By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 8, 2010; A08
Senior Obama administration officials have discussed whether President Obama should propose his own solution to the intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, including in a recent meeting between the president and seven former and current national security advisers, U.S. officials said Wednesday.
But officials, confirming a report Wednesday on the March 24 session by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, said there has been no decision to offer such a plan, either in the coming months or later this year. Officials said a presidential peace plan -- as opposed to "bridging proposals" that would be offered during peace talks between the two sides -- has long been considered an option for Obama. But they said the administration, now locked in tense talks with Israel about making confidence-building overtures to the Palestinians, is focused on arranging indirect talks between the two sides.
Some officials said the notion that Obama could offer his own plan might undercut those nascent efforts, because it could lead to a backlash among Israel's supporters and encourage the Palestinians not to make any concessions to Israel. Israeli officials have long opposed the introduction of an unilateral American plan, while Arab officials have pressed hard for one, saying it is the only way to break the impasse.
Jordan's King Abdullah II, who will visit Washington next week, recently told the Wall Street Journal that he will push Obama to offer his own plan because "tremendous tension" in the region over the failure to resolve the conflict has resulted in a "tinderbox that could go off at any time."
Still, it is notable that Obama would attend a discussion of such a concept with outside advisers. The president had popped into a meeting that national security adviser James L. Jones regularly holds with six of his predecessors at the White House when the subject turned to the Middle East. Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George H.W. Bush, made the case for an American-designed proposal and was supported by other participants in the room, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, and Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, national security adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Obama, however, did not tip his hand on whether he supported the idea, participants said.
The basic parameters of a peace deal are well known and would probably closely resemble the "Clinton parameters," offered by Clinton 10 years ago in the waning days of his presidency: land swaps to compensate the Palestinians for much of the land taken by Jewish settlements in the West Bank; billions of dollars in compensation to the Palestinians for giving up the right to return to their homes in Israel; an Israeli capital in West Jerusalem and a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, with an agreement on oversight of religious sites in the Old City.
Advocates of an American plan say the two parties are incapable of making such concessions themselves; the current Israeli government, for instance, won't halt Jewish construction in East Jerusalem despite intense U.S. pressure. But detractors say such a plan is only a recipe for putting pressure on Israel, while even some supporters caution that the timing must be right -- such as in the midst of viable peace talks -- or else the impact of the gesture might be wasted.
A major stumbling block to any peace plan is that 1.5 million people -- almost 40 percent of the Palestinian population -- live in the Gaza Strip, now controlled by the Hamas militant group, which rejects any peace talks as well as the very existence of Israel. That was not the situation when Clinton offered his proposal, which envisioned a Palestinian state consisting of Gaza and the West Bank, joined by highways.
The Israel lobby is mobilizing for what might turn into the most significant confrontation between the United States and Israel since, well, the Suez War of 1956, when President Eisenhower told Israel -- and its covert allies, the UK and France -- to halt the unprovoked assault on Egypt. Since then, US-Israel conflicts have been relatively small and tied to side issues, such as the fight over President Reagan's sale of AWACS surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s or President Bush's showdown with Israel in the early 1990s, when the United States threatened to withhold loan guarantees to Israel after a right-wing Israeli government stone-walled the peace process.
This time, if President Obama plays his cards right, he could bring down the extremist government of Bibi Netanyahu. But that depends on whether Obama displays the guts and gumption necessary for a full-frontal challenge to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allies.
A year ago, it seemed possible that Obama was headed in that direction. He'd nominated the even-handed George Mitchell as his Israel-Palestine special representative, to the discomfort of AIPAC. He'd installed a number of aides at the White House, including General Jones, Mara Rudman, and others who had sympathies with the Palestinians and with the Israeli pro-peace camp. Obama launched a major effort to rebuild US ties with the Muslim world, including his June speech in Cairo, that all but required a stronger US effort to force concessions from Israel. And he'd ordered a showdown with Israel over its illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian lands, demanding outright that Israel stop building them.
Nearly all of that collapsed. Mitchell got nowhere. Netanyahu bluntly rejected the settlements demand, kept building them, and faced no consequences. And, worst of all, Obama utterly failed to put forward an American peace plan to restart the talks. What was needed then, and now, is for Obama to outline what a final settlement of the conflict will look like: a return to the 1967 borders (with some land swaps), the division of Jerusalem, the removal of Israeli encampments from the West Bank, a sovereign Palestinian state, a deal over the Palestinians' right to return to their land (including a Saudi- and Gulf-financed compensation package), and probably some sort of US security guarantees for Israel.
