Obama Stance on West Bank Settlements

The East-West Inquirer

An online monthly that strives to bring East and West closer
Vol. IX, No. 103, July 2010
Web address: www.eastwestinquirer.com
Editor and Publisher: M.P. Prabhakaran

E-mail address: editor@eastwestinquirer.com

One good thing one can say about the Obama administration is that it has been treating The Wall Street Journal’s destructive editorial criticisms with the contempt they deserve. I hope it did the same with regard to the paper’s July 7, 2010, editorial, too. “When Bibi Met Barack (Take Four)” is contemptible,

The context of the editorial was the July 6 meeting at the White House between President Barack Obama and the visiting Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “It’s good to see Mr. Obama finally treating a key American ally as something other than a pariah,” the editorial says. We will get to the “pariah” part of this back-handed compliment in a little bit. Let’s go to the part, elsewhere in the editorial, that casts aspersions on Obama’s commitment to the special bond that exists between the United States and Israel.

“If you look at every public statement I have made,” the editorial quotes Obama as having declared at the White House meeting, “it has been a constant reaffirmation of the special relationship between the United States and Israel.” No problem with the quote per se. The problem is with what the editorial says next. It questions the sincerity of Obama’s statement when it asks the readers to “Note the lawyerly use of the word ‘public.’”

“The reality is nearly the opposite,” the editorial continues, “which goes far to explain why the Administration has been able to make so little progress in advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.” In other words, if there has not been any progress in the peace talks during the 18 months of the Obama administration it is because, his public professions notwithstanding, in private and in “reality,” he is not serious about it. It is a deplorable distortion of what Obama has done in the past 18 months.

The Obama administration had been earnest about reviving the stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians from the very beginning. It was for this purpose that the administration appointed a special envoy for the Middle East, former senator George Mitchell. A major stumbling block in the peace process was the continuous building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank by the Israeli government. If the ultimate goal of the peace process is to find a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and if the West Bank is to eventually become the Palestinian state, how can there be any progress toward that goal if Israel keeps settling more and more of its citizens in that area? Israel has already built more than 100 settlements since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the 1967 war. Close to 500,000 Israeli Jews live in those settlements now. Can anyone think of these people leaving the area peacefully if and when it becomes part of a state ruled by Palestinians?

Under the two-state solution, Israel wouldn't be called upon to “cede” any territory to Palestinians, as the Journal editorial says. It would only be asked to evacuate the territory which it is in illegal occupation of. Construction of newer and newer settlements made the Palestinians suspect that Israel was not serious about creating a separate state for Palestinians. They called off direct talks with Israel mainly for that reason.

Part of Mr. Mitchell’s mission was to get them back to direct negotiations. It was with this in mind that he set up a mechanism called “proximity talks.” Under this, both parties would talk to him first and he in turn would remove all hurdles that stand in the way of their direct talks. The biggest hurdle, to repeat, was the West Bank settlements. Thanks to his efforts, the Israeli government agreed to impose a temporary moratorium on new settlement construction.

The 10-month moratorium, effective from last November, was in place and all parties concerned were looking forward to making further progress when the Interior Ministry in the Netanyahu government came out with a disastrous announcement: the decision to construct 1,600 new housing units, in East Jerusalem. It made a mockery of the moratorium and of Mitchell's mission. The peace process was once again put in jeopardy. As if to add insult to injury, the announcement was made on March 9, 2010, just hours after Obama’s deputy, Vice President Joseph Biden Jr., arrived in Jerusalem and, standing side-by-side with Prime Minister Netanyahu, once again vowed America’s unyielding support for Israel’s security. Mr. Biden had gone there mainly to address the legitimate security concerns Israel had over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He condemned the announcement of new settlement construction as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”

And what does the Journal editorial say about it? It faults the White House for having reacted “with bullying fury to the news that an Israeli bureaucrat had approved a step in a planning process for a new housing project in north Jerusalem that could only be considered a ‘settlement’ in the most expansive (and pro-Palestinian) sense of the term.” If there is a gold medal for objectivity in journalism, that should go to the pen-pusher who wrote the foregoing words.

