Cut Bibi Some Slack
Why Obama's
hard line on Israeli settlements is counterproductive
by Steven J.
Rosen
Foreign Policy
July 1, 2009
http://www.meforum.org/2175/obama-hard-line-israeli-settlements
Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn in as
Israel's prime minister on March 31. Within weeks, the Obama
administration launched a high-profile public campaign to confront
Israel's new leader on the issue that most divides the two governments:
Israel's settlements in the West Bank.
It was an unusual way to welcome the
new leader of a close friend of the United States. Why did the Obama team
veer so sharply off the normal course? Diplomacy toward an ally normally
begins with building relations of trust on areas of agreement, and only
later engaging discreetly on issues where there are sharp differences. Why
instead did the administration team roll out a campaign of diktats,
beginning May 28 in front of cameras at a press conference with the
Egyptian foreign minister, virtually nailing a decree to Netanyahu's door
announcing that President Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements -- not
some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions," as
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it. Why so dismissively brush aside
understandings crafted by the George W. Bush's administration,
understandings that had achieved a significant reduction of settlement
construction albeit not a total freeze? Why would an unnamed source in the
administration boast to the Washington Post on June 30, "We have
not changed our position at all, nor has the president authorized any
negotiating room"?
One explanation for this bizarre
behavior is "Yes, we can" syndrome -- the prevailing belief in Washington
that this president holds 99 percent of the cards and can get people to do
things beyond what normally can be achieved. Even some in Jerusalem
believe that Netanyahu cannot say "no" to Barack Obama, especially on the
settlement issue where there Israel has little support in Congress and
even the American Jewish community is divided and paralyzed.
The theory that Obama holds the high
cards rests on the results that George H.W. Bush got when he confronted a
different Likud prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, over settlements in
September 1991. Nine months after Bush threw down the settlements
gauntlet, Israeli voters ejected Shamir and replaced him with Labor's
Yitzhak Rabin, opening the way to the Oslo accords.
But this comparison is misleading.
Obama's confrontation is taking place mere weeks after the formation of a
new Israeli government, not months before an Israeli prime minister has to
face his voters again. What's more, Israeli voters have elected the most
conservative Knesset in Israel's history. The parties of the left -- Labor
and Meretz -- had 56 seats in 1992, but they have shrunk to 16 seats
today. The real pressure on Netanyahu in today's Israel is from the right.
If Obama hopes to invigorate the country's moribund left, he's in for a
rude shock: the gains it would need to force either new elections or a
different coalition more compliant to U.S. demands are daunting.
Moreover, the hawks have many ways
to constrain and compel the prime minister. In fact, Netanyahu is in the
opposite position of Shamir. Succumbing to U.S. pressure is the one thing
that might bring Bibi down, but keeping the conservatives in his coalition
offers him every prospect of serving a full term until the next scheduled
Israeli election in 2013. Netanyahu can, and will, say "no" if his only
choice is the one the Obama team is now offering: total capitulation.
Netanyahu does have the political
strength to reaffirm previous compromises made by Ariel Sharon and Ehud
Olmert to limit natural growth. This includes the "construction line"
principle that would restrict development to infill construction within
already built-up areas while preventing further geographic expansion
beyond the outer line of existing structures. But the Israeli prime
minister does not have the legal authority, let alone the necessary
political foundation, to impose an absolute and complete freeze on all
construction in all settlements. Few in Israel are prepared to freeze
construction in the "blocs," today primarily those on the Israeli side of
the security fence, that the Clinton administration anticipated would be
annexed to Israel as part of a land swap creating a Palestinian state. Nor
does Netanyahu have either the legal authority or the support of the
public to ban Jewish housing inside the juridical boundaries of Jerusalem,
on land that might have been outside Israel's borders before 1967 but was
formally annexed to Israel a quarter century ago by the Jerusalem law of
1980.
The Obama administration would be
smarter to play a more nuanced game and make the distinctions it is
avoiding. Only a minority of Israelis support construction of housing in
outlying settlements beyond Israel's security fence, but construction in
the blocs and especially in Jewish communities in Jerusalem is supported
by the vast majority of the Israeli public and all the major political
parties. Absolutist demands for a total freeze may win applause in the
United States even from some in the U.S. Jewish community, but they go
much too far to succeed in the real world.
If Obama's purpose in authorizing
this confrontation was to provide an incentive to the Palestinians and the
moderate states in the Arab League to take the steps they need to take for
peace, his policy is likely to fail on this measure as well. Reinforcing
the long-standing belief in the Arab world that the United States can
"deliver" Israel if it only has the will reduces Arab incentives to make
concessions in direct negotiations with Israel, rather than increasing
them. It is only natural for Arab leaders to conclude, "Why negotiate with
the difficult Israelis, when you can get your American friends to do the
work for you?" The American message should be exactly the reverse: "You
have to negotiate with the Israelis. We cannot do it for you."
Netanyahu knows he will need to
compromise on settlements, but he can do this only if Obama compromises
too. An impasse on this issue certainly does not serve Israel's interests,
but it will not advance the goals of the Obama administration either. The
U.S. president's advisers need to see that, on settlements, like so many
issues, the perfect is the enemy of the good enough.
Steven J. Rosen served for 23
years as foreign policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, and was a defendant in the recently dismissed AIPAC case. He
is now director of the Washington Project at the Middle East
Forum.
Related Topics: Arab-Israel conflict & diplomacy, US policy
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