Prospects for Peace

Israeli PM Netanyahu announced today his cabinet’s decision, “To suspend new construction in Judea and Samaria.” (Yes, they still call it Judea and Samaria). The Obama Administration responded within hours with a statement released by Secretary Clinton followed by a press briefing from Special Envoy George Mitchell. 

On the face of it, this was a step forward by the Israeli government, acknowledged and welcomed (though not blessed) by the US government, and a move that one hopes will facilitate Palestinian agreement to resume negotiations.  But if one digs just a little bit deeper, it becomes very evident that it was nothing of the sort. Rather, today’s events closed the first chapter in a game of dare being played out between the new leaderships in Washington and Jerusalem.

Today’s statements appeared to be part of an elaborate and ongoing dance of suspicion between the two supposed allies. During his first term as prime minister in the late 90’s, Benjamin Netanyahu made an enemy of then US President Clinton and played the Republican congress against the Democrat president. This directly led to the collapse of Netanyahu’s government and his fall from office. Judging by today, Netanyahu is keen for a repeat performance albeit under circumstances even less propitious for him politically. The response of the Obama team might be an interesting pointer as to where things might be headed on the peace front.

The Obama administration has been calling on Israel to make good on a settlement freeze commitment dating to the 2003 Bush-era Road Map (and, questionably to the 1993 Oslo DoP).  Netanyahu has been unwilling to do anything of the sort. He sought to codify a set of exemptions to a settlement freeze or in plainer English, guidelines for ongoing settlement expansion, and to have those blessed by Washington. The Obama team refused to become the first ever American government to formally authorize settlement expansion. That is the situation we have reached with today’s announcement.

Netanyahu’s cabinet clarified its so-called “settlement restraint” policy with today’s decision (some have called it a “moratorium” or a “freeze” but as you will see shortly, it is nothing of the sort, and those words are an inappropriate description). 

The only apparent restraint in the Israeli cabinet decision was to suspend issuing of new permits or beginning new construction in the West Bank for ten months. The less restrained side of the equation is this: 3000 units already under construction will continue; all public buildings and security infrastructure will continue to be built; no restrictions would apply to occupied East Jerusalem; and construction would resume after ten months.

Netanyahu also repeated the totally (meaningless)commitment of no new settlements or land confiscations (meaningless because since 1993, the official policy is no new settlements yet via expansion, new neighborhoods and outposts, the West Bank settler population has grown from 111,000 then to over 300,000 today, and because although the built-up area of settlements constitutes only 2% of West Bank land, double that amount is slated for growth, and a total of 40% comes under the Settlement Regional Councils, therefore land confiscation issue is a red herring).

While it is technically true that this “restraint” is a new Israeli commitment, its practical relevance is of very limited significance – building 3000 units in ten months neatly dovetails the regular annual settlement construction rates. Moreover, Netanyahu made sure to assertively mention all these caveats in today’s announcement – in effect, poking the Obama administration, the international community, and the Palestinians in the eye.

While some claim this was a politically courageous act by Netanyahu, the real litmus test is easy to apply: Has this led to any shakiness, any crisis, any resignations in the most right wing coalition ever in Israel’s history? The answer: absolutely not, and resignations in Israeli politics are about as rare as Turkeys on Thanksgiving. Netanyahu’s so-called “restraint package” was so minimalist that it kept his coalition happy while doing nothing to advance a genuine peace effort (Yes, there is some criticism from the far-right, and Netanyahu’s supporters will point to it as proof of his bravery, but as I say, the real test is in his coalition – and there: not so much as a wobble).

The interesting development today, indeed the unprecedented development, was in the US response. Yes, Senator Mitchell did pro-forma explain why this is new, why this was progress from the Israeli government. But the real American response came elsewhere, in Secretary Clinton and Envoy Mitchell’s statements. They did not bless the Israeli non-freeze, explaining it fell short and that they expected more, and that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements”. (Admittedly they could have explicitly said that after ten months and the 3000 units, their expectation was for not a single new home to be built, they didn’t).

But the new language came in Secretary Clinton’s description of what American expects the outcome of negotiations to be – for an “independent and viable [Palestinian] state based on the 1967 lines”. Senator Mitchell quoted Clinton in repeating the call for a Palestinian state “based on the 67 lines.”

