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Twelve ways the US administration has failed its ally Israel n
Times of Israel | June 4, 2014 | David Horovitz
Mere hours after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
swore in a government backed by the Islamic extremist Hamas group, the US State
Department legitimized the arrangement, declaring that it would work with the
new government because it “does not include members affiliated with Hamas.”
What was saddest about Washington’s insistence on accepting
Abbas’s paper-thin veneer over his government’s new nature — his “technocrat”
ministers were all approved by Hamas — is that it represents only the Obama
administration’s latest abrogation of leadership, logic and leverage at
Israel’s expense. Rather than rushing to embrace a Palestinian government in
which an unreformed Hamas is a central component, what was to stop the US
conditioning its acceptance on a reform of Hamas? What was to stop Washington
saying that it would be happy to work with Abbas’s new government, the moment
its Hamas backers recognized Israel, accepted previous agreements and renounced
terrorism? Not a particularly high bar. What was to stop the US making such a
demand, one of tremendous importance to its ally Israel? Only its
incomprehensible reluctance to do.
Unfortunately, however, such lapses and failures are not the
exception when it comes to the US-Israel alliance of late. This administration
has worked closely with Israel in ensuring the Jewish state maintains its vital
military advantage in this treacherous neighborhood, partnering Israel in
offensive and defensive initiatives, notably including missile defense. It has
stood by Israel at diplomatic moments of truth. It has broadly demonstrated its
friendship, as would be expected given America’s interest in promoting the
well-being of the region’s sole, stable, dependable democracy. But the dash to
recognize the Fatah-Hamas government was one more in a series of aberrations —
words and deeds that would have been far better left unsaid or undone,
misconceived strategies, minor betrayals.
1. So, yes, where Hamas is concerned, you’d think that an ally
would not legitimize, as part of the Palestinian government, an organization
bent on the destruction of Israel, an organization declaredly refusing to
change that goal, an organization with a proven, mass-murdering track-record.
2. Going back to the start of the latest failed peace effort,
you’d think an ally would listen to the advice of well-meaning experts warning
that attempting to do the same thing that failed in the past in the belief that
it will turn out differently — in this case, strong-arming two hostile,
untrusting parties into an acutely sensitive and complex agreement in a very
short period — is the definition of insanity. Rather than setting an impossible
nine-month timeframe for negotiating a permanent accord, when all reasonable
evidence and past experience showed that this would fail, it would have been
better for the US and its international allies to start working systematically,
investing time, money and leverage in, among other spheres, education and
media, in order to create a climate conducive to progress. Peacemaking is going
to require a gradual process, grass-roots change; there is no quick fix. Every
credible, peace-supporting voice on the ground here told the Americans exactly
this before they set out. And was ignored. And now we all have to brace for the
dangerous consequences of the all-too-predictable failure.
3. While we’re talking about producing a more conducive climate,
you’d think an ally would use its regional clout and leverage to work with
partners in the region to rehouse Palestinian refugees, first of all in Gaza,
where there is no Israeli military or civilian presence and no reason for the
festering wound to be artificially maintained. This is humanitarian work of the
highest order, to which no organization or individual genuinely committed to
the well-being of the Palestinian people could object. It would be opposed only
by those whose ostensible sympathy for the Palestinian plight is outweighed by
their hostility to Israel.
4. You’d think an ally would have made plain to the Palestinians
that their demand, as a precondition for renewing peace talks, that Israel set
free terrorists who have killed large numbers of its innocent citizens was
outrageous and unacceptable, certainly at the outset of negotiations. Perhaps
such prisoner releases might have some justification as the concluding act of a
successful process. By contrast, freezing the expansion of settlements in areas
that Israel does not envisage retaining under a permanent accord is a win-win —
beginning the needed process of spelling out to Israelis, to the region and to
the international community Israel’s vital territorial red lines. But this, the
Americans did not demand. In short, a smart and firm ally would have rejected
Abbas’s demand for killers to go free rather than pressing Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu to accept it, and insisted on at least a partial settlement
freeze. Think you need to save us from ourselves? That’s the place to start.
5. Elaborating, you’d think an ally would want to distinguish
between isolated settlements in the heart of Palestinian territory and Jewish
neighborhoods in Jerusalem. By lumping all “settlements” together, and
relentlessly criticizing all building, you alienate the Israeli middle ground,
which supports the retention of Jewish neighborhoods built over the pre-1967
lines in Jerusalem, on the one hand, and would relinquish most West Bank
settlements in the cause of a viable peace treaty, on the other. So the lack of
subtlety and nuance on the settlement issue winds up complicating America’s own
efforts to broker progress.
