WikiLeaks reveal flaws in US Middle East policy

Tony Badran
NOW Lebanon
02 December '10
Posted before Shabbat


As the fallout from the WikiLeaks diplomatic cables continues, one unmistakable conclusion is that the principal tenets of Washington’s foreign policy establishment’s conventional wisdom, not to mention the Obama White House’s public policy positions, have been clearly disconnected from reality in the Middle East. Also apparent, however, is the problematic role which dubious allies played in propping up the administration’s discredited grand narrative.

These shady regional players deliberately fed the illusions back to influential American visitors, especially congressional delegations, thereby manipulating an alternative channel, which, alongside the assurances and admonitions of so-called foreign policy experts, reinforced the administration’s impulse to seemingly dismiss sound counsel and double down on what were clearly bad policy decisions.

The basic conceptual assumptions that have driven the administration’s public positions on Middle Eastern issues were initially distilled in the dreadful 2006 Baker-Hamilton report – the bible of establishment thinking, which was also hailed by the American left as the template for its theology of “engagement.” It was meant to right the wrongs of the Bush presidency, because it was supposedly a grown-up and “reality-based” set of principles. This allegedly “realist” narrative purported to know what the priorities of US regional allies were and what those allies expected of the US.

Several astute analysts realized that it was all a fallacy, and indeed it was quite easy to deduce that from publicly available, open-source material. WikiLeaks has now provided the official confirmation and vindication. For instance, while the conventional wisdom holds that the key regional dynamic is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the threats to US interests and allies, as well as to the stability of the region, directly derive from that conflict, a perusal of the leaked documents shows that the US’s Arab allies privately don’t assign to the Palestinian issue that level of centrality.

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The Great Mystery: What's The Obama Administration Up To On Israel-Palestinian Talks?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
22 November '10

Letters I receive from readers mainly focus on asking me what I think about the U.S.-Israel-PA negotiations about getting back to...negotiations. What is my view of this big deal that's being discussed for a three-month freeze on Israeli construction.

My response has been that until we have a clear, authoritative, and detailed description of what's being asked and offered, there's no sense in analyzing it.

Yet something very strange is going on. Before November, I pointed out that the urgent U.S. demand for a two-month freeze was a desperate attempt by the Obama Administration to be able to claim some diplomatic victory before what looked beforehand (and proved to be) a disastrous election. After all, what other possible explanation could there be for giving a lot to get Israel to stop building any apartments in the West Bank for eight weeks? There was no conceivable diplomatic payoff in terms of U.S. national interests or Middle Eastern peacekeeping to justify such a move.

So what can say of offering even more after the election for a twelve-week-long freeze?

All of the answers are seemingly ridiculous, though that doesn't make them any the less possible.

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Obama’s Middle East Failure

Joseph Puder
frontpagemag.com
17 November '10

The results of the mid-term elections were widely considered to be a rebuke of President Barack Obama’s policies, specifically against his domestic agenda. His foreign policy failures, however, have not been scrutinized as closely. Yet, the ramifications of his failed policies, particularly in the Middle East, reverberate daily.

The Obama administration’s withdrawal of 100,000 U.S. troops from Iraq, in the absence of a government able to provide security for the people of Iraq, has contributed to renewed sectarian violence, especially against the shrinking Christian community. Fr. Ladimer Alkhaseh, pastor of the Assyrian Evangelical Church in San Jose, CA, reacted to the massacre of more than 50 Christian worshipers in a Baghdad church on October 31, 2010, by saying, “The Obama administration needs to do more to help the Christians.” He added, “We want President Obama to intervene and basically stop the massacre of Christians in the Middle East.”

Obama, however, continues to appease the Muslim world. The remarks he made during his visit to Jakarta, Indonesia were in keeping with what he said in his June 2009 Cairo speech; a speech which did little to stem the jihadist slaughter of Christians in Iraq, Egypt, Gaza, and elsewhere in the Middle East. The perceived weakness and indecisiveness of Obama’s U.S. has given a back wind to Islamists everywhere — from Iran to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

In the meantime, irrespective of construction in Jerusalem, a new development in the Middle East is likely to derail Obama’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plans.