Every conflict and every situation has its own lingua franca. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, a state based on the 67 lines is the dog-whistle for what constitutes a real, no-B.S. two-state outcome. It is also language that the US has conspicuously avoided using – avoided that is until today.

Previous administrations would speak of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 (but those are interpreted differently by the Israelis and Palestinians); the Clinton Parameters of December 2000 suggested percentages on territory, but never mentioned the 67 lines; in June 2002, President Bush used the phrase, ending the “occupation that began in 1967.” That language was adopted in the 2003 Road Map and used verbatim by President Obama in his September United Nations General Assembly speech. It is language very much open to interpretation. The “1967 lines” language add a far greater degree of clarity – and, as such,  is an anathema to the Greater Land of Israel, anti-peace forces (many of whom are represented in today’s Israeli government).

Interestingly, Secretary Clinton had begun to play with this language during her recent Middle East trip but had never been so explicit – until today. It is true that this adoption of new language comes late (perhaps too late) in the process and will need to be backed up by more concrete steps. It is though progress.

So the subtext of what went on today – the Obama administration is beginning to up the ante, at least declaratively, in the signals it is sending in response to Netanyahu’s stubbornness on settlements, and in setting the table for the next phase of its peace efforts.

The question of course is – what next? Senator Mitchell gave some hints about that also. He suggested that the US was still pursuing a comprehensive peace effort and notably discussed Syria at some length. He briefly mentioned the option of resuming regional multilateral talks with Israel and various Arab states on issues such as water and energy at an appropriate time. Most interesting perhaps, Senator Mitchell explained that negations, “will proceed on a variety of tracks,” and while he continued to push for the resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, he also spoke of parallel talks that the US would conduct with each of the parties.

This combination of back-to-back negotiations – US-Israel and US-Palestinians – combined with the reference to the 1967 lines may signpost the way out of the peace impasse. The US will need to elaborate and put flesh on the bones of its “based on the 1967 lines” parameter and then pursue a conversation, mostly with the Israeli side, on how to implement that, and if necessary go public with a plan and  tie incentives/disincentives to its acceptance/rejection.

This piece also appears in Haaretz

Is the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, which is currently proposing to seek United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 border, about to shake up the Israeli-Palestinian paralysis in a game-changing way? The answer for now would appear to be "no." Both U.S. and EU officials were quick to distance themselves from the idea and label it premature. For their part, the Israelis took umbrage at this hint of Palestinian unilateralism. In case anyone failed to notice how much irony was dripping from this indignation, days later Israel indulged in yet another unilateral act of its own: advancing plans for the expansion of Gilo in East Jerusalem.

By mid-week, some Palestinian leaders were busy retreating to a more minimalist version of the "statehood now" plan. The option of a unilateral declaration of independence was more a reflection of frustration and desperation than it was a profound development in Palestinian strategic planning capacity or political smarts. It seems that talk of the move was both tentative and ill-conceived.

No plan was revealed that would address the obvious questions arising from such a strategy. Would the Palestinians maintain the Palestinian Authority in this scenario, given its overwhelming dependence on Israel? What would be the status of the mission of U.S. General Keith Dayton to train the Palestinian security forces in this new context? What would happen with taxes and border crossings, and how would the PLO advance its struggle internationally?

The list of questions goes on, but the paucity of answers from the PLO leadership suggests that it has yet to seriously consider a strategic alternative to its 16-year dependence on negotiations with Israel. In fact, the entire episode looked like another example of the PLO trying to leverage its weakness rather than rediscover or create new strengths.

Despite all this, the Palestinian flirtation with a new approach does have some significance. It is part of a new fluidity and questioning of assumptions that have entered the Israeli-Palestinian arena. Palestinian civil society, for instance, has long ceased to rely on its leadership's strategies for achieving de-occupation. Inside the territories, nonviolent resistance, notably to the separation barrier, continues to gather adherents and momentum. Outside, the campaigns for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel are growing to dimensions that should make Israel's leaders sit up and take notice.

