NETANYAHU Takes on The World

If you were to ask Israel’s pugnacious Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, off the record, what policy he thought Washington should pursue in the Middle East, he might very well tell you that it should be whatever he tells Washington it should be. If he did actually say that out loud, rather than just thinking it, it would be hard for him to get anyone else to agree, least of all representatives of the out-going administration of US President Barack Obama.

Though non-binding under the UN Charter and although its passage imposes no sanctions as such on Israel, the resolution’s wording and its condemnation of that country’s illegal settlement activities are the most specifically critical for the past three and a half decades. The US didn’t vote in favor of Resolution 2334, which passed two days before Christmas, but it didn’t vote against it either. It abstained. And accustomed as the Israeli government is to knee-jerk favorable reactions by Washington to its stances, this infuriated Netanyahu who would have expected the Obama administration to not only vote against the resolution, but also to use its UN Security Council permanent member veto power to prevent its passage.    The last few weeks of President Obama’s final term in office have carried the mood of bilateral relations between the US and Israel to a new low. The latest rift is over passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 by a vote of 14 to zero. This resolution concerns occupation by Israel since 1967 of Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem. It specifically underscores Israel’s definition under the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention as “an occupying power” in the disputed Palestinian lands and affirms that, as such, the Jewish State’s practice of building Israeli settlements in those areas is not merely controversial and provocative but, “a flagrant violation of international law” with “no legal validity.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry made that clear this past week when he gave what will surely be one of his last major policy speeches, in which he took Netanyahu to task, foregoing the usual restraint that Washington generally lavishes in public on its top Middle East ally. Kerry went as far as to suggest that Netanyahu was sabotaging any hope of a peace agreement with the Palestinians. He mentioned the Obama administration’s decision not to block the UN vote condemning Israel, claiming that it had been the US intention to virtually save Israel from itself, to keep it from being led on an erroneous path by “the most extreme elements” in its government.But Obama can hardly be held accountable for this new low in his country’s relationship with Israel. Throughout his eight years as president, the US leader has been trying to send a message to Israel’s staunchly right-wing leadership that current US policy in that country would hinge on achievement of a durable peace agreement between the Jewish State and the Palestinian people, and that the only way for there to be lasting peace would be through an eventual two-state solution to long years of enmity between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. From the outset, the US president made it clear to Netanyahu that this would be a major priority for his administration and that he would be expecting the Israeli prime minister to cooperate in achieving such an agreement if he expected US backing to continue to be unconditional. That message apparently fell on deaf ears. And US action (or lack thereof) regarding UN Resolution 2334 is the most palpable consequence of Netanyahu’s obstinacy.

Kerry suggested that Netanyahu’s administration was maintaining a long-held impasse regarding a two-state solution, adding that, “The status quo is leading toward one state and perpetual occupation.” In reaction to a sarcastic comment in which Netanyahu had earlier said “Friends don’t take friends to the Security Council,” Kerry responded, “Some seem to believe that US friendship means the US must accept any policy, regardless of our own interests, our own positions, our own words, our own principles—even after urging again and again that the policy must change. Friends need to tell each other the hard truths, and friendships require mutual respect.”

Secretary Kerry’s impatience with Netanyahu and, indeed, with the Palestinian Authority’s mutual lack of cooperation in laying the groundwork for a lasting two-state solution to their decades-old conflict is not hard to understand. On taking over the State Department from Hillary Clinton in 2013, Kerry made getting the two sides to the negotiating table a major priority, despite the fact that neither Clinton nor Obama had previously seemed willing to dive head-first into that particular Middle East quagmire. They may well have thought—perhaps rightfully so—that there was too much to lose politically by pressuring their recalcitrant but primary regional ally at the risk of undermining bilateral relations in the midst of rampant Middle East instability.

