You’ve been at the forefront of American Jewish criticism of President Obama’s renewed push for Israeli-Arab peace. After a recent meeting with the President along with 15 other Jewish leaders, you confessed that you continue “to feel uncomfortable with the assumptions that underlie President Obama’s approach” to Israel and the Middle East. 

You’ve charged that President Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world is being conducted “at Israel’s expense.” For Obama, you say, “there is a need for the US to demonstrate that it can be tough with Israel to win back credibility with Muslims. We are seeing it already on the settlement issue…”

But being tough on Netanyahu about settlements is not at “Israel’s expense.” It is a blessing to Israel, given the grave threat which many Israeli military and political leaders have said the settlements pose to Israel’s security, to the very possibility of a two-state solution to its conflict with the Palestinians, and to Israel’s ability to remain a democratic Jewish state.   For the last eight years, we’ve had a president who recklessly squandered American prestige.   He had no credibility to broker an Israeli-Arab accommodation.   He made little more than token efforts to do so, when not trumpeting his outright opposition to negotiations with Syria, despite the unanimous advice of Israel’s intelligence and military brass, and its political leadership.  An American president who has regained the confidence of the Arab and Muslim worlds is quite simply a strategic asset to Israel.   American pressure over settlements is an investment in Israel’s future, a gift to the Zionist project.

Nor does pressure need to be applied simultaneously and in equal doses to satisfy some artificial notion of even-handedness.   As Larry Derfner points out in the Jerusalem Post, “The Palestinian Authority has been cracking down on Hamas for a long while, it kept the West Bank miraculously quiet during Operation Cast Lead, it’s enforcing the law in city after city… If the PA wasn’t giving us peace and we were giving it land – we’d be right to demand that Obama put all the pressure on the Palestinians and none on us.  But the fact is that Abbas and the PA are giving us about as much peace as they’re capable of, while we aren’t planning on giving them an inch; instead, we’re thinking only about how much more conquered land Obama will let us build on.”

You’ve said that President Obama’s “notion that we have to pressure Israel to show our bona fides to the Arabs is to buy into their distorted version of history.”   You’ve accused the president of ignoring the history of Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.   But such criticisms stand reality on its head. Obama understands all too well why past peace efforts have failed.  His new way is designed to overcome the errors and missteps of the past.  By adopting a regional approach, he is more likely to gain wide Arab backing for historic Palestinian compromises on Jerusalem and refugees, issues which resonate throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.   By enlisting the help of Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, he stands a better chance of bringing about a unified Fatah-Hamas Palestinian government that will hew to the international and Arab consensus:  a government that will have both the will and the wherewithal to honor its commitments under a peace accord with Israel.

Obama recognizes that the US cannot help forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians while allowing Syria and Iran to continue to stoke Hezbollah and Hamas extremism. While Bush added fuel to the fires of Arab and Muslim radicalism, Obama is cutting off their oxygen supply, sapping Hezbollah’s political power and reinforcing the impetus towards pragmatism in Hamas.  Obama is finally ending the practice, perfected under Bush, of saying one thing–whether about settlements or the president’s commitment to help negotiate an accord–and then doing something else. 

You hold up President Bush’s “enunciation of the need for a Palestinian state, the road map, Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and the Annapolis process in 2007” as having “provided opportunities for progress toward peace if the Palestinians were truly interested.”  You highlight what “Israel has done in recent years to advance peace:  Israel’s offer of a Palestinian state at Camp David in 2000, its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, also in 2000, and its disengagement from Gaza were all steps upon which there could have been building toward peace.”  Instead, you conclude, “the Palestinians responded with rejection, suicide bombs and kidnappings, extremist politics and rockets.”

But this Manichean narrative of righteous Israelis and evil Palestinians – the stock-in-trade of right-wing hasbarah – is a cartoon version of what went wrong, ignoring true causes and effects. Annapolis did not fail because the Palestinians refused to accept another “generous Israeli offer,” but because President Bush did nothing to help the parties bridge the gaps, failing to apply diplomatic tools to encourage their agreement to a US-proposed compromise, as President Carter successfully did with Egypt and Israel.   Similarly, Bush did nothing to hold either party accountable for their commitments under the Road Map, even after promising to “ride herd” on both as he left the company of Sharon and Abbas at Aqaba.

