I can’t fully endorse Jackson Diehl’s retelling of recent Israeli history, but I totally agree with this statement:
The front-runner for prime minister in the Israeli election scheduled for February is Binyamin Netanyahu, who aspires to indefinitely postpone Palestinian statehood — and to use military force against the Iranian nuclear program. If Netanyahu is elected, Barack Obama will be more likely to preside over a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations than a Middle East peace.
America’s relationship with Israel is unique not only because of our close military and political ties, but because we have almost no political or media personalities willing to be publicly critical of anything Israel does. It’s somewhat understandable that the highest echelons of power (the president, his spokesmen, the State Department, relevant congressional committee chairs) are circumspect and lack candor when discussing the shortcomings of a key ally’s policies. We see the same phenomenon with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt. The distinction is that we have no shortage of minor politicians and media types who will criticize those countries when they take actions detrimental to themselves, their citizens, and our relations with them. This self-consorship regarding Israel doesn’t present a problem so long as Israel’s actions are in concert with our interests, but that has rarely been the case in the last eight years (or, broadly speaking, the last thirty years).
We have been stumbling along, tolerating an increasingly toxic status quo, for a long time. But things are deteriorating quickly. The most obvious problem is that Israel has lost the security we bought for them with the Camp David process in the late 1970’s and the peace accord in 1994 with Jordan. America brokered agreements that, when combined with serious military aid, guaranteed that Israel would never again face the threat of a land invasion like the one that occurred on Yom Kippur in 1973. But Israel squandered that gift through their refusal to vacate the occupied territories, which they claimed to need to protect themselves against a recurrence of the 1973 invasion. Instead, they undertook the Settler Program, which encouraged Israelis to illegally construct homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip…areas that were not part of the U.N.-authorized original state of Israel.
As a result, Palestinians have, with the assistance of their Muslim-led neighbors, developed the capacity to threaten Israel’s security. The threat of suicide attacks is ever-present in Israel, but the real problem is rocket attack. Even a large scale invasion of Lebanon in 2006 failed to stop a rain of rocket attacks from that country’s southern border with Israel. And the current bombing (and possible invasion) of the Gaza strip is unlikely to stop the more rudimentary rocket attacks originating from that territory. It’s far more likely that the rockets will slowly increase in sophistication and lethality. Israel’s only sure defense against this harassment is to eliminate the incentive to attack. Their current strategy is to employ deterrence, but the international community no longer has any tolerance for the types of deadly measures needed to even approach sufficient deterrence.
The United States was the only major country or organization that failed to condemn Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The United Nations, the European Union, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, the Arab League and others all were quick to condemn Israel’s actions, even as they all called on Hamas to stop rocketing Israeli territory. Israel’s isolation is almost complete, as the world now broadly rejects their right to self-defense if that self-defense involves the use of force outside of their borders.
This means that Israel is more dependent than ever before on good relations with the United States. It also means that Israel is dependent on America maintaining its dominant position in the world and its heavy presence in the Middle East. But those are exactly the conditions most at risk as America experiences economic decline and a lack of will for maintaining the strategy of being the sole hegemon. American public opinion is another factor that is at risk of turning against Israel.
For these reasons, there could be no more self-defeating act than for Israelis to respond to these crises by electing Binyamin Netanyahu as their prime minister. Electing Netanyahu would be the equivalent of the United States reacting to the manifold failures of the Bush administration by electing Paul Wolfowitz as president. If the last eight years of neo-conservative policies have been disastrous for Israel, why vote in someone even more neo-conservative than the neo-conservatives that created the mess?
If the Obama administration finds an Israeli government that is bent on preventing a two-state solution, it will inevitably rupture U.S.-Israeli relations. Israeli voters should be clear-sighted about this. Netanyahu cannot save you. But he can destroy Israel’s relationship with their last, best friend.
Barak and Livni are just as belligerent as Bibi on Iran so I don’t give a damn who they elect.