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Is This The Next Scenario For Middle East Talks?

Daled Amos
27 October '10

In her blog, Laura Rozen writes On the Mideast, waiting for superman.
Can you guess who superman is?

Another Washington Middle East hand who consults closely with the administration said he too has started to hear growing rumors in recent days of a possible official administration role on the Middle East peace process for Indyk. Under the arrangement that was described to that Middle East hand, the NSC's Dennis Ross would capitalize on his decent ties with Israel's Bibi Netanyahu to be a main administration point of contact with the Israelis, Indyk would capitalize on his good ties with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (universally referred to as Abu Mazen) to be a channel to the Palestinians, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be in charge.

Indyk, who has served in a consulting role to the team of Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell, professed Tuesday in response to a query that it was the first he had heard of any such plan.

Meantime, the New America Foundation's Steve Clemons said he is convinced that the man who can help Obama bring peace to the Middle East is former President Bill Clinton. That is the spouse of Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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Full House

Lee Smith
tabletmag.com
27 October '10

It seems fair to say that the Obama Administration’s Middle East policy has been a bust. The concept of “linkage”—on which the administration has based its approach to such thorny and specific problems as the Iranian nuclear program, the shakiness of the Iraqi political system, Syrian backing for violence, and the rise of Iranian-backed militias like Hezbollah and Hamas, and the Iranian take-over of Lebanon—has been clearly revealed as a species of magical thinking the main virtue of which appears to be that it absolves the United States of actually having to address problems that get worse with each passing month.

But if every new administration makes mistakes, and learns from them, President Barack Obama’s self-appointed task of bringing peace to the Middle East may get more difficult with the mid-term elections Tuesday, when the House, and perhaps the Senate, will fall into the hands of a Republican party that is poised to push back against an administration that is commonly perceived as less friendly to Israel than its predecessors.

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Obama Administration Has A New Angle In Its Claim To Support Israel

Daled Amos
16 July '10

The Obama administration has been working on its claim to support Israel, and truth be told--it has gotten better than this embarrassing moment during a State Department press conference back in November--when the State Department spokesperson tries desperately to point to some kind of accomplishment in Obama's efforts for Mideast peace--and keeps getting fisked on the spot by the questioner:

QUESTION: You mean you got the Israel Government to say, yes, we’re willing to accept a Palestinian state? You got Netanyahu to say that, and that’s his big accomplishment?
MR. KELLY: That is an accomplishment.
QUESTION: But previous Israeli administration – previous Israeli governments had agreed to that already.
MR. KELLY: Okay, all right.
QUESTION: So in other words, the bottom line is that, in the list of accomplishments that Mitchell has come up with or established since he started, is zero.

MR. KELLY: I wouldn’t say zero.
QUESTION: Well, then what would you say it is?
MR. KELLY: Well, I would say that we’ve gotten both sides to commit to this goal. They have – we have – we’ve had a intensive round or rounds of negotiations, the President brought the two leaders together in New York. Look --
QUESTION: But wait, hold on. You haven’t had any intense --
MR. KELLY: Obviously --
QUESTION: There haven’t been any negotiations.
MR. KELLY: Obviously, we’re not even in the red zone yet, okay.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MR. KELLY: I mean, we’re not – but it’s – we are less than a year into this Administration, and I think we’ve accomplished more over the last year than the previous administration did in eight years.
QUESTION: Well, I – really, because the previous administration actually had them sitting down talking to each other. You guys can’t even get that far.
MR. KELLY: All right.
QUESTION: I’ll drop it.

Since then, the Obama administration has figured out that if it is going to push a pro-Israel image, it is going to have to try a different angle, especially given the recent chill in US-Israel relations--caused in part by such things as:

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Debating Obama Policy Doesn’t Require Screaming But Logic and Honest Discussion

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
15 July '10

As I look at the occasional responses to the arguments I’m making by defenders of the Obama Administration, the arguments used to avoid thinking and talking about these issues seriously become increasingly apparent. They generally feature a refusal to discuss the substance of issues and put up instead a barrage of insults, characterizations, and non-logical or non-factual claims.

1. The right-wing argument. This says: you’re basically a right-wing person who is against a two-state solution and wants to do mean things to Arabs or Muslims. Therefore, we can ignore anything you say.

