In the Interests of Israel

Obama is facing criticism not only from Israel.

No, U.S. President Barack Obama did not say that Israel should withdraw to the 1949 line, Israel’s de facto borders ’til 1967, as one might at first suppose considering the flurry. He said what everybody who believes in a two-state solution knows or wants, namely, that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” Obama explicitly excluded Jerusalem by pointing out that this is a question, just like the fate of the Palestinian refugees, to be solved later on.

However, Obama’s speech is not vastly different from former U.S. President Bush’s famous letter to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: The Palestinian refugees have to be settled in a Palestinian state and not in Israel, decided Bush. He was right, but he anticipated a negotiated outcome. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949. Subsequently, the U.S. Congress supported this letter from April 2004: Israel, but also many Americans, see it, therefore, as a binding directive for U.S. policies.

Besides that, any objective observer is compelled to conclude that neither the U.S. president nor the U.S. representatives have the right to give or take away land in another continent, neither to the advantage nor the disadvantage of Israel. For Obama this could become a domestic policy issue, as he is facing problems not only from the Israeli side.

But why does he do anything like that, especially when he does not lay out a plan on how to proceed? Many E.U. countries hoped that Obama would devise the parameters for a new road map, the only way to discourage the Palestinians from pushing through the recognition of their state (based on the 1967 line) in the U.N. General Assembly in September. Obama did not take this step; his was rather a small tactical advance. He tried to balance scolding the Palestinians for trying to isolate Israel in the U.N., anticipating the results of the negotiations by holding onto a non-militarized Palestinian state and frowning rhetorically about the Hamas-Fatah deal, the latter being way too little for Israel.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004,” reported a statement from Jerusalem on Friday. Interesting tone. Certainly, Obama did not say the right things according to Netanyahu, but he also said he’d protect Israel’s interests and “capture” the Palestinians again. Maybe he should just let things happen.