We need to wash our hands of this criminal state and her leaders.
How does this special relationship benefit us??
.
There is a broad bipartisan consensus among policymakers that Israel has advanced U.S. interest in the Middle East and beyond.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Okay. I should have asked what they did that was positive.
So much for them being a light unto nations or whatever they claim
Israeli voters don’t elect leaders based on foreign policy considerations – let alone how the rest of the world feels about them – any more than US voters do. And without the economic meltdown, we could well have had President McCain regardless of the horrified reaction the rest of the world (outside Israel and Georgia) would have had.
Israeli voters are largely focused on the scandalous misdeeds of the Olmert-led previous regime. We’re likely to get Bibi as a result. Palestinians? What are those?
I don’t have a link but I’ve read that a tough line on Gaza is expected to narrow Bibi’s polling lead. I don’t know if that factor (or expectation) should be properly considered ‘foreign policy’ but I think it’s a fair interpretation. I think you mean that the voters are not much concerned with how their new prime minister will be received in foreign capitals. That might be true, but it shouldn’t be.
I can think of no other country that is as dependent on the good-will of another than Israel is to the United States.
Then it’s about time the United States showed Israel a little “tough love”.
It’s far past time, but as you can see there is no leadership for such a change.
Dennis Kucinich is about the lone-voice calling for any such thing (at least, among elected officials).
The only way a change is possible is through presidential leadership and you have to actually be president to accomplish such a task.
Given the institutional opposition to criticizing Israel for anything, Obama must be willing to expend enormous amounts of political capital and even to splinter his coalition (a la LBJ) in order to do what needs to be done. This makes it unlikely, but Obama is better on these issues than any president we’ve had since Carter, so I have some hope that events will lead him to the correct decisions.
There WAS Cynthia McKinney, but AIPAC succeeded in getting rid of her.
I haven’t noticed that Obama is any better on Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim issues than anyone else has been. In fact, his pandering to AIPAC was more extreme than any I have ever seen – so much so that his puppy-dog eagerness to grovel at their feet was downright embarrassing to more moderate Israel supporters.
So far, going back as far as you want, I have not been impressed by anything Obama has said or done about the Middle East or the Muslim world. And so far the group of people he has gathered around him does not bode well. Oh, sure, he made a speech against the aggression on Iraq, but when it came to action, he went right along with the crowd. I expect him to be no better than Clinton was. I will be very happy if he surprises me, but so far I have not seen any indication that he will.
I hope we will see good things from him in other areas, butI will be shocked if he does anything concerning the Middle East, North Africa, or South Asia except repeat the same mistakes and many of the same crimes as those who came before him.
McKinney is sailing there to take supplies now.
Yes, I think I heard about her being with that group. It’s great what they are doing, although it really is not much more than moral support. The amount of supplies they can bring with them is hardly a drop in the bucket.
A CNN reporter was on the boat and said that Israel rammed them on purpose….three times.
I hope you noticed that the main thrust of attack against Obama was that he was secretly a Muslim who had double loyalties and secretly sided with the Palestinians. He faced a very conscious effort to divide the Jewish community, especially where it was critical (in Florida), and to scare gentiles in general.
You do know where Obama comes from (Hyde Park, Upper West Side, Cambridge). Have you ever spent time in those places discussing the Middle East? Have you noticed that there’s a theme to I/P discussion in those locations that you don’t hear on teevee or in Washington DC?
Obama faces the same currents all politicians face on these issues. But he’s culturally aware of the problem.
I do not expect him to be better than Bill Clinton, or even appreciably different. I would be delighted to be proven wrong about this, I really would.
Yeah, I think I’ve heard you make that argument about 300 times now. Repeating it doesn’t make it more likely to be true.
And shutting up about it doesn’t make it any more likely not to be true.
I expect Obama to do some good things domestically, and I think he will work to mend relations with Europe. I hope he will surprise me, but for now it looks like Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims are screwed, as usual.
