Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Why the Obama/Clinton Path to Mideast Peace Will Fail
There is little chance peace can be brought to the Middle East unless it is imposed on both Israel and Palestine by the international community. Calling for an international peace conference and an immediate cease-fire ought to be the first foreign policy priority for the Obama administration.
Instead, Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton's remarks to the Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday committed the Obama administration to a path that is certain to fail as it has throughout the past several decades.
She stressed three elements of her position:
- The United States remains committed in its support of Israel, which guarantees that it cannot play the role of "honest, neutral broker of peace."
- The United States restates that it will not negotiate with Hamas until it recognizes Israel (which Hamas has already said it would not do, though it has been willing to negotiate a cease-fire agreement with Israel and announced that it is prepared to negotiate a new agreement that could last for 20 or 30 years).
- The Obama administration will work to bring the two parties together for peace negotiations.
This position is at odds with the views that Obama articulated when he was seeking the Democratic nomination. At that point, he made clear that we should negotiate with Iran and Syria, which both pose more serious threats to American interests than Hamas.
The difference, of course, is the Israel lobby to which Obama and Clinton have repeatedly paid obeisance. That lobby, representing the most hard-line elements in the Jewish world but also tens of millions of Christian Zionists who support the militarist perspective in dealing with Arabs and Palestinians, has insisted as a matter of faith that American politicians promise not to deal with Hamas. In the 1980s and 1990s, the lobby insisted that the United States not negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The Obama administration's game plan, according to several Israeli analysts, is this: Call for a cease-fire that will freeze in place Israel's commanding military position in the West Bank and Gaza after allowing Israel some more time to finish its task of wiping out Hamas operatives in Gaza, then hope that the military success of the Israelis will strengthen Ehud Barak (head of the Israeli Labor Party) and Tzipi Livni (head of Olmert's Kadima party) in Israel's February elections; anticipate that these two will form a government to negotiate a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority, whose power will be strengthened as Palestinians witness the defeat of the military option proposed by Hamas.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian state likely to be produced by these negotiations will be neither economically nor politically viable. Barak and Livni will not have the power to make serious concessions to the Palestinians, so the government they likely will form (with Secretary of State Clinton and the Obama administration's participation) will be one that allows the Israeli army to crisscross the Palestinian state in order to safeguard the 400,000 Israelis who will continue to live in settlements. The state thus created will resemble a patchwork of little city-state cantons that will not look or feel to the Palestinians like a real state.
While the weak Palestinian Authority may accept an arrangement of this sort, the vast majority of Palestinians will eventually wake up to understanding that this U.S. -negotiated deal is little more than an agreement by Palestinians to police themselves while Israel retains its settlements and its military dominance of Gaza and the West Bank.
Eventually, the Islamic fundamentalist movement will reappear and gain new strength, and resume the struggle, while Israelis and Americans cry foul because they gave the Palestinians a state.
The only viable alternative is for Obama to call for an international conference of the European Unon, Israel and the Arab States, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and, yes, Iran and India as well, and allow that international conference to impose a solution that provides security and justice to both sides. Only an imposed settlement has the slightest chance of being just to Palestinians - the precondition for a lasting peace, and a secure Israel.
Hard as it might be to push the Obama administration in this direction, it will be less difficult than getting Secretary of State Clinton to use American power to directly force Israel to be responsive to the minimum needs for peace and justice for the Palestinian people.
25 Comments so far
Show AllIsrael doesn't obey UN Security Council resolutions as it is. Why would they listen to an 'international conference'?
"Only an imposed settlement has the slightest chance..."
If the US continues to unblinkingly support Israel, then an 'imposed settlement' will do nothing but stoke Israel's paranoia.
Perhaps Condi Rice could do something at the UN...uh, never mind.
Obama/Clinton diplomacy is dead in the starting gate.
Hillary the Harpy started it off by threatening the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia with the iron fist of diplomacy 2 days ago.
Yesterday Bolivia and Venezuela severed diplomatic relations with Israel, the "murdering arm of the US", to quote Chavez.
Next will come an embargo of oil and gas to the Genocide Gang.
Not even in office yet, and as dead as yesterday's doornail.