People who are conservative or right-wing have their own answers. For me, though, I need merely cite the following points. In American terms, I am not only a registered and life-long Democrat, but I worked for Democrats in both the Senate and House of Representatives; at one time worked at Democratic National Headquarters as a volunteer; worked on several presidential campaigns, was a consultant for a few Democratic senators, organized a Democratic group of foreign policy experts to prepare for the next presidency one of whose members (Madelyn Albright) became the secretary of state.

In Israel, I have always been active in the Labour Party or one of its offshoots, was an outspoken supporter of the Oslo effort, volunteered to teach courses for Palestinian institutions on the West Bank, was at the peace rally where Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered in November 1995, and have backed a two-state solution—under the right conditions, of course--for about 20 years.

And, believe me, I have a lot of contacts with Arabs, Turks, Iranians, and Muslims whose worries about Obama's policies are just as intense as my own.

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What Makes Obama Tock in the Middle East

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
13 June '10

In critiquing the Obama Administration, I don’t mean to suggest it has no reasons for desiring to please Arabs and Muslims as one of its highest (sometimes seemingly its highest) priorities. Unfortunately in practice this often means flattering the more extremist forces in those groups and giving short shrift to the more moderate among them.

This strategy isn’t a conspiracy; it just doesn’t correspond to the realities of the region or work particularly well.

The main factors inspiring this effort in terms of foreign policy--in contrast to ideological premises about America itself--are as follows:

1. The hope that Arab governments will help the United States extricate itself from Iraq and ensure there is a stable regime there that is friendly to the United States.

Leaving aside U.S. efforts within Iraq itself, there is no visible pay-off on this issue. Even relatively moderate (Sunni-led) Arab states are keeping the (Shia and Kurdish-led) Iraqi regime at arms'-length while still favoring Sunni rebels. Syria continues to back Sunni terrorists in every way and if their effectiveness is declining that's not due to Syrian moderation but to U.S. and Iraqi defensive efforts.

2. The hope that Arab governments will help the United States against Iran, especially in trying to stop Tehran from getting nuclear weapons and, if that fails, containing Iran. Clearly, some effort is needed here to assure basing rights. Yet here, too, the policy makes little difference. Arab regimes need U.S. protection against Iran and want American weapons for themselves.

At the same time, though, Arab states are also intimidated by Iran (especially given their perception that the Obama Administration is weak), and worried about internal subversive forces and their rivals portraying them as lapdogs of the West. They also know that nationalist and religious sentiments run high, in part because these same governments have long encouraged them further. Thus, their help will be limited no matter how much Obama tries to persuade them that he is a nice guy, sorry for the past, and not too close to Israel.

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RE: How Obama’s Policy Ensures More Flotillas

J.E. Dyer
Contentions/Commentary
07 June '10

Hard on the heels of Evelyn Gordon’s stingingly accurate analysis, the news comes that Iran is offering a naval escort for the next flotilla. The UK Guardian quotes a top Revolutionary Guard official speaking this past weekend:

“Iran’s Revolutionary Guard naval forces are prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys that carry humanitarian assistance for the defenceless and oppressed people of Gaza with all their strength,” pledged Hojjatoleslam Ali Shirazi, Khamenei’s personal representative to the guards corps.

This is not an empty threat. Iran’s navy has deployed units to the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea for antipiracy operations since December 2008. The Iranians have taken great pride in expanding their maritime operating range across the region; extending their navy’s reach into the Eastern Mediterranean is now an incremental step, something no longer obviously beyond their force’s capabilities.

This is the kind of move President Obama could have deterred by affirming U.S. support for Israel’s right to secure borders and self-defense. Iran has been emboldened to take this step — one that must provoke a regional showdown — by the perception that Israel stands condemned and alone.

With his response implying U.S. disengagement, however, Obama has ensured that we will ultimately have to do more to protect our own interests. If Iran makes good on this offer, Egypt will quickly face the game-changing decision about whether to allow Iranian navy ships through the Suez Canal for such a mission. And if the U.S. is not acting overtly to give Egypt what the military calls “top cover” — political support and material backing for a negative decision — there is no guarantee that Arab regional fears of Iranian militarism will govern the Egyptian thought process.