No, it doesn’t look like that.
It only looks like that if you analyze things completely on the surface level.
In our society political criticism of Israel is so discouraged that it simply does not occur openly.
Therefore most people do not understand the issues, let alone have a balanced view of them. This includes most politicians. The rest are too savvy to stick their neck out on an issue they cannot ultimately control.
Therefore, only a president can change policy in a fundamental way and he or she cannot signal in any way that they intend to do so prior to being elected. Or, at least, none so far have been willing to try.
The importance of Obama’s background is that he comes from progressive circles, which means that he is fully aware of the issues and that he has a balanced view of them. The only question is whether he is willing to act on what he knows because it could easily ruin his effort at building a lasting left-leaning coalition. It carries huge risk factors that jeopardize any number of other worthy goals.
Why did Obama go overboard at AIPAC right after winning the nomination? It was overcompensation for the attacks he knew were coming. It meant nothing for how he plans to proceed. In fact, I went on vacation at that time and said I was relieved to be leaving so I wouldn’t have to witness that routine spectacle.
We haven’t had a president since Carter that had better prospects of changing the policy. Should you expect him to change it? You can take a negative view for psychological reasons. The truth is, we don’t know. But he won’t continue Bush’s policies.
In our society political criticism of Israel is so discouraged that it simply does not occur openly.
did you miss one example of the change? Apparently Israel’s PowersthatBe are still at 1948.
Well, call me – or my analysis – superficial, if you like. I would argue, though, that superficial would be to do as so many people did upon hearing Obama say he would withdraw combat troops within 16 months, and conclude from that that he planned to end the occupation within that period.
I am a simple-minded empiricist. I am a pretty decent analyst when it comes to things I am familiar with, but I draw judgments and conclusions and form expectations based on established facts, what I have observed/experienced in the past, and what I see and hear in the present. From those things I can create a logical construct of some sort that leads me to conclusions about what to expect.
As I have said numerous times before, I defer to your greater experience, knowledge and insight in matters of U.S. politics. I also find it plausible that Obama was overcompensating in his deeply embarrassing performance in front of AIPAC and his HORRIBLE snubbing of the Palestinians while he made googly eyes for days at the Israelis. And if those were the only disturbing signs I had seen, I would give them a lot less weight.
And I never suggested I expected him to continue Bush’s policies, did I? I have, in fact, said I expected them to be more like Clinton’s, and that IS where most of the signs are pointing. Instead of rehiring Bush’s Israel Uber Alles gang of neocons, he has rehired Clinton’s crowd of “kinder, gentler” Israel firsters, so it’s still going to be a group of deeply committed Zionists who will guide him in the United States’ Middle East policy, it will just be Clinton’s group of committed Zionists. Or did he choose these people just to fake us all out and make us think he would continue the traditional U.S. policies toward Israel? And in order to fake us all out did he hire people he is going to have to fight tooth and nail every step of the way to develop a decent policy toward Palestinians, or did he choose people with whom he is in basic agreement? Or maybe on inauguration day he will unveil his REAL set of foreign policy advisers?
Other causes for concern: Obama has always made clear that he would 1) continue the Iraq occupation with a smaller, reconfigured, rebranded force, 2) escalate the conflict in Afghanistan, 3) significantly increase the size and the budget of the military.
Now, maybe he was just saying and doing all that to get elected/ease the transition/whatever, but somehow it does not make me sleep better at night.
OK, I am sure it is very frustrating for you trying to get through to my simple, superficial mind on this, but it is frustrating to me to be told to believe something other than what has been in front of my eyes and ears all this time.
Think of how many millions of aid to Israel come back to the states as military contracts, that buys a lot of goodwill.
IAF uses new US-supplied smart bomb
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230456505080&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
The very structure of foreign aid funding for Israel and Egypt and Pakistan and other places includes requirements that certain [large] percentages of that foreign aid money be spent on purchases from US based defense-contracting companies.