Gringos, apparently, are not capable of learning.
I'm beginning to wonder if I made a mistake when I voted for Obama.
Well, if you are a ZIONIST ISRAEL SUPPORTER, it's lookin' like you voted right.
But don't feel bad, I voted for him too. And unless the man is the cleverest martial arts "dancer" in the world and is looking to restore our democracy, our prosperity, and our national health, in general, and loosen the grip of Zionist Israel from our treasury and our political process, it seems like ... uh,oh ... we've been had.
A post I just put on a headline article, but it's worth saying it again:
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS: www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
The Israel Lobby
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt
"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of U.S. Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? ..."
This is the first part of a paragraph of a very lengthy review which indicates a horrifying fact of life for the United States. The Bush government and likely previous administrations, along with particular members of Congress are infiltrated with Zionist, dual-citizened U.S./Israel folks, in all kinds of high positions, directorships, judgeships, etcetera ...
Israel, with a prosperous economy of its own gets mega-GIFTS from the United States, of money - $30 billion annually and FREEBIE weaponry -- currently used against Gazans: planes,helicopters, guns, explosives ... you name it. It's sort of like blackmail payments Israel gets from all over the place, ... but the question is for what? 911 cooperation? OR Just ambitious politicians who want to get elected or keep getting elected & have to kiss the butt of AIPAC? OR Israel's connections with the U.S. Federal Reserve banking institutions that decide U.S. monetary policies. The list of mega-powerful Jewish financial institutions connected with our Federal Reserve—our money printer and money dispenser/ interest-rate-setter—is as long as your arm, starting with the Rothschild Bank of London. Rothschild pours money into Israel too.
If you haven't paid attention recently, it seems for all the world that, despite the election, we've lost our democracy to Israel's GIMMEES. Look who's sitting on the new Obama cabinet. Why?
In the meantime, if you've seen the pictures and followed what's happening in GAZA, there is only one word: GENOCIDE. And those dreadful HAMAS bombs that the MSM is always going on about, look like home-made, tin-can weapons and have managed to kill maybe 10-14 Israelis in two years, but not by direct hit. More like falling debris. They are especially good, however, to crack sidewalks and make mud splatters in a grassy meadow or maybe if their unguided flying gets lucky, they put a hole in somebody's wall.
So far in the GAZAN "war" more than a thousand Gazans, half+ women and children, have been killed and 2,000 injured. Ten Israeli soldiers have been killed. Most all by Israeli "friendly fire," according to official reports. Maybe one by a Gazan "fighter." He likely had a slingshot.
ZIONIST ISRAEL = EMPEROR JONES with a lot of wealthy backup. I think the rest of us U.S. citizens need to be worried and get educated real fast. Something stinks to the high heavens, not in Denmark, but in this egg-on-its-face United States. We've been had and it's getting worse. Why?
Yup. You sure did.
Wonder no more!!!
You should not have been surprised. Candidates who wanted to have Israel take responsibilities never were allowed to speak - Kucinich, Paul, and especially Cynthia McKinney ( who put her life on the line for her beliefs as it turned out).
I share that feeling, but also realize that it was Obama/Biden or McCain/Palin. Keep that in mind.
I supported Kucinich thru 2 presidential runs, even though I knew he had no chance. McKinney or Nader would be great, but as I said a million times here, they had no possibility of winning.
I am not saying this to rehash that old debate, but I could not live with a President Palin.
opeluboy:apparently we agree on something! I supported Kucinich twice and voted for Obama at the end.
I imagine we actually have more common ground than that.
You know, it is a good idea to be able to make a point without name-calling. But since you are unable to do that, I will not challenge the completely unrealistic nature of your argument and put it down to lack of wisdom, immaturity and a total inability to operate in the real world.
The reason I voted for Obama, and I believe the only serious reason ever to vote for him, was to provide some chance that the decline and fall of the US Empire would be relatively peaceful (i.e. no nuclear or other apocalyptic war with casualties in the tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or billions). I still believe that to be true. That does not mean that Obama will not try to hold on as long as he can, in accordance with the wishes of his corporate masters, but just that there exists a possibility that he would not risk cataclysmic war in doing so. With McCain there was little chance of a non-cataclysmic exit for the US from the dominant position on the world stage.