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How Obama’s Policy Ensures More Flotillas

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
07 June '10

The Obama administration plans to use Israel’s botched raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla to force Jerusalem to end or at least drastically ease its blockade on Gaza, because “we need to remove the impulse for the flotillas,” a senior administration official told the New York Times. That single statement encapsulates everything that is wrong with Obama’s Mideast policy — and indeed, that of the entire West: willful blindness to facts that inevitably produces counterproductive policies.

First, the statement assumes the flotilla was indeed motivated solely by the blockade. Yet the organizers themselves — the Free Gaza movement and the Turkish group IHH — have both made it clear that their agenda is far broader.

After interviewing Free Gaza co-founder and spokeswoman Greta Berlin last week, the New York Times reported that Berlin “likes to joke” about her two ex-husbands — one Palestinian, one Jewish. “But when she is not joking she says that her detractors in Israel are right, that she does not accept Israel as a Jewish state.”

In short, Berlin isn’t motivated by Gaza’s “humanitarian distress” but rather by a desire to see Israel disappear. Thus her motivation to stage anti-Israel provocations won’t vanish just because the blockade does.

IHH founder Bulent Yildirim, addressing a Hamas rally in Gaza last year, certainly talked a lot about the blockade. But according to MEMRI’s translation, he also declared that “everything is progressing toward Islam”; offered Hamas “the blessings of Saladin,” destroyer of the Crusader Kingdom, to which Islamists often compare Israel; said that if only Hamas hadn’t declared a cease-fire, “all of Turkey would be in Gaza” to help it fight Israel; and warned “the Jews” that “we are here, in Turkey, in Egypt, Syria, and everywhere, and our daughters and our boys can also defeat you.” In short, his agenda, too, is not merely ending the blockade, but ending Israel — unless you assume, as Westerners repeatedly and mistakenly do, that people like Berlin and Yildirim don’t actually mean what they say.

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“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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The Jews of Silence

Richard Baehr
American Thinker
18 April '10

The New York Times, in a front page article, described how President Obama appears to be reconsidering, if not turning away from, the historic strategic alliance between the U.S. and Israel. In remarks made at the end of the multinational nuclear security talks, Obama reinforced this message, saying the following:

It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower[.] ... And when conflicts break out, one way or another, we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the significance of these two lines as to the president's thinking. It is also impossible to read these and not realize that this president is the greatest threat to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and Israel since the founding of the modern Jewish state in 1948. The first sentence is in some ways the more incredible. No prior American president has been resentful or unhappy about leading the world's greatest superpower. This can mean only one of two things:

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Why Rashid Khalidi is Happy: The Obama Middle East Policy and the Palestinians

Ron Radosh
Pajamasmedia.com
18 April '10

A few weeks ago, when discussing the Obama administration’s policy towards Israel, I linked to this 2008 Los Angeles Times report on how Rashid Khalidi and other supporters of the Palestinian cause regarded Barack Obama as their friend. Obama’s warm words at a going away party for Khalidi in 2003, when he was about to leave Chicago for New York City and a position at Columbia University, had “left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.”

On Sunday’s Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, Khalidi was a guest along with Bret Stephens, the pro-Israel columnist from the Wall Street Journal and former editor of the Jerusalem Post. During the discussion, Zakaria asked whether or not it was “a shift for the — the United States to be suggesting that this stalled peace process [between Israel and the Palestinians] hurts America’s ability to pursue its interests.” What the administration is now saying, Khalidi responded, “is that Israel is a drag on the United States. It’s not a strategic asset, and this is a discursive shift of some significance.” (my emphasis) To put it a bit differently, Rashid Khalidi, who in 2008 worried that because of American politics Obama had to appear to be a supporter of Israel, now believes that Obama’s promise to move U.S. policy towards the Palestinian perspective is coming true.

