Obama and the Nonexistent Peace

Can the small peace agreement between Obama and Netanyahu now be made into the great peace that Israelis and Palestinians have been seeking in vain for 20 years? If the answer to this question depends to some extent on the U.S. president’s visit to Israel, the response will be devastating. What Obama has vaguely outlined is not a process of mutual concessions to allow the parties to move closer together after years of non-communication, but rather a series of one-sided renunciations by the Palestinians and most of the Arab countries in general, who are still enemies of Israel.

The first condition imposed on the Palestinians is that they renounce negotiations on the settlement freeze. This stance represents a dramatic reversal on the part of Obama, who in 2009, shortly after being elected for the first time, asked and obtained from Netanyahu a ten-month suspension of all construction activity in the Palestinian Territories. After agreeing, Netanyahu made it known to the settlers allied to his government that it was a one-off gesture that would never, ever be repeated. And he has maintained this pledge. Obama’s reversal is therefore a setback for the Palestinians and a victory for the Israeli right.

So how do we get out of this? Honestly, I don’t know. Obama doesn’t deny that the colonization of the territories is a problem (“We do not consider continued settlement activity to be constructive,” he said, blandly, “… to be something that can advance the cause of peace”), but this is not what we should discuss now — instead we must go further. The two central issues, the two fundamental parameters of the non-existent negotiations are, said Obama, the sovereignty of the (future) state of Palestine and the security of Israel. This means that “if we solve those two problems, the settlement issue will be resolved.” Meanwhile, the settlers can safely continue to build where they want — in Jerusalem, the West Bank, everywhere. If this land comes from the Palestinians there won’t remain much for their state. Patience …

But if the two-state proposal proves impractical, you might ask a fool in good faith, perhaps we will return to the idea of a bi-national state? No! Not even this idea — which for the Israeli left and right is like pulling wool over their eyes — would work. On this point Obama has been, if possible, even more explicit. “Palestinians,” he said, “must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.” This represents a further concession to the Israeli right. Accepting the definition of Israel as a Jewish state implies that the Palestinians will have to either resign themselves to living as a marginalized minority dominated by the Jewish majority or begin to pack their bags and go elsewhere, as former foreign minister Lieberman and the new hero of religious nationalism, Naftali Bennett, would like.

Israeli public opinion, especially from those on the right, at this point the majority, is positive in the face of Obama’s new, unpredictable, even contradictory philosophy. But if you look at the regional landscape, it’s difficult to escape the impression that the U.S. is caught in a vice. No one can think, in fact, that the Arab-Israeli conflict, 64 years after the first war, has become an irrelevant theme in this narrative, as well as in the political lives of Arab countries. It has been, and remains, a central issue with profound political, economic and emotional implications.

Giving up the part of the “honest broker,” the just mediator, that Washington has historically played between the combatants, will be seen by the Arab public as further evidence that what really matters for the U.S. is the protection of its own interests and those of Israel, not the Palestinians. Nor will the U.S. accommodate the pressure for freedom produced by the Arab Spring: If achieving its objectives serves Mubarak’s cause, then good for Mubarak. The same goes for Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, if it achieves the same result.

But, because we are in the Middle East, because the revolutionary wave raised in the winter of 2011 is not at all exhausted, letting the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians rot or be re-sized as a minor issue, a matter of public policy, may be a serious error of judgment.

Now, it’s not that Obama doesn’t have a plan to revive the peace process and isn’t trying to diffuse this time bomb. After Obama leaves for Washington, Secretary of State Kerry will remain in the region to try to pick up the pieces. The magic formula is represented in the Saudi peace proposal that, in exchange for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 boundaries and a “fair” solution for the refugee question, promises recognition of Israel by all Arab countries still formally at war with the Jewish state. It’s not a new proposition. It was announced in Beirut in February 2002, during a summit of the Arab League in the Lebanese capital. From time to time, in recent years, it has been alternately exhumed and set aside, but without success. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that the new attempt to revive the Saudi plan is the work of Shimon Peres, a former supporter of the proposal. But I can’t say for certain. Sure, it’s strange that Obama has ventured to say that “now is the time for the Arab World to take steps toward normalized relations with Israel.” But who loses if no one makes the first move?