Advocates of Middle East peace are circulating a letter in the
U.S. House of Representatives, urging President Obama to "continue your strong
efforts to bring U.S. leadership to bear in moving the
parties toward a negotiated two-state solution." The key word is "strong." It's easy
enough to say we want peace and a two-state solution. To take the steps
necessary to make it happen, including putting serious pressure on
Israel, is something else again.
That's what it means for a leader to be strong.
Bill Clinton once said:
"When times are uncertain, people would rather have a leader who is
strong and wrong than one who is weak and right." The Israel-Palestine situation
now is most uncertain. But it gives the president and the Congress a unique
opportunity to be both strong and right. More precisely, the government of
Israel is giving them that
opportunity.
It may look like Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and his right-wing base are using the U.S. president for their own purposes -- engaging
in a charade of negotiations while steadily gobbling up more Palestinian land in
the West Bank, including Jerusalem. Most recently, Netanyahyu
celebrated "Jerusalem
Day" with a speech proclaiming: "We will continue to build and develop
ourselves in Jerusalem," while Jerusalem mayor Nir Barakat declared: "The municipal
borders of Jerusalem are not negotiable and building will
continue across all of the city under Israeli sovereignty."
As if to give teeth to that rhetoric, Israel's Public Security Minister, Yitzhak
Aharonovitch, told the
Knesset that Israel
will demolish Palestinian homes in East
Jerusalem in the coming days. He acknowledged that demolitions had
been postponed in recent months so as not to harm U.S. efforts to
get peace talks started. Yet just as those talks were beginning, with both sides
admonished by the U.S. to avoid any "provocative actions," Aharonovitch
defiantly declared: "There is no directive for police not to implement the
demolition orders. ... If there was a postponement, it has now ended."
The Israeli right appeared to be thumbing its nose at Obama,
in much the same way that they embarrassed vice-president Joe Biden by
announcing new construction while he was in Jerusalem in March. That might seem to demonstrate that
Israel holds the power and can do
whatever it pleases despite American objection, as many observers in this
country choose to believe.
Yet it's easy enough to see the
whole situation from the opposite angle: By publicly defying Obama's demand for
no provocation by either side, the Israelis are giving him a wonderful
opportunity to step in forcefully and get tough on the world stage. And Obama
can do that, if he wants to. Israel depends on the U.S.
for military, economic, and above all diplomatic support.
A serious demand from Washington to curb the Jerusalem provocations would scare most
Israelis into
demanding that their government obey.
As the prominent Israeli columnist Shmuel Rosner, who is certainly no
dove, recently wrote, if Obama "signalled that Israel could no longer take unconditional
US support for granted, Mr.
Netanyahu's domestic support would quickly evaporate."
But the signal would have to be clear, powerful, and
non-negotiable -- just the kind of signal that most Americans like to see their
government sending in a time of uncertainty like the one we are passing through
now. And most Americans could be persuaded that a demand to cease destroying
Palestinian homes is not merely strong but right. Regardless of their overall
view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, most would understand that once
another government makes a promise to the United States,
that promise must be honored. Fulfilling a promise is right; breaking it is
wrong. Obama could state the case that simply and come out looking both strong
and right.
Of course the administration must weigh this potential
political gain against the risk that comes with any pressure a
U.S. president puts on
Israel: a counterattack from
the hawkish "Israel lobby." That counterattack was
once so dreaded that presidents rarely ventured any criticism of
Israel at all.
Now the Israel lobby's power is
clearly waning.
That's recognized even in elite political circles in Israel,
where Dov Weisglass, a senior adviser to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
said: "Netanyahu should have taken into account the
change within the American Jewish community. Their support for
Israel is decreasing," and
they are not likely to support Israel's provocative building projects in
Jerusalem, he
added.
The crucial political battleground is in Congress, where the
Israel lobby likes to flex
its muscle, threatening presidents that they'll pay for any pressure on
Israel by losing votes for their most
prized measures. The lobby has traditionally signaled that threat by having huge
numbers of legislators sign letters to the president, urging him to do whatever
Israel wanted.
One sign of the Israel lobby's decline is the
shrinking number of legislators -- especially Democrats -- who will sign its
letters. Last month, a typical "stand with Israel" letter
was signed by a sizeable majority of House members. But the number was
strikingly smaller than in the past, because fully 91 Democrats -- almost a
third of the House Dems -- refused to sign.
A month earlier, 54 members of the House, all Democrats,
signed a letter urging the president to call for the lifting of the
Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, a number that no one could have imagined a
year or two ago. Dems in the House are starting to stand up to the
Israel lobby, finding out what it
feels like to be strong and right.
Now there's that new letter in the House, initiated by Reps.
Delahunt (MA), Kind (WI), Price (NC), and Snyder (AR), urging Obama to "continue
your strong efforts to bring U.S. leadership to bear in moving the
parties toward a negotiated two-state solution." The pro-Israel, pro-peace
lobby J Street is putting its weight behind the letter, but
finding it an uphill battle. "It is
unbelievably difficult to get members of Congress to sign on," J Street executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami
admits.
Yet it's difficult only if members of Congress do not hear
from their constituents. A vast majority of Americans now believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a
negative impact on U.S. interests. They want to see the
U.S. get involved to end the
conflict. However the issue is not high enough on most people's list of
political priorities to move them to act -- not even to take the simple step of
calling or emailing their representatives.
Perhaps they are waiting for their president to take the first
step, to be strong and right. But he's not likely to take that political risk
until he sees the people taking steps that are strong and right.
Perhaps they feel that something as simple as calling a
congressional office is a piddling gesture in the face of such an immense
problem. That's a very understandable feeling. But no one is going to wave a
magic wand and create peace. Changing the course of U.S. Middle East policy is
like the changing the course of an ocean liner. It happens slowly, far too
slowly. Yet there is no other way than the agonizingly slow slog through the
political process. Even the smallest gesture does make a difference.