Those bombs have depleted uranium.
Yes! An abomination on top of the abomination that is the relentless infusion of weaponry into these regions of contention by the powers that be.
“If Netanyahu is elected, Barack Obama will be more likely to preside over a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations than a Middle East peace.“
Good, then let’s do what we can to get Netanyahu elected. It’s about time there was a crisis in U.S.-Israel relations. In fact, it is about time the U.S. laid down the law to Israel and stopped funding Israeli crimes.
Come to think of it, it’s about time the U.S. stopped funding U.S. crimes.
“If the Obama administration finds an Israeli government that is bent on preventing a two-state solution, it will inevitably rupture U.S.-Israeli relations.”
Fat chance.
Nothing Israel does short of mass genocide will get even a rebuke from the US. Lets call a spade a spade. The “likudnik” lobby has massive influence on politicians from both parties. No one will challenge AIPAC. The political establishment is dependent on the fund raising ability of this lobby.
It could even be said that US middle east policy is written in Israel. US national interests have a low priority when it comes to middle east policy. This has been the case for many decades. Obama ultimately is a sophisticated politician he is not going to rock the boat.
Nir Rosen- Gaza: The logic of colonial power
This says it all in terms everyone can understand.
The bipartisan foreign policy establishment’s unanimous response to the bombing of Gaza is predictable support and an insistence that Hamas stop rocketing Israeli territory. But no one seems to ask whether this strategy will succeed.
Most of the criticism from progressives is not that Israel doesn’t have the right and responsibility to protect its citizens from rocket attack. The criticism is about tactics and strategy. If killing a lot of people (many of them wholly innocent) is not even going to stop the rockets then why do it?
I understand that American politicians are reluctant to tell Israel that they have no options other than abandoning the settlements, but someone has to do it. Right now, only civilians are willing to state the plain truth.
This is not about stopping the rockets any more than the 2006 33 day battery of Lebanon was about getting back a couple of kidnapped (sic) soldiers. the rockets are a pretext, nothing more.
Look at the targets Israel hit in Lebanon. Example: in case after case they destroyed new, modern wide bridges leaving the nearby parallel old, two-lane bridges completely intact. I saw it with my own eyes. That means there was no military purpose in destroying those bridges. If there had been they would have destroyed both the old and the new to prevent enemy movement. The goal was, as one high level Israeli government official so beautifully clearly put it, to set Lebanon back 30 years – back, in fact, to some of the darkest days of Lebanon’s history.
Look at what Israelis are targeting in Gaza. They are not hitting military targets at all, they are hitting civil infrastructure – police stations, a university, a women’s university dorm, hospitals, mosques, homes, apartment buildings, kindergartens – I have this information directly from my good friend Majdi and other eyewitnesses who are watching the bombing and seeing what is destroyed. And they are doing this all over the Gaza strip, not just in Gaza City.
They are doing just what they did to the PA over a period of months not that many years ago – systematically destroying the physical structures of governance. Their goal when they did that to the PA was to destroy the PA’s ability to govern effectively, and that is what they are doing now to Hamas. As Arthur Gilroy is fond of saying, bet on it.
And by the way, they are not killing Hamas leaders and operatives, they are killing civil servants, school children, teachers, ordinary people in their homes, on the streets, in their office buildings. Yesterday they killed five sisters who were all sleeping in their home. Have you heard them bragging at all about how many Hamas leaders or operatives they have killed? Have you heard them name a single Hamas official they have killed? No? Why not, do you suppose?
Oh yes, and an estimated 10% of the known dead are children. That does not count, of course, the dead whose bodies are buried, perhaps forever, in the rubble of whatever building they had the misfortune of being in.
