The times they are a changin'. John Judis has written a piece I'd never thought I'd read at TNR. It's an elegant, factual, calm dismemberment of where the Obama administration has ended up on Israel-Palestine: on AIPAC's extendable leash, wagging its tail for a treat. On the pure principles of UN recognition of a Palestinian state, John shows exactly how American politics has been slowly but fatally corrupted by the Greater Israel lobby in recent years with respect to Middle East policy. One logical stiletto:
The United States, it is said, should not assist Palestinians in gaining membership at the UN because some Palestinians still don’t recognize the right of Israel to exist. But guess what? In 1947, there were Zionists identified with the Revisionist movement (parts of which later came together to create Likud) who denied the right of Palestinians to a state. They wanted all of Palestine and even Jordan for a Jewish state; and some of them were willing to use terror and assassination to achieve their ends. And there are still many Israelis who deny the right of Palestinians to a state. That didn’t preclude our helping Palestine’s Jews achieve statehood through the UN, and it shouldn’t impede our helping the Palestinians.
Precisely. More to the point, the Greater Israel lobby has actively damaged the interests of the United States on behalf of the illegal policies of a radical religious right government of a foreign country:
America’s standing in the world could only have been improved by being on the side of a Palestinian state. It would have removed an important talking point for Islamic radicals; it would have allied the United States with the reform forces of the Arab Spring, who, as has become clear in Egypt, are very critical of the continued Israeli occupation. American support could also have helped forestall the sort of explosive reaction among Arab publics that might follow rejection of the Palestinian bid in the Security Council. And backing Palestinian statehood would have put the United States in a position to work constructively with European and Middle Eastern countries, many of whom are hoping to see an end to the century-long standoff in Palestine and now Israel. Instead, Obama’s stand has made the United States an outlier in the region. We are identified not so much with Israel (which we have rightly defended against attack from other states), but with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and with the expansionist ambitions of the Israeli rightwing.
The explanation for the humiliation of Obama at the UN, where he gave the kind of speech a junior congressman might give at an AIPAC break-out session, is pretty simple. Obama was checkmated. Netanyahu and the GOP recognized immediately that the Cairo speech could have opened up a whole new chapter in America's relationship with the Arab and further Muslim world. And so they, in active collaboration, did all they could to stop it in its tracks. They succeeded in handing Obama the clearest defeat of his first term.
The Obama goal was simple: win back global soft power in the war against Jihadist terrorism by demonstrating even-handedness again with the Israelis and Palestinians; use hard power much more effectively by lethally targeting al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The latter has been a big success. The former a major failure – fundamentally caused, as Judis beautifully explains, by Netanyahu's adamant resistance to any serious attempt at a two-state solution on 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, the only formula with any chance of success.
Many of us who supported Obama partly on his potential to transform America's Muslim relations, especially in the wake of the extraordinary Arab Spring, have been crushed and angered. But the anger has by now led to total resignation. I mean: what, in the end, was Obama supposed to do? Many of the chieftains in his own own party – Reid, Hoyer, et al. – are more loyal to the Israeli prime minister and their core donors than to their own president. The GOP is even worse: actively going to Israel and colluding with the Likud against the US administration to enable more and more illegal settlements on the West Bank. AIPAC's roll-call at its last conference revealed a veto-proof majority of Congress. Veto-proof. I doubt that was a message designed to be buried.
So any genuine attempt to put any serious pressure on Netanyahu would be immediately undercut by the Hill. So would have recognizing the Palestinian state at the UN. If Obama had followed through, the Congress would have responded by cutting off aid to the Palestinians, backing Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank, and would reveal triumphantly that even a president who has done as much for Israel as Obama (bunker-busting bomb sales, rescuing embassy staff in Cairo spring immediately to mind) cannot break out of the constraints any president is under when tackling this subject.
In that sense, I believe the pro-Greater Israel skeptics of the sincerity of Obama's UN speech are largely right. Obama simply has run out of options. So he has cut his losses and capitulated – what any serious leader does when he recognizes the forces against him are so massive there's no hope but to wait for a recapitalization after another election victory. Meanwhile, Netanyahu remains in Israel an extension of the GOP at home – and more secure than ever because the GOP has adopted wholesale the Christianist support for Greater Israel on theological grounds. What is at stake is nothing less than America's global credibility as a power able to act in its own interests, outside the demands of religious fundamentalists and Democratic donors. That has now been revealed, when it comes to Israel, as essentially impossible.
We had a window. It's important to remember who shut it, and tried to lock it tight.
The Dish 