Obama and Israel, Into the Abyss
by Daniel Pipes
Philadelphia
Bulletin
July 21, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/pipes/7464/obama-israel-into-the-abyss
What I dubbed the Obama administration's "rapid
and harsh turn against Israel" has had three quick, predictable, and
counter-productive results. These point to further difficulties ahead.
First result: Barack Obama's decision to get
tough with Israel translates into escalating
Palestinian demands on Israel. In early July, Palestinian Authority
chief Mahmoud Abbas and Saeb Erekat, his top negotiator, insisted on five
unilateral concessions by Israel:
- An independent Palestinian state;
- Israel shrunk to its pre-June 1967 borders, minus a Palestinian land-bridge
between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip;
- A Palestinian "right of return"
to Israel;
- Resolution of all permanent status issues on the basis of the 2002
Abdullah
plan; and
- A complete stop to building by Jews in eastern Jerusalem and the
West Bank.
Palestinians and Americans are the intended
audience for this preemptory list; such exorbitant demands, the record
shows, only reduces Israeli willingness to make concessions.
The former Shepherd Hotel
in eastern Jerusalem. |
Second result: The U.S. government takes
marching orders from Abbas and passes them along to the Israelis. Abbas
complained to the Americans that the construction of 20
apartments and an underground garage in the eastern Jerusalem
neighborhood of Shimon
Hatzadik, 1.4 kilometers north of the Old City, would shift
Jerusalem's demographic balance. The State Department promptly summoned
Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren on July 17 and instructed
him to halt the building project.
Some background:
Zionists founded the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood in 1891 by purchasing
the land from Arabs, then, due to Arab riots and Jordanian conquest,
abandoned the area. Amin
al-Husseini, Jerusalem's pro-Nazi mufti, put up a building in the
1930s that later served as the Shepherd Hotel (not to be confused with the
renowned Shepheard's Hotel
in Cairo). After 1967, the Israelis designated the land "absentee
property." Irving Moskowitz, an American businessman, bought the land in
1985 and rented the building to the border police until 2002. His company,
C and M Properties, won final permission two weeks ago
to renovate the hotel and build apartments on the land.
Third result: The U.S. demand has prompted an
Israeli resolve not to bend but to reiterate its traditional positions.
Oren rejected State's demand. Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu, who confessed to being "surprised" by the U.S. demand,
assured colleagues "I won't cave in on this matter."
Publicly,
Netanyahu closed the door on concessions. Insisting that Israeli
sovereignty over Jerusalem "cannot be challenged," he noted that
"residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city"
and pointedly recalled that "in recent years hundreds of apartments in
Jewish neighborhoods and in the western part of the city have been
purchased by – or rented to – Arab residents and we did not interfere.
"This says that there is no ban on Arabs buying
apartments in the western part of the city and there is no ban on Jews
buying or building apartments in the eastern part of the city. This is the
policy of an open city, an undivided city that has no separation according
to religion or national affiliation."
Then, his blistering finale: "We cannot accept
the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all
parts of Jerusalem. I can only describe to myself what would happen if
someone would propose that Jews could not live in certain neighborhoods in
New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major
international outcry. Accordingly, we cannot agree to such a decree in
Jerusalem."
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman asserted
this same point while Yuli
Edelstein, minister of Information and Diaspora, added that the U.S.
demand "proves how dangerous it is to get dragged into talks of a
settlement freeze. Such talks will lead to a demand to completely freeze
our lives in the entire State of Israel."
From May 27,
when the Obama administration began its attack on Israeli "settlements,"
it has displayed an unexpected naiveté; did this administration really
have to relearn for itself the well-known fact that Washington fails when
bossing around its main Middle Eastern ally? It then displayed rank
incompetence by picking a fight on an issue where an Israeli consensus
exists – not over a remote "outpost" but a Jerusalem quarter boasting a
Zionist pedigree back to 1891.
How long until Obama understands his error and
retreats from it? How much damage will he do in the meantime?
Related Topics: Arab-Israel conflict & diplomacy, US policy
Daniel Pipes | 
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