Barack Obama, Israel, And Palestine

During his ultimately victorious campaign, Barack Obama had planned for the Near and Middle East a list of priorities that did not necessarily include the Palestinian question. His short-term projects were focused on a return to order in Iraq and tentatively opening dialogue with Iran, with the goal of preventing them from obtaining nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama certainly did not think he would have to consider Gaza and its inhabitants so quickly.

In this matter, there is much uncertainty about what he means to do or not do. Except for his speech about the indivisibility of Jerusalem before the annual assembly of the pro-Israel lobbying group, AIPAC, in June 2008, Obama as a candidate never directly spoke on the subject during the three televised presidential debates during the campaign. He has also stayed mostly silent since the beginning of the Israeli offensive, only repeating what we already know: that he will maintain the unique relationship between the United States and Israel, reaffirm the necessity of the security of the Jewish state, and also place importance on the necessity of a Palestinian state within the framework of a negotiated settlement.

Apart from his commitment to invest himself “from the very first months” in the peace processes which are now stalled by the upcoming February 10th Israeli elections, it is hard to say which directive he will take. The post of special envoy to the region, which was cut by George Bush, is in the process of being recreated, but to pursue what policy?

The remarks made by Obama’s envoys in various situations leave many possibilities open: a moderate approach to the impasse (justified by the absence of charismatic leaders in Israel who are ready to pay the price for peace and by the rupture in the Palestinian camp between Fatah and Hamas), or a constructive approach based upon a solid corpus of already published texts (the Clinton “parameters” of December 1999, the “road map” of June 2003, the Arab Initiative of February 2002 and revised in March 2007).

These texts became classics, permitting one to foresee the terms of an eventual settlement over what is essentially a territorial conflict. Between a pro-Israel think-tank such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who favors the sanctuary of the West Bank against Hamas through increased cooperation between Palestinian security services and the Israeli army, and the Saban Center of the Brookings Institution that holds the opposite illusion of the rehabilitation of Hamas and advocates their reinsertion into the Palestinian government, there are a large number of options open to the new president.

The context here seems to be unmistakably in favor of the idea of limited engagement. According to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Israeli offensive against Gaza could perhaps have a secondary objective: to dissuade the new White House occupant against tackling the issue head-on.

In Israel, the leader of the Likud party, Benyamin Netanyahu, speaks openly in favor of an interlude in the political process. The former prime minster advocates “an economic peace” which he says will reduce tensions and allow Israel to avoid delicate subjects like the fate of Jerusalem, the fate of the Palestinian refugees, and the settling of borders. His adversary, Tzipi Livni, who heads up the centrist Kadima party, freely dissuades the United States from mixing itself up in an asymmetric dialogue with the Palestinians.

Rhetoric and Reality

The break from the status quo is also causing problems for Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, which has been weakened by the operation against Gaza, and which braces itself against every revision of its relations with Hamas.

As a leading economic partner of Israel and major donor to the Palestinian Authority, the European Union does not seem disposed to such a review of the Palestinian issue and the ensuing repercussions on its relationship with Israel.

If Barak Obama makes the choice of a minimal engagement (former envoy Dennis Ross pointedly summarized it as “motion without movement”), the rather homogeneous camp consisting of Israel, the United States, and the European Union together would exemplify anew the expression that former Israeli minister Abbas Ebann used about the Palestinians when he said, “they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

These opportunities have not yet been completely missed in the heat of the last few years. Following the election of Mahmoud Abbas as the head of the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon preferred negotiations over a tactical retreat from Gaza that today limits the Israelis. Later, neither the inter-Palestinian accord at Mecca in 2007 nor the revival of the Arab Initiative that same year in Riyad (settled in the presence of Hamas and guaranteeing normalization of relations with the Arab world in return for an Israeli retreat to the 1967 borders) has been seized by the West or by Israel.

Former advisors to Bill Clinton during the Oslo process, such as Robert Malley, head of the Middle East department of the International Crisis Group, who now see their former colleagues returning to the White house, openly question their ability to recognize the changes that have happened since their last go round. They also question this group’s ability to recognize the lessons learned from the failures of Oslo and their relation to the Annapolis talks, launched in accelerated form in 2007 by a Bush administration that had already run its course.

The principal failure of Oslo has been identified: it is the difference between rhetoric and the reality on the ground. The West’s strategy vis-à-vis the Palestinian territories was reduce it for the time being to a confrontational approach: to make the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank the “testing ground” for an eventual Palestinian state and hasten the downfall of Hamas in Gaza. Because of the Muslims’ capacity to maneuver in their reduced space and despite the Israeli bombardment, this approach is not guaranteed to succeed.