Hamas leaders are stepping up efforts to break their international isolation and slowly absorbing the implication for their future actions of the Goldstone Report's accusation against them of war crimes. Overall, there is an increasingly pervasive new sense of uncertainty in the region. Opposite this, Israel's leadership demonstrates an impressive capacity for tactical maneuvering, but is as bereft as the PLO of a strategic outlook.

At this stage, it is unclear whether any new strategic direction will come from the Obama administration; so far it has kept both sides guessing. The sharpness of U.S. criticism of President Mahmoud Abbas for not returning to negotiations was unexpected, given American investment in his leadership. The White House's admonition of Israel for advancing the approval process of a new neighborhood in Gilo was highly unusual, too.

Prime Minister Netanyahu's seeming addiction to poking American presidents in the eye seems to be souring relations with the Obama administration even more quickly than happened with President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s (an unwise predeliction that directly triggered Netanyahu's fall from political power at the time).

So it is still Washington rather than Ramallah that is likely to shape the next phase of any peace effort. After 10 months of the Obama team's efforts to pursue essentially the same old peace process (albeit with greater vigor), the collapse of that edifice is increasingly visible. A half-baked declaration from Ramallah is unlikely to chart a fresh path forward. Instead, Washington should be reviewing the reasons why that worn-out peace process architecture cannot deliver, and embracing a course correction.

For all the talk of resuming direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, no one really expects them to bring about a breakthrough. If the aim is to resolve the 1967 issues (borders - including those of Jerusalem; settlements, two states and security), then the focus needs to be on an agreement between the international community and Israel on the details and conditions for de-occupation, and between the international community and the Palestinians on the transition to Palestinian assumption of sovereign responsibilities (international oversight of security, for instance). If the aim is to resolve the 1948 issues (Israel's creation, the refugee narrative, and ending all other outstanding claims), then American or Quartet mediators will need to pursue a far broader, bolder and more inclusive conversation than the technical fix approach that has previously held sway.

Either way, U.S. or Quartet-led back-to-back negotiations with the Israelis, on the one hand, and Palestinians, on the other, are more likely to produce results than putting the current Israeli and Palestinian leaderships in a room together. But absent such American initiative, we should not be too flabbergasted if next time around, a Palestinian declaration of political reorientation is actually matched by a strategy and a plan, or if it reshapes the conversation.

This piece also appears in The Washington Note

This was not a good week for the Obama administration's Middle East peace efforts. Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem last Saturday, Secretary Clinton seemed to be praising the distinctively partial limitations that Israel was willing to implement on settlement non-expansion. During the following days in Morocco and Cairo, she walked those remarks back, but the damage had been done.

By Thursday, the American-sponsored Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was sufficiently exasperated to announce that he will not be standing for re-election, and all week the media and political commentary on the U.S. approach was scathing about America's efforts--even by Middle East standards.

Speaking to the Washington Post, I described the U.S. approach of the past days as amateurish--a perhaps harsh, but unfortunately apt, label. On the positive side, I think the administration folks are themselves aware that this is not going swimmingly. The overall administration scorecard on Middle East peace is slipping into the red.

But first, let's be fair about that record.

The Obama administration merits significant credit for having acknowledged from the get-go that advancing a solution on Israel-Palestine, or at least reaching a post-occupation equilibrium, is a key American national interest--a realization that was belatedly groped at by the Bush administration and was set forth from day one by its successor. That displays a keen understanding of the centrality of how the Israeli-Palestinian issue impacts America's standing and ability to advance its goals, including the push back against extremism in the region and beyond. National Security adviser General Jones repeated the assertion last week at the J Street conference. Credit, too, for the administration for acting on this. A senior envoy, Senator Mitchell, was appointed on day two, and deployed shuttling back and forth to the region. The President delivered a ground-breaking speech in Cairo, the Arab world was deeply engaged (unlike the past), and a marker was set down on settlements. It was on this latter issue of settlements, however, where things began to unravel.

The Obama team's call for a comprehensive settlement freeze was consistent with past U.S. policy (notably Bush's Roadmap of 2003), although it was perhaps treated with more seriousness coming from the new 'hope and change' President. The Israel Prime Minister's answer came in June, and it was a rejectionist one: no full freeze, and no limitations whatsoever on settlements in East Jerusalem. That is when the malaise set in.