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Secretary Clinton at Dedication of Center: Israel must jump higher, remain silent (insatiable demands)

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
16 April '10

[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

Here are Secretary of State Clinton's marching orders to Israel:

"But easing up on access and movement in the West Bank, in response to credible Palestinian security performance, is not sufficient to prove to the Palestinians that this embrace is sincere. So we encourage Israel to continue building momentum toward a comprehensive peace by demonstrating respect for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, stopping settlement activity, and addressing the humanitarian needs in Gaza, and to refrain from unilateral statements and actions that could undermine trust or risk prejudicing the outcome of talks."

There is a reason she doesn't just say "prejudicing the outcome of talks" because she knows what that means.

It means that Israel cannot annex territories during the course of negotiations.

That's the same limitation Israel accepted at the start of the Oslo process.

It is the only limitation.

What about settlement construction?

Oh, that's "spirit of Oslo".

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Obama’s Two-State Delusion

Moshe Dann
Frontpagemag.com
02 April '10

Let there be no mistake: President Obama’s attack on Israel’s right to govern in eastern Jerusalem has nothing to do with American national interests, and nothing to do with a “peace process.” Other American leaders may have disagreed with Israeli policy, but none of them made it a casus belli.

No other prominent politician sought to impose the “two-state solution,” based on 60-year-old cease-fire lines with Jordan, instead of a negotiated agreement. Obama’s move leaps beyond all previous “accords,” plans and “road maps.” Never before has the United States sought to dictate the terms of Israeli surrender, thereby undermining its only reliable ally in the region.

Obama’s obsession with the establishment of a second Arab Palestinian state might be understandable if it were based on a realistic appraisal of conditions as they are, instead of what they might be. The warning signals are there.

Two dramatic shifts have made the “two-state solution” irrelevant: the stand-off victory of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the hegemony of Hamas in Gaza and many areas of the West Bank, nominally under the Palestinian Authority, controlled by Fatah. One has to be ignorant, and/or blind not to appreciate what these situations mean – especially given the threats from Iran.

The developments have led to the widespread recognition, especially among Israelis, that the so-called “Oslo process” (“land for peace”) has failed, that Israel has no “peace partner,” and, therefore, that a second Arab Palestinian state is no longer relevant.

Today, unilateral withdrawal from Yehuda and Shomron (“the West Bank”) and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state is a “clear and present danger,” not only to Israel, but to the entire region.

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Leaving Behind All Logic and Rational Policy in an Effort to Bash Israel

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
29 March '10

When you barely scratch the surface of what's being said by the Obama Administration and supporters about its current one-way feud with Israel it is easy to see how ludicrous are the claims being made.

For example, here's Thomas Friedman producing a much-quoted statement where no one seems to see the glaring omission:

“This tiff actually reflects a tectonic shift that has taken place beneath the surface of Israel-U.S. relations. I'd summarize it like this: In the last decade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — for Israel — has gone from being a necessity to a hobby. And in the last decade, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process — for America — has gone from being a hobby to a necessity. Therein lies the problem.”

Typically, of course, he leaves out the second main party: the Palestinians. Imagine, in a conflict between two sides, the attitude of one of them has been completely left out of this formula. So I would add: for the Palestinians (or, if you wish, Palestinian Authority) the peace process has gone from a necessity to a nuisance.

And by the way: can anyone make a serious argument that obtaining a quick peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is either possible or a necessity for the United States? No. And the only way that this claim can be asserted is by systematically censoring out a dozen counter-arguments.

Moreover, as the United States fights for an instant peace process—only a few weeks after President Barack Obama admitted in January that it wouldn’t go anywhere—the Palestinians have been the main factor blocking it. The PA has refused to negotiate for 14 months while daily Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed the willingness to talk immediately.

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Iran and Syria Are Up; Egypt and Saudi Arabia Are Down. And this is Israel’s Fault?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
12 November 09

The Aztecs of Mexico believed that if they didn't sacrifice human victims each day the sun wouldn't come up the next morning. This seems to be the principle governing how Western elites blame Israel for everything that goes on in the Middle East and propose as a remedy even more U.S. concessions.

A remarkable example is how the New York Times tries to explain what is in fact a very important development in the region in an article entitled, “Influence of Egypt and Saudi Arabia Fades.” Wow! I could have told you that back in 2000.