The Road Map and Annapolis were built not only on the wobbly foundation of isolating and excluding Hamas and Gaza, but on an unrealistic, and ultimately failed, American-Israeli bid to topple Hamas by besieging Gaza and its entire population.   This siege, more than anything else, coupled with the lack of real progress on the ground in the West Bank–and not Israeli “concessions”–were responsible for the attacks which Israel has endured on its southern communities.   Had Sharon truly wanted to promote peace by withdrawing from Gaza, rather than to simply cut Israeli losses and bury any serious peace plan in “formaldehyde”–as his chief aide Dov Weissglas put it–he would have withdrawn Israeli troops and settlers from the Strip as part of an agreement with Abbas, rather than unilaterally.  In this way, he would have enabled the PA and Fatah moderates to take credit for a diplomatic achievement, rather than allowing Hamas to gain bragging rights before the Palestinian public that Israel had been pushed from Gaza only by its “resistance”–much as Hezbollah did with its Lebanese audience when Barak unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon.

By the same token, Barak’s move was largely motivated by Israel’s need to cut its ongoing losses from guerrilla attacks while Israeli troops remained entrenched in Lebanese territory.   It was a gift to Hezbollah, not a step towards peace, after Barak had walked away from a potential peace treaty with Syria, an act of political cowardice for which President Clinton and his chief Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, have criticized him harshly.   Barak balked on a Syrian-Israeli deal after Assad had committed to the US that under a land-for-peace bargain, Syria would insure that Hezbollah, its client, would be reined in, according to Ross.

You claim that the Arab world wasn’t ready to reach an agreement with Israel when Carter and Brzezinski were in the White House, and that the same is true now–as if nothing has changed in thirty years and there were no Arab peace initiative offering Israel recognition, normal ties and peace with the entire Arab world today; as if the rise of Iran were not providing powerful new incentives for the Sunni Arab states to end the conflict and form a close alliance with Israel and the US.

Nothing’s changed?   Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Meshal has recently said that his group would not stand in the way of a peace deal between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel.  Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin told the Israeli government that “Hamas rhetoric has changed in recent weeks. ‘Public statements by leaders attest to efforts by Hamas to appear interested in ending the conflict with Israel, based on the model of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in exchange for a long-term hudnah'” or truce–until Netanyahu silenced him.  Netanyahu’s spokespeople claim that these changes in rhetoric are purely “cosmetic” and that Hamas “remains rooted in an extremist ideology which fundamentally opposes peace and reconciliation.”

But the great Jewish historian Walter Lacqueur was closer to the mark when he observed in the 1970’s that “even in the war aims of religious or quasi-religious movements a discrepancy often exists between the desirable and the possible. . . All such movements have come at one stage or another to the realization that with an enemy who cannot be defeated, temporary compromises have to be made.  The old enmity, the odium theologicum, is itself subject to gradual erosion as such compromises become permanent; the formulas of hatred may linger on but they no longer carry the same conviction.”

The latest poll of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion, conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, between May 21-June 3, 2009, showed that “59% of the Israelis support and 36% oppose a two-state solution. Among Palestinians, 61% support the two-state solution while 23% support a one-state solution and 9% support other solutions.” Are you imposing an idealistic, romantic definition of what constitutes acceptance of Israel by Palestinians, rather than a practical and realistic view of what it takes for there to be peace between two countries – whether Israel and Egypt, Palestine or Syria?

It is a categorical mistake to suggest that the Arabs aren’t ready to make peace with Israel because some, notably the Saudis, are unwilling to start the normalization process in exchange for the partial settlement freeze Netanyahu will finally offer. His government has been unwilling to come to a full stop on settlement construction, as requested by the US and the international community, and as required by the Road Map.  Instead, Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will continue building Jewish housing in Palestinian Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, regarded by the Arab world as the future capital of a Palestinian state.   Does this strike you as a wise way to inspire confidence in Israel’s good intentions about a future peace?

As any schoolchild knows, but so many Jewish leaders pretend not to, there can be no two-state solution without sharing Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israelis.    What’s more, Netanyahu remains adamant about continuing to build in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including those in heavily populated Palestinian areas which have no chance of becoming part of Israel under a future peace accord.   To genuinely promote peace, Israel needs to start offering economic incentives to settlers deep in the West Bank to begin returning to Israel, rather than erecting yet more housing for continued settler growth in areas that Israel will most certainly have to leave in any peace deal.

The Saudis want to begin a normalization process only once there is an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.  Even if Netanyahu adopts a partial freeze on settlement building, they are rightly skeptical that he will countenance the establishment of a Palestinian state on fair terms.  Netanyahu’s long-standing opposition to a viable two-state solution, with a territorially contiguous Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza, justifies their skepticism.  Under such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Netanyahu has failed to engender the kind of trust and good faith that would enable Arab leaders to begin an incremental process of normalization with Israel now.   Still, some Arab states–including Qatar, Tunisia, Bahrain and others–will probably agree to further normalization steps in exchange for a settlements moratorium.