Me too.
Oh c'mon! Obama's big lavish celebration of self where he will spout high-minded empty feel good platitudes and happy buzzwords is almost upon us. After that he will retreat behind his Clintonista walls and be irrelevant again.
He is silent now. Not only does he not have political courage--he would celebrate lavishly while the slaughter commences.
We didn't need Hillary Clinton to tell us that Obama wasn't going to be any different in respect to Israel. Obama did that himself with his speech to AIPAC. He gave them the biggest Lewinski since.....well, ever. And if that weren't enough or you happened to miss it, he chose Joe "I am a Zionist" Biden for VP. For everyone who is feeling duped by Obama, the clues were there all along and they weren't even hidden. All you had to do was look away from the bright light and stop listening to the O-rhetoric.
The fundamental fact is that no Israeli government will ever evacuate a single Jewish settler from the West Bank because such an act will trigger at least civil disobedience if not a civil war in Israel with unpredictable consequences.
The only way in which the West Bank can be recovered for the Palestinian population is by a tough no-nonsense international military force under U.S. command which will shoot to kill if attacked by settlers and bomb Tel Aviv if attacked by the Israeli Defense Force. War crimes? No, just emulating what the Israeli's are doing in Gaza.
It's not about peace. It's about murdering and stealing. That's why Israel was established: to murder and steal.
USA is just a gang of bandits governing a few hundred million stupid slobs.
There is little chance peace can be brought to the Middle East unless it is imposed on both Israel and Palestine by the international community.
Kum-ba-yah. No one can IMPOSE peace in that region of the world. You can withdraw money and weapons and walk away but you cannot impose anything, least of all peace. What a pipe dream!
Sioux Rose
MORDECHAI: That was exactly the inference I took from this article and that particular oxymoronic statement.
Rabbi Lerner -
Thank you for a meaningful and insightful article.
As to AIPAC, my view is that in light of its stranglehold on American politicians, the only way to reduce, or even better to remove its nefarious influence, is for American Jews to very publicly reject it.
Arguing for "imposing" peace may be questionable, but arguing for "imposing peace" on both sides is absurd. Israel is the occupying power, the Palestinians are the victims. There is no moral equivalency here.
Obama knows Hamas is full of shit and only wants Israel handed to it on a silver platter. He also knows Hamas is a tool of Iran, as is Hezbollah.
Lerner, an intelligent and thoughtful man, makes a serious mistake in assuming that US political leaders, including Obama and Clinton, actually desire a peaceful resolution and a stable two-state solution. Politicians (as opposed to statesmen or -women, who are in short supply) want what their benefactors and public opinion molders want, and Israel's right wing leaders and their water carriers at AIPAC and related groups want conquest, not coexistence. They find one excuse after another to throw obstacles into the process, blaming the Palestinians for their unenviable fate. It would take an act of great moral courage to force Israel to acknowledge the rights of Palestinians. Until the US stops acting like Israel's vassal, nothing is going to happen.
Alex
Hey, people, how about a little more praise for Rabbi Lerner for speaking the truth and trying to effect a little change? Don't forget Chomsky's famous dictum (which I paraphrase) whereby, in situations of great power (as is unfortunately wielded by the U.S.), even a slight nuance of difference in perspective can inflect policy enough to spare thousands of lives. It's true that the neo-Clintonistas of Obama's admistration don't get the bigger picture and repeat the lies about Israel's "desire for peace," when in fact it's conquest they want, as LawyerAlex rightly points out. But, as Lao-Tse says, a thousand-mile journey begins with one step, and if the first step is to stop the killing, then we must take that step, and then begin the next step from there.
I support and believe in Obama. But he is still the head of an Imperialist Economy, a War Machine, a Vassal of Israel. Israeli influence in Congress, America and the Media is in the long run, more powerful than the POTUS. 100% fealty not demonstrated to Tel Aviv? No ascension in the U.S. political arena.
For 60 years Israel has defied all possibilities for Peace and will continue to do so.
The notion that ANY group can "impose" their will on Israel is naive and at odds with the truths of the last six decades.
To my Jewish Brothers and Sisters who support Peace, all my Respect.