But why has it faded? Could it be because of such long-term problems as these regimes' corruption, incompetence, rejection of reform, and inability to break from radical stances? Could it be that the fact that these regimes keep feeding anti-Americanism, hatred of Israel, militant interpretations of Islam, and extremism generally rebound against them?

And might it be that radical forces—like Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah—have shown, with help from the United States and Europe, that hardline positions and violence pay?

Could it possibly be, in the shorter term, that the apologies, concessions, and refusal to confront the extremist Islamists have emboldened them and demoralized the relative moderates?

No. Guess who is blamed?

“With Israel having rebuffed American calls to freeze settlement-building, and with the prospects for substantive peace talks fading, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are increasingly viewed in the region as diminished actors whose influence is on the wane, political experts say.”

These experts have obviously not been following the news. Seems to me that Israel did agree to freeze building on settlements (the word “settlement-building” implies Israel is building more settlements and expanding existing ones which isn’t true). Remember that speech Secretary of State Hilary Clinton just made in Jerusalem praising this concession?

(Continue article)

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Next, Locusts?

The abject failure of the Obama administration's Middle East policy

Eliot Abrams
The Weekly Standard
11/16/2009, Volume 015
Issue 09

Can anything else possibly go wrong for the Obama administration's Middle East policy? In the past ten days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has twice reversed herself publicly on her attitude toward the Israeli settlements. Palestinians have refused her direct request to rejoin peace talks with Israel, and Palestinian Authority president Abbas has said he will not run for reelection. U.S.-Israel relations are in a state of frozen mistrust. The New York Times and Washington Post, among others, are calling Obama's policy a complete failure--in news stories as well as editorials. The only thing missing is a plague of locusts.

The policy is indeed a complete failure. In ten months the administration has managed to offend and demoralize Israelis and Palestinians, lose the support of Arab governments, and reduce previously excellent relations with the government of Israel to levels unmatched since the James Baker days. Meanwhile, George Mitchell's trips to the region are increasingly reminiscent of the Colin Powell visits in 2002 and 2003--producing little but embarrassment. The Israeli "100 percent settlement freeze" and the Arab outreach to Israel, early goals of the Obama team, are now forgotten, as is an early resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

These disasters are mostly the product of an ignorant and belligerent attitude toward Israel and especially its prime minister. The ignorance was most evident in the administration's view that a total construction freeze could be imposed not only in every settlement but in Jerusalem itself. But the U.S. policy was worse: We demanded a freeze that would apply to construction by Jews, but not by Arabs; could any Israeli leader be expected to support such a position? One does not need to be a member of the Knesset to understand that such a freeze was impossible for Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition as it would have been for any Israeli prime minister--but apparently this fact was beyond the understanding of Mitchell, Rahm Emanuel, and all the other "experts" on the Obama team.

The belligerence toward Netanyahu has been evident all along, but is best shown by the refusal to tell Israel's prime minister whether or not the president will see him this coming week when Netanyahu (like the president) addresses the United Jewish Communities annual general assembly in Washington. The Israelis gave the White House weeks of notice that Netanyahu had agreed to speak, would be in town, and hoped to see Obama. The White House reaction has been to keep him twisting in the wind, with news stories several days before his arrival saying the president had not decided yet whether to see Netanyahu.

Think of it: Our closest ally in the region, critical issues at stake (from Iran's nuclear program and the recent Israeli seizure of an Iranian arms shipment meant for Hezbollah to Abbas's announcement), yet the Israelis get no answer. Obama and his "experts" may think they are reminding Netanyahu who is boss, but they are in fact reminding all of us why Israelis no longer trust Obama--and making closer cooperation between the two governments that much harder.
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The Wrecking Crew

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
05 November 09

In yet another “My, how they messed it all up!” assessment of the Obami’s Middle East peace efforts, the Washington Post finds consensus: “the administration’s efforts have faltered in part because of its own missteps.” The reviews are in and they’re not pretty:

Daniel Levy, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator now at the Century Foundation in Washington, summed up the administration’s efforts in recent days as “amateur night at the Apollo Theater.” He said the administration did not game out the consequences of its demands on the parties — and then flinched. “They just dug deeper and deeper their own grave,” he said. “All of this talk of negotiations doesn’t cut the mustard in the region.”