Now let’s turn to what may be your biggest concern: that President Obama is pursuing Israeli-Arab peace with a genuine sense of urgency. I’ll address this issue, within the context of the dangers Israel faces with Iran, Hezbollah, Syria and the Palestinians, in the second part of this open letter, which is available here.

B’virkat shalom,

(Gidon) Doni Remba

The post An Open Letter to ADL Leader Abe Foxman: A Response to Obama’s Critics on Israeli-Arab Peace appeared first on Jewcy.

With the maiden visit of newly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington set for May 18, signs of an immanent clash between U.S. President Barack Obama and the hardline Israeli leader abound.

While both leaders will look to find common ground, papering over differences with diplomatic formulas, the rift may be unavoidable. The impending tension recalls previous encounters between Likud leaders and U.S. presidents from both parties.  This time the tremors will center not only on the Palestinian fault line, but also on Iran.

Netanyahu views the development of an Iranian uranium enrichment capacity as an existential threat to Israel that must be squelched. He is certain that Obama’s "dialogue" with Iran is bound to fail, rendering inevitable an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear sites. An Israeli attack will be preceded by more punishing economic penalties on Iran of the kind mooted lately on Capitol Hill, and backed by AIPAC, the hawkish pro-Israel lobby. But sanctions-on-steroids are unlikely to blunt Iran’s quest to join the nuclear club, serving only to clear away the final hurdles blocking a final push for preemptive Israeli military action.

Obama’s way represents nothing less than a revolution in the Middle East: not the stillborn new Middle East the Bush Administration imagined could be midwifed by the force of American and Israeli arms, but a new order that will arise from the centripetal forces unleashed by a political earthquake. How does Obama hope to set in motion this tectonic realignment? Reading the tea leaves, one can divine an unfolding pattern whose contours will only be more fully revealed when Obama delivers a major speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds in Egypt on June 4, following meetings with Netanyahu, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.  

With the backing of the Pentagon’s top brass and his Republican Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama’s administration is convinced that a military strike against Iran will engulf the region in a raging firestorm. It believes that an Israeli air attack on Iranian nuclear sites will fall far short, accelerating the Iranian nuclear weapons program, part of which will remain intact underground. Netanyahu hopes to persuade Obama that, if all else fails, the U.S. must turn its gunsights on Iran. But Obama will be immovable:  he will not launch the next catastrophic Mideast war.  

On the contrary, Obama believes a negotiated solution to the nuclear issue may be in the cards if the U.S. treads an untried path with Iran. He may offer to create a multinational consortium to produce enriched uranium inside Iran under international management and supervision, with an enhanced verification system to ensure that weaponization does not take place. Israel too may be pressed to declare its nuclear capabilities, subjecting them, along with those of India and Pakistan, to international oversight and inspection. In return for a mutually acceptable resolution of the nuclear impasse, Iran may be willing to scale back its military aid to the Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas militant organizations and accept a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace accord, which could include Lebanon. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has now offered, on American television, to support whatever peace plan is accepted by the Palestinian people and the international community.

Should U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations fail, Obama hopes to transform the regional landscape in which Iran would emerge with a nuclear arms capacity in such a way that deterrence would be most likely to succeed. Even without a "grand bargain," the U.S. will seek to foster cooperation with Iran in as many areas as possible, replacing confrontation with détente, from a position of greater regional leverage. Those in the regime who seek to project Iran’s influence in the Arab and Muslim worlds by backing Hizballah and Hamas "resistance" against Israel will have the rug pulled out from under their feet. 

Obama hopes to woo Syria out of Iran’s orbit with economic and political incentives and a determination to broker a peace treaty between Israel and Syria as part of a grand rapprochement between Israel and the Arab and Muslim worlds. The U.S. will loosen Iranian bonds with Syria and Hamas – which has now offered a long-term truce with Israel – while depriving Hizballah and its Iranian backers of the tinder for their incendiary tactics. Contrary to pundits who cry that Israel will be sacrificed on the altar of American reconciliation with the Islamic world, Obama’s aim is the creation of a new regional political architecture in which Israel’s vital needs, and American national security, will be more firmly anchored than ever before.   