No, this is not about rockets at all. They could easily have prevented the resumption of rockets by honouring the ceasefire. But they continued day after day to break the ceasefire, killing 20-30 Palestinians within a three week period DURING the ceasefire, while Hamas continued to show restraint. Israelis killed during that period…..exactly zero. In fact, now two Israelis are dead – both killed by Hamas rockets fired since the Israelis began their bombardment. The Israeli government WANTED the rockets. They wanted them so they would have a pretext for what they are doing now, and they kept on escalating their provocations, killing Palestinians until the Palestinians had no choice but to defend themselves. Bet on it.
they want Hamas out of power.
They are willing to destroy all government institutions to further that goal. That’s true.
However, you act as if all Israelis in government are in agreement on some grand conspiracy.
Where did you get that I think all Israelis in government are in agreement on anything? Where did you get that I think all members of ANY government are in agreement on anything?
from your comments which consistently assert that ‘Israel wants’ or that Israel has some masterplan that they are implementing.
Hmmmm. And you never use the term “Israel wants”, “Israel should”, “Hamas wants”, “Hamas should”, “Pakistan wants”, “India wants”, “the U.S. wants”, “Lebanon wants”, “the Palestinians want”, etc.? Come on! I’ll bet, given just a few minutes, I could find tens of examples of you using exactly this kind of phraseology.
I am afraid that an American President would be brought low before the ‘friendship’ ceases.
It doesn’t need to ‘cease’, it needs to change.
Ceasing would be more than OK, although I would settle for removing the qualifier “special” from the relationship.
Can you imagine what would happen to an enemy of the United States if it committed even 1 percent of the crimes and atrocities that Israel commits on a regular basis?
ALI ABUNIMAH: I want to say, Amy, first of all, that we have to go back to the Warsaw Ghetto or Guernica to find crimes in the modern era of the scale of the viciousness and of the deliberateness of what Israel is committing with the full support of the United States, not just the Bush administration, but apparently as well the incoming Obama administration. We have to recognize the complicity not just of the so-called international community, but also of the Arab regimes, Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak, the Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt. Tzipi Livni, when she issued her threats against Gaza, was in Cairo in the biggest Arab capital, and Aboul Gheit stood next to her silently.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/29/israeli_attacks_kill_over_310_in
I heard this, Cee, and was really very disappointed that he seemed to forget all about Falluja. Sorry to say, but even the first American massacre of Falluja makes what is happening so far in Gaza look mild. The second massacre of Falluja was many times worse than the first. They basically laid waste to the city.
I am not trying to minimize what is happening in Gaza, of course, and always appreciate `Ali’s remarks, and Amy’s attention to these issues.
PS And good for `Ali for taking certain Arab – ahem! – “leaders” to task.
“If the Obama administration finds an Israeli government that is bent on preventing a two-state solution, it will inevitably rupture U.S.-Israeli relations.”
The Obama administration won’t dare.
The two-state solution is as dead as Monty Python’s parrot, anyway. The Israeli settlement policy, Palestinian miscalulation, and the Israel-is-always-right policy of US politicians and press killed it.
So what is left?
(1) An Israeli apartheid state and generations of struggle against it.
(2) Another Palestinisn expulsion.
(3) A slow-motion Palestinian expulsion.
(4) A regional nuclear war.
(5) (1) and (3)
(6) (4) followed by (2)
(7) A binational state. This is something entirely different than a discrimination-free Israel.
(8) A panicked flight of a significant part of the Jewish population that leads to (7).
(9) A slow-motion exodus of the Jewish population that leads to (7).
See any other options?
“(3) A slow-motion Palestinian expulsion.“
This is exactly what has been going on since 1967.
“(7) A binational state. This is something entirely different than a discrimination-free Israel.“
This is and has always been the only just solution.
“my suggestion here is based purely on a humanitarian concern for the Palestinians.“
Yeah, right! It is out of deep humanitarian concern that you urge the Palestinians to do exactly what the Israelis have been working toward – abandon their homeland to Israel so that the Israelis can accomplish their dream of Greater Israel.
