Imposed Arrogance

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
07 April '10

David Ignatius writes: “Despite recent turbulence in U.S. relations with Israel, President Obama is ’seriously considering’ proposing an American peace plan to resolve the Palestinian conflict, according to two top administration officials.” As frightful as this sounds, it smacks of just the sort of arrogance we have come to expect from this administration. The gang that deplored “cowboy diplomacy” and said we should be more attuned to our allies’ concerns has devoted itself to bullying and blustering — but, of course, not when it comes to despotic regimes. There, it’s all smiles and bows.

Who might be the architect of such a scheme — one that presupposes there is a Palestinian negotiator with the authority to make a deal and enforce the peace? Why, Ignatius tells us, “the real strategist in chief is Obama himself. If he decides to launch a peace plan, it would mark a return to the ambitious themes the president sounded in his June 2009 speech in Cairo.” That would be the speech in which he skipped over 60 years of Palestinian rejectionism, analogized Palestinians to enslaved African Americans, and posited that Israel’s legitimacy rested on Holocaust guilt.

Ignatius concludes:

A political battle royal is likely to begin soon, with Israeli officials and their supporters in the United States protesting what they fear would be an American attempt to impose a settlement and arguing to focus instead on Iran. The White House rejoinder is expressed this way by one of the senior officials: “It’s not either Iran or the Middle East peace process. You have to do both.”

This is poppycock, of course. The Obami can’t come up with an effective Iran approach. And now they want to add to their overwhelmed and underperforming foreign-policy apparatus by imposing a Middle East plan? It is apparent that the latter is an excuse and diversion from doing anything about the former. It is also very dangerous.

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