First things first, the last paragraph of Juan Cole’s article: Abbas Reported to have Withdrawn from Israeli-Palestinian talks; Obama Mideast Policy Sabotaged by Netanyahu.
Much of this has to do with Netanyahu’s insult of Vice President Joe Biden on his visit to Israel, when in succession, Israel announced the planning of 1,600 and then 50,000 new homes in East Jerusalem. For that matter, just before the visit, Ehud Barak had announced the building of 110 new homes in an Iraeli settlement in the West Bank, contrary to the alleged freeze. According to Juan Cole, due to Abbas’ withdrawal from negotiations (now a wavering threat), “Obama’s Mideast policy lies in tatters and US credibility as a broker of any future settlement was deeply wounded.”
Obama is in real danger of seeing his allies lose respect for the United States once they see that Israel can treat him in this humiliating way with impunity. The security implications for the US are enormous. Many European allies feel strongly that Israel is an aggressor state in the region, and when Obama asks them for help in the fight against al-Qaeda, they may feel that Washington’s coddling of Israeli colonialism produced much of the radicalism that they are now asked to spend blood and treasure combating. Moreover, many leaders may be emboldened to treat Obama and Biden just as Netanyahu did, if the latter faces no consequences for his impudence.
(snip)
The argument that Israel is a security asset for the United States is undermined if the Israelis are provoking enmity toward the United States among 1.5 billion Muslims by their inexorable annexation of Palestinian land and daily oppression of the Palestinian people.
Netanyahu reportedly apologized for the timing of the announcement, but not its substance, and apparently the plan to build remains viable. But who doesn’t believe the obvious, that Netanyahu engineered the embarrassment in order to throw another monkey wrench into peace talks. In doing so, he slapped Obama’s face, and the face of its greatest benefactor, the United States.
Israeli colonization of Palestinian territory lies at the heart of the Mideast conflict. It isn’t a complicated issue in the law, since Israel’s actions are clearly illegal and unethical to boot. But might makes right and Israel is the most powerful country in the Middle East, so all the protests on legal and humanitarian grounds have amounted to nothing.
The talks were likely deliberately sabotaged by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had his Interior Minister announce the construction of 1600 new households in Occupied East Jerusalem the day before they were scheduled to begin. In fact, Israel is actively planning 50,000 further housing units on occupied Palestinian territory. US Vice President Joe Biden had come to kick off the process with visits to Netanyahu and Abbas, but he has now been sent home empty-handed by Netanyahu’s sheer effrontery.
Netanyahu’s far rightwing coalition includes many members of the Knesset or Israeli parliament who are bound and determined to colonize every last inch of the Palestinian West Bank and to reduce the Palestinians to landless beggars. Were the prime minister to make too many concessions to the Obama administration, some of them might well pull out of his government, and it could easily fall. Netanyahu is convinced that the Clinton administration undermined him the last time he was prime minister, and he is determined not to allow that to happen again. So acted as though he was complying with US demands for a settlement freeze, but exempted part of Palestinian territory from the freeze. Then shortly before proximity talks were to begin he had his Interior Ministry announce further colonization, knowing that it would complicate or (better) nix the talks. Netanyahu knew that if he was pressed on the announcement, he could get himself off the hook by apologizing for his flat-footed minister’s poor timing. Biden did not buy this lame shadow play and neither will anyone else with any common sense.
And on the matter of Israel being security threat to the United States, Biden agreed:
“This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”
