards demonstrating to Hamas the need to somehow adapt to the coming moves towards a peace settlement. That would also be misguided, but in some ways the logical outgrowth of the "West Bank First/PA Only" approach which has thus far (in my view mistakenly) characterized the administration's Palestinian policy. More on all this later, but for now I'll just point out that Palestinian commentators across the spectrum are worried about this, and so am I. The growing intra-Palestinian turbulence as a dangerously rising trend which could undermine the President's efforts while his attention is focused elsewhere.

Marc Lynch | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register


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Actual Credibility vs. a Phony PR "Credibility Campaign"

by Dan Kervick on Mon, 06/01/2009 - 3:58pm

As Obama leaves for Saudi Arabia and Egypt, he will thus benefit from the headlines and op-eds in the Arab press featuring his strong stand on the settlements.

It always seems to come down to communications, public diplomacy and PR for you, Mark. Apart from all these marvelous headlines and op-eds trumpeting Obama's supposed "credibility" on this issue, what tangible steps has the administration taken to back up all this diplomatic gas with any material form of pressure? None at all. It seems like the administration has already backed off on the settlements. Israel says "no", and it appears that's all there is to it.

And you, like any number of other commentators over the past few days, have now discovered that a settlement freeze isn't that big a deal anyway, that it's too late to close the barn door, etc. The latter point is probably right. But if the administration is not prepared to back up its demands with sanctioning action, then they should never make these demands in the first place. Otherwise they are going to shoot their aspirational credibility all to hell.

I suspect that Netanyahu is just going to keep on saying "no" or "maybe" or "some day", while cynically and mockingly complaining from time to time about all the unseemly and onerous "pressure" from Washington, secure in the knowledge that the oh-so-credible Obama talk will never advance beyond the lip-flapping stage.

Eventually, these Arab newspaper readers are going to figure out that there is nothing behind these headlines and reports of credibility beyond just so much hot desert wind, and that the administration is guided by a bunch of callow young communications specialists who think we can dupe the Arab and Muslim world into hewing to our wishes through the irresistible power of our Ivy League syntax. I hope against hope that someone in the administration eventually acquires the cognitive ability to distinguish the real world from the world of blather, and recognizes that real credibility comes from the performance of actions that go beyond talking.

Obama and the intra palestinian conflict

by Sanaa Al-Banna on Mon, 06/01/2009 - 6:58pm

Hi,
This is my first comment on your blog of which i may be a regular readear, surely as much as i can access the internet.
i would like to ask about your opinion on intra-palestinian conflict, what are the possible scenareos of this conflict, let me say,after 5 years dor example.
Actually i'm quite interested in this issue, i think the American strategy with Obama is targeting a change in the basic concerns and circumstances that fuel Hamas power/support in the Arab area, it looks for someone to play an new role in the palestinian israeli conflict, outside the Abbas-Masha'l axis, a aettlement that is not acceptable by either parties: palestinian Hamas , or israeli/along with Abbas.
So i'm exactly asking about your opinion, on how the upcoming chaanges in American policy toward the Arab area would effect fatah-hamas conflict.
Thank you !

The Heart of the Matter

by Zathras on Mon, 06/01/2009 - 10:51pm

Lynch alludes here to the crucial aspect of the settlements issue, the one most difficult for Washington to influence. This is the formidable position supporters of settlements occupy in Israeli domestic politics.

There isn't any question about how Israeli supporters of settlements would react if Netanyahu acceded to early American pressure to freeze settlements -- they would move to bring down his government. Settlements are much more important to them than he is. Israelis who would be willing to accept a settlement freeze (plus the minority who never liked settlements in the first place) would not respond to this by backing up Netanyahu. He gives in now, he's toast.

Over time, the position of pro-settlment Israeli groups is likely to weaken, other things being equal, because to most Israelis settlement expansion, under any guise, is less important than the prospect of a rupture with the United States. We're not at that point yet, though, and to get there the Obama administration will need to maintain a consistent position, and consistent pressure on Netanyahu's government, on this question. We must expect that in the meantime Netanyahu will look for ways to change the subject -- to Iran, to Hamas, to anything that might get him off the hook he's on now that the American President has decided not to just ratify whatever the Israeli government decides it has to do. He will try to make other things not be equal.

Obama will need to resist; dismantlement of some settlements on the West Bank can be a condition of a final arrangement between the Israelis and Palestinians, but halting the growth of settlements has to be a condition for beginning negotiations for such an arrangement. If the Americans go along with the line past Israeli governments have taken -- that any concession related to settlements is out of the question as long as Hamas is making trouble, or Iran is making trouble, or anything else is going wrong -- Netanyahu will have found the way off his hook, and we'll be back to square one with the Arabs.

The standard rebuttal to this from partisans of Israel in the United States will be that unreciprocated concessions of any kind to any Arabs will be wasted; the Arabs (and certainly the Iranian mullahs) who want to destroy Israel now, will want to destroy Israel after Jewish settlements on the West Bank stop growing. There is, unfortunately, much truth in this -- but it is irrelevant. The Obama administration has to pressure Israel to freeze settlement growth because it is in American interests. These would supercede Israel's even if settlement expansion reflected Israel's national interests rather than the factional agenda of a minority of the Israeli public.

Arabs and Israelis do not trust one another. That is a given in Middle Eastern politics and diplomacy. Another given, and one that many Israelis are reluctant to accept, is that, ultimately, Israel's security depends on a strong relationship between Israel and the United States. Israel must trust that the United States will take no step that will put Israel's security in doubt, and must otherwise reconcile itself to accomodating American policy rather than expecting Washington to yield to the imperatives of Israeli domestic politics. This would mark a change from how the Israeli-American relationship has worked in the in the recent past, but it is not unprecedented. American administrations during the 1970s that knew what they wanted in the Middle East were able to drive Israeli concessions on issues of real, imminent relevance to Israeli security, at a time when this was more gravely threatened than it is now.

The foundation of the progress toward peace in the region during that period was not growing trust between Israel and its Arab neighbors, but trust by Israel of the United States. The alternative to such trust now is not Israel backed up by America no matter what. It is instead Israel alone in a hostile world.