Obama Falls for Abbas' Bluff
Mahmoud Abbas must be a very good poker player.
Or else Barack Obama must be a very bad one.
Holding the geopolitical equivalent of a pair of twos and a pair of threes, the Palestinian Authority President has bluffed and bullied the President of the United States into an awkward predicament.
Abbas has threatened Obama: If you do not step up your pressure on Israel, I will go to the United Nations in September and ask the General Assembly to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state.
In his speech to the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) last Sunday, Obama cited Abbas' threat as reason to press now for a peace agreement based on the 1967 lines: "But the march to isolate Israel internationally -- and the impulse of the Palestinians to abandon negotiations -- will continue to gain momentum in the absence of a credible peace process and alternative. And for us to have leverage with the Palestinians, to have leverage with the Arab states and with the international community, the basis for negotiations has to hold out the prospect of success."
In other words: "Hey AIPAC: Don't blame me. I have no choice. If I don't move against Israel now, Abbas will act on his awesome threat to isolate Israel internationally, and then where will any of us be?"
Well here's one possible choice Obama had.
He could answer Abbas' threat: "Oh really?" And then remind the PA president of some elementary facts, like:
(1) The UN General Assembly has already voted to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, back in 1988. What's the big deal about a second vote?
(2) The economy of your declared state depends abjectly on foreign aid: $675 per person per year. (For comparison: Sub-Saharan Africa receives $48 per person per year.)
A May 27 BBC report describes the importance of this aid: " 'Over the last 15 years, 50% of the Palestinian Authority budget has come from foreign aid,' says Nasser Abdul Karim, an economist at the West Bank's Bir Zeit University. 'But it's charity and the growth is unsustainable,' he says wryly. So what would happen if the funding stopped? 'Salaries would not be paid. Employees would stop spending. People could not pay rent or bank loans or electricity bills,' says Mr Abdul Karim. 'The domino effect would play a major role in crippling the whole economy.' "
(3) The United States provides more than half this money, either directly to the Palestinian Authority or indirectly, via the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. So who exactly has leverage over who here?
(4) Beyond cash, the United States provides equipment and training for the security forces of the Palestinian Authority. Without that assistance, those forces would fall below even their current standards of effectiveness.
(5) PA electricity, water, and customs revenues all depend on Israeli co-operation. The Palestinian economy will collapse without Israel -- and only the United States has leverage over Israel.
The PA mind trick over the September declaration is only a sub-set of a larger mind trick that Abbas has exercised over Obama.
The Obama team's strategy is based on leaving two issues to the very end of a future Israeli-Palestinian negotiation: Jerusalem and refugees. The idea is that these issues excite the most intense emotions and should be left until all other issues are settled.
By postponing Jerusalem and refugees, the Obama strategy establishes a dynamic leading up to a final exchange: the Palestinians surrender their claimed "right of return"; Israel surrenders its sovereignty over historic Jerusalem.
If that's indeed what the President has in mind, it would be quite a one-sided deal: Israel would yield something real and precious in exchange for the Palestinians yielding a claim they could never enforce.
It would be like the Americans yielding the White House to Mexico in exchange for Mexico promising not to try to take back Texas and California by force.
The real analogy to the Palestinian "right of return" is the long-abandoned Zionist claim to the East Bank of the Jordan River: the two fantasies could cancel each other out.
Indeed, since the admission of millions of Palestinians into Israel would be tantamount to the destruction of Israel, you might think that abandoning the refugee claim would be a first step toward negotiations.
Yet somehow Abbas has convinced Obama to allow him to stake this grandiose pretension against Israel's most cherished possession. If this were poker, Obama would have been wiped out already. Or more exactly: not Obama, but the people with whose lives and security Obama is playing.
Originally published in the National Post.