Turns out, just as conservative critics argued, the key error was in adopting the Palestinian bargaining gambit as our own — namely, insisting on an unattainable absolute freeze on settlements. This of course encouraged Palestinian intransigence and Israeli mistrust. The amateur show reached its climax as Hillary Clinton, like a flighty teenager, first praised Israeli concessions as unprecedented and then rushed to soothe the scorned Palestinians, assuring them that the absolute settlement freeze was still the U.S.’s aim.

As they were knocking over the furniture, the Obami felt compelled to deny the Bush-era agreement with Israel for reduced settlement activity. Rather than spruce that up with a bit of self-serving rhetoric and garner some credit for advancing the “peace process,” the Obama brain trust embarked on its fruitless quest for a settlement freeze, ultimately alienating both sides. As Elliott Abrams, George W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser, observed, “We had nine months of nonsense.” The Obami have earned the contempt of both sides and left the parties so estranged that face-to-face talks may no longer be in the offing.

This is the “smart diplomacy” set. This is Middle East strategy brought to us by Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, the sage gurus of international diplomacy who we are told egged Obama on and figured they might outfox Bibi Netanyahu or, better yet, orchestrate his downfall. For this they give the Nobel Peace Prize.

In many administrations, heads would roll. You’d see a shake-up of the advisers who presided over this debacle. But so sign of that yet. Emanuel and Axelrod have moved on to running the Afghanistan war, Clinton is “reasserting herself,” George Mitchell is racking up the frequent-flyer miles, and James Jones is doing whatever it is James Jones does. Should the mainstream American Jewish community be pleased with this display? Well, they’ve gone a bit mute, perhaps abiding by the advice that if you have nothing nice to say, better to be quiet. Nevertheless, those who vouched for the Obami’s brains and Zionist credentials were, we now know, duped.

As for the country as a whole and our allies, it is a sobering sight — the full extent of the Obami’s incompetence and arrogance and the results of both, that is. For those hoping to “restore America’s place in the world,” it’s about time to realize that our standing, at least in the Middle East, has never been lower. And let’s not forget: the same underachievers are supposed to be devising an Afghanistan-war plan and working to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. Do you feel safer yet?

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The Middle East: Can You Handle the Truth?

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
03 November 09

The Obama Administration has no idea of what is about to happen. After all, it has won hasn't it and done something positive for the Palestinians, right? It demanded that Israel freeze all construction on West Bank settlements. Israel agreed, save only that it finish the approximately 3000 units already begun. So the U.S. government can deem itself successful, having delivered something along the lines of what it promised originally to give the Palestinians.

Moreover, this agreement was ultimately gained without any corresponding Palestinian or Arab concessions. It will be remembered that for some months the United States tried to get the Arab side to give something. It failed. Nor did the U.S. government give anything to Israel in exchange for the freeze.

So objectively, what’s happened? Israel made a big concession; Israel got nothing; the Arab side gave nothing. Isn’t this a sort of Palestinian or Arab victory; proof of President Barack Obama’s leverage with Israel; an example of Israeli flexibility?

And, after all, when the current apartments being constructed are finished there will be a construction freeze. So all that’s necessary is to wait a few months, right?

Take a step back, clear your mind, look at it. Of course that’s what has happened. The Palestinians and the Arab states “should” be happy.

But this is the Middle East, a place where even if all Arab or Iranian demands are met, this only triggers anger, blame, complaint, and still more demands.

And you can’t solve the problem using Western rules. Hilary Clinton, stung by Arab criticism that she praised Israel’s plan too highly, does a bit of a turnaround two days after proclaiming Israel’s concession to be amazing:

“This offer falls far short of what we would characterize as our position or what our preference would be. But if it is acted upon, it will be an unprecedented restriction on settlements and would have a significant and meaningful effect on restraining their growth."

Nope, that won’t do it. You are saying a nice, rational, carefully callibrated Western-style statement: we want more but it’s a step in the right direction so it should be praised and it is a good thing. That isn’t how things work here. In the eyes of the Palestinian and Arab leadership Israel cannot ever do anything good. You can praise Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs every day of the week but you aren't allowed to ever say anything positive about Israel or do anything for that country.
(Full article)
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