It is, of COURSE, based purely on a humanitarian concern for the Palestinians that you urge them to abandon their homes and their homeland and flock – where? Oh, yes, to Jordan, the country that right wing Zionists insist IS the Palestinian state. Ah yes, Jordan, a small, poor country with few resources that is currently heavily overburdened with a million or more mostly destitute Iraqi refugees that it really cannot accommodate.
So, these 3.5 million or so Palestinians should just – what? Pack up their belongings and march en masse right straight into Jordan……….and live where? Does Jordan have excess housing sufficient to accommodate 3.5 million suddenly homeless people with no means of supporting themselves? Funny, but the last time I was there I didn’t notice tract after tract of empty houses just waiting to be inhabited. In fact, the place looked pretty packed.
And speaking of means of supporting themselves, I guess Jordan also has a million or so jobs that are unfilled and just waiting for people to rush in and take them? Oddly enough, when I was there earlier this year I heard there was significant unemployment, but that might have changed by now.
And, I guess Jordanian schools must have at least a million and a half empty seats to accommodate a sudden huge influx of school-age children, too.
And I am sure Jordanian doctors will be thrilled to have 3.5 million more patients.
And just what Amman needs is another million cars on the road.
Mattes, where did you see this comment? I would like to give this lying sub-moron a piece of my mind!
Damn…I forgot, let me look.
Sorry. No. The Palestinians should not leave. This is exactly what Israel has always wanted.
Didn’t Herzl say that they needed “Spirit the penniless masses across the border”? Hell no.
Why should the Palestinians give up their claims on their land?
Why should resource poor Egypt or Jordan be overburdened by the influx?
As I pointed out in my rather – ahem – sarcastic comment above, neither Jordan nor Egypt could possibly absorb that many people even if they were financially self-supporting. There is no housing for them, there are no jobs, there are not enough seats or teachers in the schools, the medical system could not accommodate them, even as paying customers. It’s difficult to believe the guy was serious. If he was he has to be one of the five stupidest, non-thinking people on earth.
…and isn’t that what Hitler first said??
Israel and the US have stumbled along this road together since the creation of the Jewish state. However neither entity has any good productive ideas for solving the problem after all this time. Hatred, vengeance and destruction never contribute to any solution, never mind a lasting solution. The first step towards a solution of this conflict is to look at the internal structure of the governing bodies for each of the contending entities. Israel is composed of a vast multicultural society, with the main group, the Jewish population, severely divided by culture, religious definition, age and political ideology. Add to this the differences between the Sephardic and Ashkenazi nationalistic backgrounds. What you have is a fractured splintered rock, far from the solid monolith image in the mind of her enemies.
The closest the Palestinians came to a form of representative government was the Palestinian Authority in the days of Arafat. The Palestinian cause has been used as a convenient rallying cry through out the Arab world to enlist popular support for adversaries fighting over their own local issues.
Hamas initially was composed of Palestinian intellectuals who really came into being to oppose the old PA’s excessive graft and corruption which was depriving the Palestinian people of the money needed to improve their lives. Hamas was good at providing services directly to the people, but they have proven to be poorly trained when it comes to engaging in international diplomacy/politics. The Palestinians have two horrific choices, a backward inward looking Hamas, or a stunted over-corrupt leaderless PA.
Neither Israel nor the Palestinians can produce governments that are sufficiently free of internal conflict enough to contribute to the peace process and the holy grail of the “two state solution”.
The real source of the problem in this land that Israel and Palestine call home is WATER. This is an old long term problem that preceded the founding of the state of Israel. This part of the Middle East is simply drying out, and with an expanding population naturally the fight will continue to be over water. However, both adversaries are fearful of using the word WATER, so they say the fight is over land. The Israelis feel that unrestricted access to water is critical to their survival. Hence their drive to control specific areas in the region. If the Palestinians are in the way, they are simply moved to refugee areas. once the WATER question is settled the rest of the peace process will be easy and forthcoming. Numerous technical ideas have been considered as possible solutions to the water crisis including desalinization, but nothing has been successful this far.
