It has
become a truism to state that President Obama erred when he picked a fight with
Israel over settlements at
the outset of his Middle East peace efforts.
Like many Mideast truisms, this one too is
false.
Obama's error had nothing to
do with settlements. His error was picking a fight that he apparently
wasn't committed to winning.
Because if Obama wasn't
ready to play tough and demonstrate -- to both sides -- that there are real
consequences for not playing ball, then his Middle East peace efforts were
doomed to failure from the start, regardless of what strategy or tactics he
adopted along the way.
Had Obama been serious about
achieving a breakthrough in the peace process -- and this means being fully
cognizant of what that could mean in terms of a confrontation with Israel -- the
settlement issue was clearly the best place to start.
Every U.S.
administration since 1967 has opposed settlement construction. Add to
this the fact that Israel committed itself to freezing all settlement activity
under the Bush administration's Road Map -- a commitment made explicit even in
Israel's written reservations about that Roadmap, in which Israel said that
the Roadmap has no bearing on a permanent agreement on the various final status
issue, including "settlement in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (excluding a
settlement freeze and illegal outposts)" (italics added) -- and it is
clear that the Obama administration was on firm ground taking up the issue.
Of course, while U.S. opposition to settlements has been clear for
decades, no U.S.
president has ever put his political capital where his mouth
was. Yes, in the 1990s Bush the elder took on settlements
more directly than anyone when he imposed settlement-linked conditions on
U.S.-backed loan guarantees (requiring that the guarantees be reduced annually by
an amount equal to Israel's
non-security settlement-related spending). But in practical terms his
effort had no impact on the settlement enterprise. The original amount
of guarantees was so high that the deductions had zero impact on Israel's ability to borrow money -- even with the
deductions, which were minimal, Israel
never borrowed enough to hit the loan guarantees' ceiling during the life of
the program. Indeed, when Israel
was again granted a U.S. loan
guarantee program in 2003, Israel
accepted without question that the same conditions would apply, recognizing
that they were utterly without impact.
By dealing much more
seriously and effectively with the settlement issue at the very outset of his
presidency, Obama had the chance to fundamentally change the unproductive
dynamics that have characterized U.S.-led peace efforts for years. Achieving a settlement freeze would have demonstrated to both Israel and the
Palestinians that the era of procrastinating, excuse-making, and game-playing
was over, and would have put tremendous pressure on both sides to deliver
results in negotiations.
Some have argued that
Obama's focus on settlements was a mistake because Netanyahu simply cannot
freeze settlements, even if he wants to. Reality proves otherwise. If it was possible for the government of Israel, by decree, to place a
moratorium on new starts in settlements for 10 months, it is possible for the
government to extend this moratorium for the duration of peace negotiations or
even indefinitely. And the argument that a freeze would be politically
explosive in Israel
is belied by the fact that the imposition of the 10-month moratorium resulted
neither in massive protests nor a single defection from Netanyahu's
coalition. This, despite the fact that most Israelis believed it was a
real freeze -- not understanding that the government had included far-reaching
exceptions that allowed the settlers to keep building throughout the ten months
of the moratorium -- and despite the fact that most Israelis expected the
moratorium would be extended past 10 months, under pressure from the U.S.
In terms of substance, the
focus on settlements also made sense, because of all the permanent status
issues, this is the most urgent.Why? Because settlements -- both in the
West Bank and in East Jerusalem -- are not
static. Every day, new facts on the ground are being created that render
the two-state solution harder -- and eventually perhaps impossible -- to
implement. And each new fact on the ground undermines the credibility of
those Palestinians who argue that negotiations, not violence, are the path to
ending the march of settlements and the occupation.
Finally, conventional wisdom
increasingly holds that Obama was fated to lose the fight with Netanyahu over
settlements because Congress did not support him. This is a re-writing of
history. As difficult as some may find it to believe, during the nearly
10 months in 2009 that the Obama administration spent negotiating with
Netanyahu over the moratorium, the U.S. Congress, with only a few exceptions,
either supported the president or kept quiet. This posture reflects a
simple fact: settlements aren't popular on the Hill. They are an issue
that even right-wing, pro-Israel groups can't defend and most don't try.
Some have suggested that the
Obama administration underestimated how hard a settlement freeze would be to
achieve. If true, then this peace effort is truly a tragicomedy. Because any observer of the past two decades of Middle East peace efforts, let
alone the past four decades of U.S. policy on settlements, could predict with
certainty that no Israeli government would or could agree to a settlement
freeze without the U.S. playing hardball. Indeed, this is why some
supporters of Israel reacted
with near hysteria to the Obama administration's call for a settlement freeze --
assuming, not unreasonably, that such a call would ultimately mean real
pressure and arm-twisting applied to Israel.
The irony
is that the Obama administration allowed itself to be sucked (or suckered) into
paying the political price for pressuring Israel without ever actually
applying the kind of real pressure necessary to achieve the president's
declared goal. So in the end the Obama administration lost twice -- it
took the hit for being tough on Israel, even when it wasn't being tough at all,
and it took the even bigger hit for laying out a goal and creating an
expectation that it was not prepared to meet.
This mistake of the Obama
administration's two years of Middle East
peace policy must be corrected now, if there is any hope of achieving progress
toward peace under this administration.
Lara Friedman is director of policy and government
relations for Americans
for Peace Now.
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