But Kerry seemed confident that if he could once get negotiations started, he could encourage the two sides to reach a “final status” end to their conflict by the middle of the following year. Though that would surely have been a stellar achievement of the Obama era, it unfortunately never happened. In fact, by mid-2014, Israel and the Hamas Palestinian terrorist organization were embroiled in some of the worst fighting for years between Palestinian fighters and Israeli troops, which led to Israel’s controversial shelling and invasion of the of Gaza, which suffered massive destruction and the deaths of 1,492 civilians (among them 551 children and 299 women), as well as the loss of a quarter of all Gaza City homes and the displacement of a quarter-million people.

The shared view of the Obama administration and US allies in Europe has been that Israel’s unrelenting pursuit of its settlements policy has been an effort to change “facts on the ground” in such a way as to be able in any eventual negotiations to object to trading away areas “where Israelis make their homes.” And as such, it is clearly a ruse to deal from a position of even greater strength than Israel is already afforded by clearly being the most highly protected US ally on earth, when and if the time ever comes for a two-state agreement—to which Netanyahu pays lip service but little else.Despite repeated attempts to bring the two sides together in some sort of meaningful negotiations, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu stonewalled, mutually blaming one another for the lack of progress, each saying that the other was taking actions that made the negotiation process impossible. But while Kerry seems to have anticipated the need to overcome Palestinian resistance to meaningful and productive negotiations, he has been increasingly less forgiving of Netanyahu, especially with regard to his continuing promotion of expanded Israeli settlements in disputed territories.

In effect, it has been Prime Minister Netanyahu’s staunch resistance to the Israel-Palestine Peace Process that has determined this latest toughening of the American stance. And it appears evident that the Obama administration, which fears reversals in the peace process under the current president’s successor over the next four years, wanted to take action that would make its point clear before leaving office.

Netanyahu’s comment after Kerry’s policy address to the effect that Israel “didn’t need to be lectured” by the US secretary of state, was an arrogant rebuke by the prime minister of a country that, indeed, depends entirely on the United States for its survival, surrounded, as it is in the Middle East by a veritable sea of enemies. What the Obama administration has been asking for is the same kind of unconditional demonstration of solidarity from Israel that the US has shown toward that country since its inception. And in this sense, Obama’s administration has been no less the principal ally of Israel than any presidency that preceded it, having provided sometimes unprecedented military and financial aid to the Jewish State throughout the president’s eight years in office and moving to ensure it of 38 billion dollars in fresh aid over the next ten years. It seems little to ask in return that Israel take the lead in becoming part of a two-state path to bilateral peace between it and a future Palestinian state instead of being a very major part of the problem.

To date, there has been a plethora of US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian accords and memoranda designed to usher in a final peace process capable of providing for a lasting solution to the conflict: From the Camp David Accords in 1978 to the Oslo Accords, Hebron Protocol, Wye River Memorandum and Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum in the 1990s, to the Camp David Summit in 2000, and on to the Taba Summit, the Annapolis Summit and the George Mitchell and John Kerry-led talks from 2001 to the present, there is little left to be said on what needs to be done. It is time for both sides to sit at the negotiating table in a spirit of peace, understanding and cooperation until they have hammered out what must finally be the affirmation of the sovereignty of two nations.

The principles set by the current, outgoing US administration form a simple path to peace: recognition by the Palestinian authorities of Israel’s right to exist; the creation of a state for the Palestinian people and a fair and viable solution to the Palestinian refugee situation, which dates back to the expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, when the Jewish State was formed; a secure and recognized contiguous border between Israel and a viable Palestine, with Israel agreeing to leave territory that it has illegally occupied since 1967, but “with land swaps that reflect practical realities on the ground,” the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital for both states, considering the significance of that ancient city for the two peoples.

This can only be achieved by means of Palestinian and Israeli authorities putting aside their long-standing feud and coming to terms with a viable peace process. If this cannot be achieved by civilized means, then it is hard to see how the future can hold anything for Israel and the disinherited Palestinian people but a life of endless war and insecurity.