6. Trapped in the inevitable deadlock, with that nine-month
deadline fast approaching, you would think that an allied president
would eschew giving an
interview to the American media essentially accusing the prime minister of
leading Israel to disaster at the very hour that said prime
minister was on his way to a meeting at the White House. For one thing,
such withering public comments are hardly likely to bolster the prime
minister’s faith in the president’s judgment and solidarity — and thus are
likely to undermine efforts to build his trust. For another, it’s downright
rude.
7. And when it all went conclusively pear-shaped, you’d think an
ally would respect its own rules about not leaking the content of the
negotiations. Secretary of State John Kerry repeatedly urged the two sides to
keep the content of their talks confidential, yet it was his own special envoy,
Martin Indyk, reportedly, who gave a lengthy briefing to Israeli journalist
Nahum Barnea, a respected columnist but one who is hardly empathetic to
Netanyahu, which yielded an article that unsurprisingly placed overwhelming and
at least somewhat unwarranted and distorted blame for the collapse of the
process on the prime minister.
8. You’d think an ally would man up about its own dismal role in
the frictions and misunderstandings that doomed the talks at the end of March.
“The prisoners were not released by Israel on the day they were supposed to be
released, and then another day passed and another day, and then 700 units were approved
in Jerusalem and then poof — that was sort of the moment,” Kerry told the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in early April, by way of explanation for
the impasse. Actually, “the prisoners were not released on the day they were
supposed to be released” because Israel opposed freeing Arab Israeli convicts,
whose fate it reasonably considered not to be any of the Palestinian
Authority’s business. That issue only became problematic because Kerry had
earlier misled the Palestinians into thinking that Israel was prepared to set
them free. Furthermore, the announcement of the reissuing of an old tender to
build 700 homes in Gilo was not a critical factor in the collapse — “poof” — of
the talks.
9. No matter how frustrated or defensive Kerry might have been
feeling, you’d think a friend of Israel would know better than to lob the toxic
term “apartheid” into the public debate over Israel’s future. Israel’s
embattled democracy provides equal rights for its 25 percent non-Jewish
minority, who enjoy freedom of religion, assembly and press. Arabic is an
official language in this country. An Israeli Arab judge sent our president to
jail. That’s only part of the story, of course: Ruling another people is already
deeply corrosive; if we cannot separate from the Palestinians, if we annex the
West Bank, still graver dangers await. Warning Israel privately of the threats
posed to our democracy is the duty of a concerned friend. But publicly invoking
the spectacularly loaded term “apartheid” in critiquing Israel is the lowest of
blows — a gift to enemies who can be counted on to seize upon such
comments to distort Israel’s reality and delegtimize its very existence.
10. Further afield, you’d think an ally would maintain an empathetic
silence rather than repeatedly tell the world that Israel has struck weapons
shipments in Syria en route to Hezbollah. This when Israel
was deliberately avoiding acknowledging responsibility for such actions
because of concern that President Bashar Assad would be provoked into
counterattacks at Israel.
11. To the south, you’d think an ally would avoid rushing to
support Islamic extremists (see a pattern here?) when they come to power in a
neighboring state. The fact that the Israel-Egypt peace treaty survived the
Muslim Brotherhood’s brief period of misrule in Cairo is a critical and
inadequately appreciated success, achieved despite Washington’s
foolish embrace of the short-lived Morsi government.
12. And finally, you’d think a powerful ally would insist that a
state that calls for, and works toward, the destruction of Israel be denied the
capacity to achieve that goal. There is simply no justification for allowing
Tehran a uranium enrichment capability. It lied to the international community
about its nuclear program. It built secret facilities to advance towards the
bomb. It has no “right” to enrichment. It can receive nuclear fuel, like well
over a dozen nations worldwide, from legitimate nuclear powers for its
ostensibly peaceful nuclear program. The central goal of US policy in this
regard should not be merely denying Iran nuclear weapons but denying Iran the capacity
to build nuclear weapons. Iran can be relied upon to abuse any
leniency in this regard, with immense consequent threat to Israel and others in
the region. The Obama administration’s curious disinclination to use its
economic leverage to achieve a deal that dismantles Iran’s nuclear program
leaves Israel in real danger, undermines the security of other US interests in
the region, and risks sparking a Middle East nuclear arms race — the very
opposite of the president’s cherished vision of eventual nuclear disarmament.
You might think the above list is the least that Israel might
reasonably expect from the US administration. But no. The peace process has
collapsed and Israel is getting a disproportionate amount of the blame. Hamas,
committed under its own charter to the obliteration of Israel, is now part of
an internationally recognized Palestinian government. And the P5+1 nations, led
by the US, are working toward a deal that will enshrine Iran’s uranium
enrichment capabilities. Israel may not be a perfect ally, but we deserve
better than this.
[David Horovitz is
[David Horovitz is
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