Israel: Obama’s tough new stance

last updated 8 January 2015

President Obama really believes he can create peace in the Mideast, said Dan Froomkin in TheWashingtonpost.com. His first step toward that goal, it’s now clear, is “to play hardball with Israel.” At his meeting last week with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Obama reiterated what he recently told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel must stop building settlements in the occupied West Bank. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chimed in, calling for a “stop to settlements—not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” By convincing “key pro-Israel allies in Congress” that halting settlements is essential to any peace plan, said Laura Rozen in Foreignpolicy.com, Obama has put Netanyahu in a corner. To one aide Netanyahu groused, “What the hell do they want from me?”

Friends of Israel deserve an honest answer, said Martin Peretz in The New Republic Online. Obama apparently thinks that if our closest Middle East ally halts all construction in the settlements—no new homes for settlers’ grown-up children, no additions to existing houses—then the Palestinian problem will magically disappear. That, of course, is nonsense. “The Palestinians haven’t shown any serious readiness to make peace.” Yet Obama would have Israel give up a major bargaining chip in return for—well, nothing. It’s worse than that, said Dick Morris in Townhall.com. Israeli sources say Obama recently sent CIA chief Leon Panetta to Tel Aviv to “read the riot act” regarding a possible Israeli pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Obama has essentially accepted that Iran will get the bomb, while demanding concessions from Israel and appeasing its many Arab enemies. Even the “sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama” must now realize they’ve made a terrible mistake.

Obama means well, said Jim Hoagland in The Washington Post, but he is going about reviving the peace process the wrong way. He and his aides think that if the U.S. acts “forcefully enough,” it can compel Israel to end the settlements, take that prize to the Arab world, and quickly forge a breakthrough. But American arm-twisting alone won’t produce a Palestinian state. This is a time for patient diplomacy—for “pulling weeds and planting seeds,” and getting Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab nations to the peace table—not a time for hubris and demands. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Mr. President, but “there is no American solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that you can heroically deliver from on high.”