The editorial goes on to say: “No wonder, then, that so many Israelis look askance at the prospect of making further concessions to the Palestinians.” Here is my request to the editorialist: Don’t be so presumptuous as to speak for “so many Israelis.” Speak only for Israel’s right-wing Shas Party, whose leader Eli Yishai, in his capacity as the Interior Minister in Netanyahu’s fractious coalition, made the housing announcement. Mr. Netanyahu was embarrassed by the timing of the announcement, alright, but he never disavowed it. The reason: he has always been a supporter of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. The editorialist may note that it was not just the Obama administration and friends of Israel around the world who were upset by the announcement. A large number of Israelis, who long for peace in their country, were upset,too.

The incident put a damper on the Obama administration’s enthusiasm to move the peace process forward. The damper did show during Netanyahu’s earlier visit to the White House. It is not to be characterized as “pariah” treatment. This White House doesn’t need any lecture from a paleocon pen-pusher on how to treat an ally. When an ally doesn’t behave like one, he has to be told so, though not in so many words. An alliance is a two-way street.

To find out how critical fair-minded Israelis are of their government’s settlement policy, I invite the Journal editorialists to read Nicholas D. Kristof’s July 1, 2010, column in The New York Times. The column is an eye-opener to, in Kristof's words, “the ugly truth that our ally, Israel, is using American military support to maintain an occupation that is both oppressive and unjust.” The column puts in stark contrast the luxurious life of Jews in the settlements built on the illegally occupied Palestinian land and the wretched living conditions of their Palestinian neighbors. Thanks to B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, Mr. Kristof had a chance to visit a place where the two live side-by-side, separated by a barbed-wire fence. The place is in the southern Hebron hills of the West Bank.

On one side of the fence, Kristof writes, “is the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, where Palestinians live in ramshackle tents and huts. They aren’t allowed to connect to the electrical grid, and Israel won’t permit them to build homes, barns for their animals or even toilets. When the villagers build permanent structures, the Israeli authorities come and demolish them, according to villagers and human rights organizations.

“On the other side of the barbed wire is the Jewish settlement of Karmel, a lovely green oasis that looks like an American suburb. It has lush gardens, kids riding bikes and air-conditioned homes. It also has a gleaming, electrified poultry barn that it runs as a business.”

Kristof quotes Elad Orian, an Israeli human rights activist, as saying: “Those chickens get more electricity and water than all the Palestinians around here.”

On another occasion, Kristof “watched the ugly side of Israel collide with its more noble version as Rabbi Ascherman and I visited a rural area in the northern West Bank where Jewish settlers have taken over land that Palestinian farmers say is theirs.” One such farmer, a 71-year-old Palestinian by the name of Muhammad Moqbel, told Kristof and the rabbi that last year, “he was hospitalized with a broken rib after settlers attacked while he was picking his own olives.”

The U.S.-born rabbi is the founder and executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights. It has helped Palestinians recover some land through law suits in Israeli courts, says Kristof, in his July 8, 2010, column in The Times. In the same column, titled “In Israel, the Noble vs. the Ugly,” he also says: “The most cogent critiques of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians invariably come from Israel’s own human rights organizations…. By challenging religious extremism, Rabbis for Human Rights redeems not only Israeli values, but also Jewish ones.” One wonders what values The Wall Street Journal represents when it produces editorial after editorial condemning Palestinians and praising those who have relegated them to refugee status in their own country.

The Journal editorialist may also note that the Obama administration’s display of displeasure over the latest settlement expansion in the West Bank has had some positive outcomes. The most notable of them is that Benjamin Netanyahu is now a mellowed person and comes across as mature and reasonable. From his one-time extreme-right-wing position of refusing to deal with the Palestinians, he has come around to expressing willingness to engage in direct talks with them. He has even started talking in terms of finding a two-state solution, the only realistic solution, to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. It was unthinkable even a few months ago. The credit for this turnabout goes entirely to the bold stance the Obama administration took on the Netanyahu government’s settlement policy in the West Bank.

The World as an Indian Sees It – I: What Makes Islamic Turkey Different from Islamist Saudi Arabia, the first book on my travels around the world, was published in India in May 2010. Shown below is a reproduction of its cover. The book is the first in a series I plan to bring out under the running title "The World as an Indian Sees It."