Finally, the recent attacks of Israel on Gaza are simply Israel taking advantage of the American political interregnum. It is not a situation that they do not trust Obama, but is a case of taking advantage of this time when the American government is essentially non-operational. The Bush administration is busy packing their political appointees into high level civil career jobs before the Obama administration comes into office, and this is also true for the State Department. Israel knows this and is choosing this moment to clean Hamas out of Gaza, and they have the next 20 days to complete the job.
Will this fix the problem? No because neither the Jews nor the Palestinians have a solid cohesive internal government to take care of the people’s business. Until the rock of Israel is made whole and the Palestinian people have a leader and a government that will put their welfare and future first there will be no peace.
“Hamas initially was composed of Palestinian intellectuals who really came into being to oppose the old PA’s excessive graft and corruption which was depriving the Palestinian people of the money needed to improve their lives.“
Close, but not exactly accurate. Without going into all the details of Hamas’ genesis, it evolved out of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, whose purpose was to encourage religion among Palestinian society. Opposition to Israel or to the occupation was not one of its functions or purposes. By the early ’70’s Hamas had a charitable and social-welfare organization which ran clinics, schools, and provided food to those who needed it. The Israeli government, run by Yitzhak Shamir, took Hamas under its wing, nurtured it with financial and other support with the idea of developing it as an opposition group in order to weaken the PLO and divide the Palestinians.
Clearly the plan backfired badly.
Oh – I should say that it is in regard to the elections of 2006 that you are right on the money. Hamas won the election exactly as a change from the PA’s corruption, graft, and collaborationism that was always to the detriment of the Palestinian people and their aspirations. Many Christian, secular, and Muslim Palestinians who were by no means Hamas supporters voted for Hamas instead of the corrupt, self-centered Fatah members.
And it was right after the elections that Israel and the United States, assisted by the EU began their collective punishment of the Palestinian people for the crime of choosing the leadership of their choice in free and fair elections – well, as free and fair as any election can be for a population under an oppressive decades-long occupation and colonization by a foreign power.
In addition, Israel apparently panicked and right away arrested tens of Hamas MP’s and other elected government officials for no apparent reason other than the fact that they had been elected, and in this way Israel crippled the Palestinians’ newly-formed government, thus paving the way for everything we have seen since then.
There is no way of knowing for sure whether things would have turned out better had the Palestinians’ democratically elected government been allowed to govern freely, but it seems estremely likely that they would have.
Israeli voters are the problem. IIRC, after the ’67 war the Israeli left wanted to cede the newly-won territories back to Jordan and Egypt, while the Israeli right wanted to annex and resettle it. Neither side had enough support to force their will upon the other so they did what all coalitions do – they compromised. The compromise – occupation – has never worked well throughout human history, but because the left would not give in to the right and the right would not give in to the left they ended up in an untenable situation.
(It should be noted that if Egypt and/or Jordan wanted a Palestinian state created then they could have declared one at any time prior to ’67 – and Ehud Barak futilely offered it up in 2000 – but that’s another discussion for another time.)
What to do?
Nobel Peace Prizes have been awarded to people who obviously didn’t have a clue about how to answer that question so I’m not going to act like I have an answer, but I do know that the “Blame Israel Always” sect isn’t correct either.
the “Blame Israel Always” sect
Not a very numerous sect in the US Congress or media.
Indeed, but they’re ubiquitous on many blogs…
That’s because Americans who have taken the time and effort to education themselves about these issues are not as reflexively pro-Israel as the American political/media establishment
“after the ’67 war the Israeli left wanted to cede the newly-won territories back to Jordan and Egypt, while the Israeli right wanted to annex and resettle it.“
Not quite.
