“The Palestine Peace Distraction,” "The False Religion of Middle East Peace,” And Other Significant Recantations

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
27 April '10

Barack Obama came into office with one messianic mission. It was to bring statehood to the Palestinians. Of course, even he understood that he couldn’t quite put it that way. But statehood for the Palestinians necessarily also meant Palestinian peace with Israel, an aim worthy enough for any American administration. So that became his primary foreign policy mission. Still, the fact is that he saw the shadings of the conflict only through the eyes of the “disinherited.” And they really had nothing much to give in any transaction. Ipso facto, it was from the Jewish state that all the concessions were to be had.

However committed he was to this formula, the president required another rationale to make his pitch sound like a genuine argument. He found it in the security interests of the United States. As it happens, having put the Muslim world at the very center of the American universe through signs and secret signs, he was able to make Israel bear the burdens of our troubles or, rather, to make it responsible for our failures in diplomacy and our casualties on the battlefield. Indeed, Obama may actually believe that this Islamic atrocity or that (or, for that matter, all of them) can be attributable to Zionism, about which he has never, never said a good word.

There is a long (pseudo)realist tradition in American foreign policy that puts the Jews at odds with our national interest. Eisenhower’s foreign policy tutor, John Foster Dulles, thought he could lure Gamal Abdel Nasser away from his Third World revolutionary fantasies if only Israel would not stand in the way. James Baker, who found ample common cause with Saddam Hussein, found the Israelis awfully incompatible. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, about whom I’ve written several times, are the shoddy intellectual heirs to this morally corrupt tradition.

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American Foreign Policy Fraud

JINSA Report #971
12 March '10

Presidents of the United States don't have to make friends, have friends or be friends. They do, however, have to manage America's foreign policy interests. The Obama Administration, by essentially demanding that Israel produce a Palestinian state even when the Palestinians are fractured and unable (they've never been willing) to deliver on the most minor promise, has elevated ideology over American foreign policy interests in the Middle East.

America's interest is to mute radical ideology and squelch terrorism, including Hezbollah and Hamas terrorism aimed at Israel, Jordan and Egypt, and funded and protected primarily by Syria and Iran-and increasingly, by Turkey. The Obama Administration's interest is Palestine. America's interest is to find a way to remove the Iranian threat from the Gulf and the rest of the Middle East. The Obama Administration's interest is Palestine. America's interest is to support consensual government and human rights. The Obama Administration's interest is Palestine. America's interest is to support democratic countries tied to us by values, history and security; to support Israel. The Obama Administration's interest is Palestine.

Vice President Biden's trip to Israel has been widely described as an intended "love fest," ruined by the Israeli announcement of new houses to be built in their capital. Friends of Israel bewailed the timing-though not the substance-of the announcement and asked with chagrin why Israel couldn't once, just once, get its PR right. Mr. Biden rudely kept Prime Minster and Mrs. Netanyahu waiting for dinner while he scoured his thesaurus for a diplomatic word for "condemn." In the end, he settled for "condemn." The Palestinians sniffed into their handkerchiefs that their delicate feelings had been bruised, and took to their beds unable to bear the thought of proximity talks.

What a fraud. Well, most of it is a fraud. The timing of the announcement probably did surprise the Israeli prime minister-although even if he had known, he also knew that Mrs. Clinton had publicly accepted that Israel's slowing of house building specifically did not apply to Jerusalem. But everything else is a fraud.

Mr. Biden did not come to make nice to Israel. The policy of the President-at whose behest he came-is to make Israel cough up Palestine. Mr. Biden's job was to move toward that goal. If sweet-talking the Israelis first was part of the deal, fine. But since it wasn't Israel holding up the works, it was the Palestinians, condemning Israel to entice the Palestinians always had to have been part of the plan. If the Israelis hadn't obliged with the announcement of apartments, Mr. Biden certainly would have taken on the Jewish "heritage sites," which the administration has already condemned. Or he would have fallen back on "settlements" or "checkpoints" or the "humiliation" of the Palestinians. The Palestinians, for their part, planned to accept whatever gifts Mr. Biden brought them and never, never, ever intended to be serious partners to either side.

The narrative before this week was that President Obama wasn't properly understood by Israel as a friend. The truth is that he was properly understood.
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