If you haven't been paying attention, the Israeli government used Biden's peace-rallying visit to announce the construction of 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope to make the capitol of their eventual state. Up to 50,000 units may be planned. This directly violates the US and international calls for a settlement freeze (although that battle is already lost). East Jerusalem is probably the most contentious issue in the peace process, so this move is a flagrant slap in the face to anyone involved in the process. I read it as a clear statement that the current Israeli government has no interest in a peace deal.
The Israelis apologized and claimed that the timing was an embarrassing coincidence; the left hand of the Israeli government wasn't talking to the right hand (Biden himself doesn't seem to buy this). The government implemented a bureaucratic fix to ensure it won't happen again: Israel will no longer announce policies so antithetical to the peace process while US peace envoys are visiting. I hardly find that satisfying.
What nobody is talking about is the basic fact that continued settlement expansion is one of the biggest obstacles to a peace. It is rapidly eroding Israel's moral credibility and, in my view, it is eroding Israel's prospects for a secure future. If Israel builds its way into a situation where a two-state solution is no longer possible, it's going to be in a real bind. Biden was right when he said, "...quite frankly, folks, sometimes only a friend can deliver the hardest truth." Unfortunately, the Israeli government doesn't seem to have any intention of stopping expansion into East Jerusalem.
I was equally shocked that the US let Israel get off so easily on this one. President Obama was already weakened and humiliated by the Israeli refusal to agree to a settlement freeze; now he looks even more like a fool. Biden had some harsh words behind closed doors, but in general, the US is trying to paper over the rift. It seems to me that if the US ever wanted to push back regarding settlement expansion, this was the moment to do it. Even Haaretz is reading Biden's muted response as a green light for the East Jerusalem construction.
Let me tell you how this looks from my front-row seats in Jordan. Every single time I discuss about the Israel-Palestinian conflict here, the conversation always drifts to the same question: Why is the US incapable of exerting the least amount of pressure on Israel, particularly over settlements, which undermine US-led efforts and are clearly not in American national interest? From there the conversation always moves to a topic where we have to walk a knife's edge between basic facts and anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: the strength of the Israel lobby. I plan to tackle that thorny subject in a future post, but I'll just say this: I work hard to challenge and dismantle the anti-Semitic interpretations of the lobby's power (which are prevalent here), but it's very difficulty to do that when the US is so obviously bound to destructive Israeli policies--even when it's clearly not in our national interest.
Foreign Policy's new Middle East Channel has some good analysis here. I'll close with a quote:
Israel is unlikely to make a choice until the U.S. makes its own choice, and this week demonstrated that papering over the chasm now existing between U.S. and Israeli positions is an ever-more transparently flawed exercise. America may only be paying attention when the vice president is in town, but the Arab and Muslim world views America as the enabler-in-chief of Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and of the indignities being visited on Gaza's civilian population, every single day.
In the absence of decisive American leadership, Israel is likely to dig itself deeper into a hole, burying the last vestiges of hope for pragmatic Zionism. And America too will not emerge unscathed. The president can give any number of Cairo speeches and appoint Sen. Mitchell as special peace envoy, Sec. Clinton can appoint Farah Pandit as representative to Muslim communities and Rashad Hussain as envoy to the O.I.C., but these officials had all better be given the cellphone number of the Israeli interior ministry, Jerusalem district planning and building department, because that office and others in Israel's bureaucracy still have the deciding vote in framing America's image in the region.
1 comments:
Please check your local maps, they are talking about building in the North of Jerusalem, not East Jerusalem.
Oh, and just a thought here, are the Palestinians stopping any of their building at all?
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