For Obama, the Israel-Arab conflict, including the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum, can and must be moved towards resolution under American stewardship. Press reports suggest that the U.S. and Arab allies Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are working on revising the Arab League Peace Initiative, making explicit key compromises on Jerusalem and the refugee problem. They would make Israel an offer it will be hard pressed to refuse: Palestinian refugees would return only to the new state of Palestine or be rehabilitated within the Arab states or other countries. This would insure that refugee repatriation could not undermine Israel’s Jewish majority or the principle of "two states for two peoples" affirmed in the original 1947 U.N. partition resolution calling for an Arab and a Jewish state in Palestine. Gaining Arab unanimity on this radioactive issue may prove impossible. But even engineering the sponsorship of a group of leading Arab states for so far-reaching a change to the historic Arab position would represent a coup for Obama. 

Jerusalem’s Old City, with its holy sites sacred to Judaism, Islam and Christianity, objects of both Israeli and Palestinian national identification, would come under international supervision, as proposed in the partition resolution. Arab and Muslim states would begin normalizing relations with Israel, in exchange for concrete Israeli steps like a comprehensive settlement building freeze, and a time-table for removing most West Bank settlers, designed to send the message to Palestinians and the Arab world that Israel is committed not only in word but in deed to realizing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  

The Arab League, together with the Palestinians, and the U.S.-led Quartet, together with Israel, will become the primary interlocutors in the new negotiations. By adopting a novel holistic, regional framework, and clarifying the parameters of the Arab peace initiative and the way forward to its realization, Obama raises the odds higher than ever before that the players will at last overcome four great obstacles which have thus far stood in the way of a Palestinian-Israeli accord:

1. With the Arab League as the primary Arab interlocutor, Obama’s way helps bypass one consequence of Palestinian weakness and division, creating an environment in which the Palestinians are brought to the table hand in hand with the entire Arab world. By providing broad Arab and international public legitimacy for just compromises on Jerusalem and the refugees, as well as on borders and security, the regional approach eases the way towards Palestinian popular acceptance of the deal. Contrary to those skeptics who see only guile in Hamas’ offers of a long-term truce with Israel, ignoring the larger political context in which the movement operates, Hamas will feel enormous Palestinian public pressure to end terrorism against Israel, and to play its part in a Palestinian government that will sign on.

2. By the same token, the U.S. role in the new constellation helps compensate for the endemic weakness in the Israeli political system which has prevented shaky Israeli coalition governments from credibly offering a viable Palestinian-Israeli bargain. Former prime minister Ehud Barak’s government was already a minority coalition by the time he went to Camp David in 2000, and when he dispatched negotiators to Taba in early 2001. Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and their Kadima party were on their way out the door when they renewed final status talks with the Palestinians this past year under the Annapolis umbrella, in the shadow of a Pyrrhic victory in Lebanon and corruption allegations against the prime minister.

3. Instead, the U.S., the Quartet, and the Arab League may ask Israeli and Palestinian leaders to present to their publics a complete outline for peace incorporating already ongoing Arab concessions and concrete steps to build Israeli confidence, paired with unfolding Israeli concessions and concrete steps to build Palestinian trust. Israeli and Palestinian plebiscites will take place with a full understanding on both sides that pushback from either Israeli or Palestinian governments will be met with the firm hand of their American and Arab patrons, who will be loath to see their monumental efforts fail. Israelis and Palestinians are bound to demand that their governments seize the opportunity for a breakthrough.

The Arab League, the U.S. and NATO will oversee the implementation of all aspects of the regional peace treaty: U.S.-led and Arab multinational peacekeeping forces will guarantee Palestinian and Israeli security in the West Bank and Gaza as Israel removes most settlers and phases out military control. An international trusteeship will guide the economic and institutional baby steps of the newly de-occupied demilitarized Palestinian state. 

4.  The U.S. will help broker Israel’s peace talks with Syria – and possibly Lebanon, if Iran and Hizballah can be co-opted. Should Iran and Hizballah prove unwilling, they will find themselves isolated in a new Middle East order, facing a far more united Israeli-American-Sunni Arab and international front.                    

Obama will no longer tolerate the slogans of American or Israeli obstructionists who claim that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not "ripe" for resolution – it never is by their lights – or that there is no Palestinian partner for peace. Nor will he countenance an Israeli strike on Iran, as he will make clear to Netanyahu. But Obama refuses to accept the status quo, which has proven far too dangerous for the U.S., Israel and our Arab allies. The risks of rejectionism now dramatically outweigh the risks of peace.

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