Obama: Bad for Israel and Bad for the Palestinians
There is an old joke that goes something like this, in an updated form:
Saul: Did you hear, Jon Gosselin is breaking up with Kate. What do you think?
Abie: I don’t know, is it good or bad for Israel?
I watched ABC News last night, and though the jury that makes up the different parts of my mind had been out for quite awhile on the benefits of an Obama presidency, I came to a conclusion: Obama is bad for Israel.
On the ABC News piece Charles Gibson spoke about the U.S. demand that Israel stop expanding settlements.Then the piece went on to discuss U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell’s meetings in Cairo, Damascus and Ramallah, where he was told in each case that there would be no peace talks until Israel stopped all settlement expansion.
Let’s leave aside for the moment the question of why the Obama administration, which seeks to make the U.S. a kinder and gentler international player, feels that Israel is the only country of whom it feels entitled to make demands.
So, what has the Obama administration achieved with its “demand” for change in Israel’s settlement policy? Anyone with a dram of familiarity with human nature would quickly say, Obama has handed an intransigent adversary an excuse for its intransigence. Until Obama, in his Cairo speech, decided that Israel’s settlement policy was the principal obstacle to peace, Cairo and Damascus and Ramallah were begging Israel to come to the negotiating table.
Obama and his advisors (Rahm, are you listening? Are you thinking of quitting yet?) thought it useful for the process to make Israel the bad guy, and hand the Palestinians an excuse to further perpetuate their decades of “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Really, how softheaded is that?
It is not the rejection of reasonable peace offers by the Palestinian leadership that has stood in the way of peace in the Middle East.
It is not the endless, pitiless swarms of suicide bombers that have stood in the way of peace in the Middle East.
It is not the corruption and cash-grabs (there is no money in peace) of the Palestinian leadership that has stood in the way of peace in the Middle East.
It is not a steady stream of rockets fired on fields and schoolhouses from Gaza and Lebanon that have stood in the way of peace in the Middle East.
No. It is the desire of a family to add a housing unit to a particular settlement so their child can raise their grandchildren near them. That has been what has stood in the way of peace in the Middle East.
Well done, Mr. President. In your desire to be all things to all people, you have condemned Israel and Palestine to more aggression, more instability, more suffering, by equivalizing the building of settlements with rejectionism and the murder of innocents.
The jury is in. The Obama administration is bad for Israel. But it is also bad for Palestinians.