Obama didn't deliver. He never stated the end goal. Now, he has another chance. His new opportunity was handed to him last week when Netanyahu's government slapped visiting Vice President Biden in face by announcing, during a high-stakes, delicate trip, a plan to build 1,600 new Jewish homes in occupied East Jerusalem. In the aftermath of that event, the entire Obama administration has been mobilized against Israel. The key question is not whether Obama and Co. will slam Israel rhetorically, as they've done, buy whether there will be concrete consequences for Israel and whether the Obama team will finally relaunch the all-but-dead peace process by declaring the president's own vision of the terms that Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab states must agree to.
"We also hope that if progress lags, the administration will be ready to put forward its own proposals on the central issues of borders, refugees, security and the future of Jerusalem.
"Mr. Obama has another chance to move the peace process forward. This time he has to get it right."
Biden, of course, used the word "condemn" in reacting to Israel's defiant action, saying: "I condemn the decision." Then rhetorically at least, the US got even nastier. Hillary Clinton -- who, like Biden, prides herself as being militantly pro-Israel -- used the word "insult" in slamming Israel: "The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting," said Clinton.With Obama's approval, she delivered a 45-minute tongue lashing to Netanhayu over the phone. And yesterday David Axelrod, the White House political adviser chimed in, saying: "What happened there was an affront. It was an insult."
Netanyahu, while faking an apology, insists -- as does his entire right-wing regime -- that it won't change policy or back down.
The lobby is mobilizing. AIPAC, in a defensive statement, called the whole thing a "distraction," and it added:
"AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State. ... The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel."
"We are shocked and stunned at the Administration's tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem. We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States. One can only wonder how far the U.S. is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table."
And a panoply of Israel's best friends in Congress are trying to preempt an Obama response to the Israeli insult that goes beyond rhetoric, too. Representive Shelley Berkley (D.-Nevada) called the Clinton-Axelrod statements part of an "irresponsible overreaction," and the ever-reliable John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, told Commentary that "the tone and substance we are seeing emerge as a pattern for this Administration are both disappointing and of great concern."
"Israel and the United States have been drifting apart for some time, though that pace has accelerated during the Obama administration. The currents that have set Washington and Jerusalem on different courses are complex and cannot be boiled down to one failed mission (that of Vice President Biden) nor an indifferent president (Barack Obama). There is a generational shift underway, driving apart post-Zionist Israel and 21st-century America."
"It would be shortsighted for the administration to use this episode as an opportunity to reward the Palestinians. ... And it would be an analytical blunder for the administration to believe that this incident is an opportunity that could precipitate Netanyahu's political demise."
Underlying all this is not just the reaction to an insulting announcement during the visit of Vice President Biden. Instead, at a more fundamental level, the Obama administration is beginning to realize that Israeli intransigence -- and the Netanyahu government, in particular -- is a major obstacle to US policy in the region, from Iraq to Iran to the struggle against Al Qaeda. It still remains to be seen if the White House the courage to do anything about it. In 2009, it didn't. But this is 2010.
Tense relations between the United States and Israel are having a negative effect on Israeli public opinion.
President Obama (file photo)
A new Jerusalem Post poll shows that only 4 percent of Israeli Jews see U.S. President Barack Obama's policies as pro-Israel. That is a drop of 2 percent from the previous poll in June. The survey found that 51 percent of Israelis see the Obama administration as pro-Palestinian, while 35 percent consider it neutral.
"There's quite a bit of concern and disappointment in President Obama, in the sense that Israel [is] sort of under attack on all of these settlement issues, on Jerusalem," said Israeli analyst Dan Diker. "And I think that many Israelis are saying, 'Well wait a second, where is the friendly U.S. administration that Democratic and Republican administrations have been known to be?'"
President Obama's supporters say he is trying to take a more "even-handed" approach to the Middle East conflict than his predecessors. But his outreach to the Muslim world, and especially his landmark speech in Cairo in June, are seen by many Israelis as an attempt to appease the Arabs at the expense of the Jewish state.
"President Obama has been all over the Middle East, he's been in Turkey, he's been in Saudi Arabia, he's been in Cairo, and giving major speeches, and he has not spoken to or with the Israeli people or really sort of extended his hand as a partner in this entire process," he said.
Israelis had a much more positive view of President George W. Bush. According to a Jerusalem Post poll in May, 88 percent of Israelis considered Mr. Bush's policies to be pro-Israel.
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