It took years for Israel to finally sign UNSC 242 (which the Arab states involved signed very quickly), which is among other things, Israeli denials to the contrary, about Israel withdrawing from the territories it occupied in the 1967 war, and respect for the territorial integrity of all states in the region (Israel has continued to ignore nearly every provision of 242 even after signing it). Israel’s refusal to sign 242 was neither a compromise, or a pure decision by the right, but was broadly supported.
Immediately upon gaining control of the territory, Israel conducted significant ethnic cleansing of parts of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, making hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into refugees for the second time in less than 20 years (and I am personally acquainted with some of these people, and know their stories in detail). They loaded tens of thousands of people onto trucks, drove them to the bank of the river, dumped them out, and forced them to cross the river into Jordan with whatever they were able to carry with them (there are multiple independent accounts, and there are photographs). Infants, Children, elderly, ill or infirm, and pregnant women were not exempt. There was no clear objection from the left to this ethnic cleansing.
Meanwhile, in Syria, Israel was conducting its most successful ethnic cleansing operation to date in which it successfully ethnically cleansed the Golan Heights of 96% of its Syrian population, and demolished 95% of its villages and towns, along with its farms. A bit later it also cold-bloodedly and systematically razed to the ground the provincial capital city, Quneitra, leaving no structure intact.
Colonization (aka “settlement”) of the occupied territories began almost immediately. This was particularly true in the case of East Jerusalem.
“Neither side had enough support to force their will upon the other so they did what all coalitions do – they compromised….because the left would not give in to the right and the right would not give in to the left they ended up in an untenable situation.“
Not accurate. Colonization of the land by ethnically cleansing where necessary, building colonies (aka settlements) and moving Israeli citizens into them began almost immediately without serious objection from the left. In fact, most of the left was no less enthusiastic about the colonization of East Jerusalem than the right was.
“(It should be noted that if Egypt and/or Jordan wanted a Palestinian state created then they could have declared one at any time prior to ’67“
Not even a little bit accurate. In fact, this is flat-out propaganda. There is not time or bandwidth to go into detail here – this is actually a good subject for a PhD thesis – so I will just have to summarize it by saying that Israel would never, ever have allowed it to happen. The pressures Israel put on both Jordan and Egypt with respect to the Palestinians and the territories under their control are well documented, as is a certain agreement between the Zionists and the Jordanian government. The bottom line is that Israel was determined that there would be no Palestinian state, and that was just not an option open to either Jordan or Egypt.
“and Ehud Barak futilely offered it up in 2000 – but that’s another discussion for another time.“
Oh, puleeeeze! Not the myth of the “generous offer” again. That one has been debunked over and over and over and over again, and still people bring it up as if it were credible. Do I need to go into this in any detail or does everyone know by now that even Israeli officials have admitted that they would not have accepted it had it been offered to them?
“I do know that the “Blame Israel Always” sect isn’t correct either.“
It is not a matter of blame, but of responsibility. Israel has the responsibility to put this right. At the very least Israel has the responsibility to abide by international law and to honour its own agreements. It rarely does either.
“Netanyahu cannot save you. But he can destroy Israel’s relationship with their last, best friend.”
If only that were true. Alas, I think if Israel elected Avigdor Lieberman or the even nuttier (Nazier?) Feiglin, the U.S. establishment would fall into line behind even them.
Changes in middle east policy will only result from changes on the ground in the middle east; changes the nobody in the mainstream blogging community will openly favor. Specifically I mean a nuclear capable Iran, (not necessarily armed) a stronger Hizbollah, a Gaza ceasefire resulting in lifting of the blockade, and a collapse of the puppet regimes of Egypt, Jordan and most especially Saudi Arabia. In addition, a greater roll for America’s strategic competitors (Russia, China)
I’m not predicting those things will happen. (but they might) Only that they will force a huge change in U.S. policy if they do. Until then, no president is going to do a damned thing.
Barack Obama will continue to put Israeli interests over American interests just the way all the other presidents have done. Hopefully he can still prevent human extinction due to climate change.