The administration had three possible options in responding:

1) Stick to its guns and calibrate a set of escalating consequences in response to possible ongoing Israeli recalcitrance.

2) Make a smart pivot by declaring, for instance, that if Israel could not for its own reasons freeze settlements, then this would make all the more urgent the need to quickly define and agree a border for an Israel-Palestine two-state solution. And the U.S. could reasonably have adopted a formula regarding that border (such as based on the 1967 lines, minor mutual modifications to accommodate settlements close to the Green Line in a one-to-one land swap). The U.S. could have explained to its Israeli friends that absent a defined border, the settlement freeze would have to be comprehensive, but in the discussion on borders, there could be more flexibility given the one-to-one land swaps.

3) Dig themselves into a hole. Insisting on a freeze, heightening expectations, without a plan for achieving that end, and by then acceding to talks with the Israeli government over koshering aspects of settlements expansion.

It is certainly legitimate for the administration to have not chosen option one, and to have decided that this was the wrong issue and/or wrong timing to escalate with the Netanyahu government. My own preference would have been for option two, and indeed, the administration could reasonably be perceived to have laid the ground deftly for such a pivot. Unfortunately, they went for option three, and it all came crashing down around their feet this week.

The Secretary's last minute stop in Cairo to round off the trip said it all. The Mubarak regime tried to help salvage some American pride, lining up behind the Secretary's efforts. Except that it is precisely the Mubarak government whose credibility is so severely questioned in the region, it is the largest Arab recipient of American financial assistance, and is obsessed with leadership succession--in short, getting a smile out of the Egyptian leader doesn't even register on the congratulatory charts.

There is nonetheless potentially good news in all of this. Those who are writing off the administration's peace efforts, friend and foe alike, are being premature in the extreme. This is a benefit of starting on day one--you can acknowledge the need for a course correction in month ten. In fact, it is not the new approach of the Obama administration that has failed, but rather, this is a moment of clarity regarding the bankruptcy of the old approach that has guided policy for over a decade and that the Obama team had inherited and embraced.

As Rob Malley and others have argued, what is needed now is a review (as has been conducted in other foreign policy areas) and a testing and likely abandonment of many of the prevailing policy assumptions. These might include the notion that one can incrementally build confidence between the sides when the prevailing reality is one of occupation, that bilateral negotiations between representatives of an occupied people and the occupying party can deliver de-occupation, that Palestinian political division should be encouraged (not overcome), or that proven self governance capacity under occupation is a precondition for freedom and independence.

If the goal still is Israel's security, recognition, and a guaranteed future as a democracy and a Jewish national home, alongside a secure, viable, and post-occupation Palestine and advancing America's national interest, and this should be the goal, then a new path is needed for reaching that destination. It will certainly require more international and U.S. lifting.

The Obama team is perfectly capable of charting a course from a bad week to a game-changing success, but more of the same won't get them there.

 This piece appears at Foreign Policy online

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stepped from the frying pan into the fire this weekend, when she sparked a controversy regarding U.S. policy toward Israeli settlements right after some tough days of public and private diplomacy in Pakistan. But was the controversy as serious as it seemed? And what does it means for the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts? Here, a fact check on some settlement myths and misconceptions.  

1. What is the significance of Clinton's linguistic acrobatics? 

Standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night in Jerusalem, the secretary seemed unequivocally to line up with the Israeli leader in relation to the ongoing dispute over the settlements. Clinton described Israel's offer of a policy of settlement "restraint" (i.e., not freeze) as "unprecedented." Prime Minister Netanyahu looked pleased as punch as Clinton placed the dead cat firmly at the Palestinians' door.

Monday, Clinton rushed to correct the impression of a policy shift, delivering remarks with the Moroccan foreign minister at her side in which she described Israel's restraint policy as falling "far short" of America's position or preference. She also reiterated America's 40-year opposition to Israeli settlement policy and rejection of "the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements" -- all things that she had failed to mention at the presser in Jerusalem. The Obama team's image of credibility and competence had taken a serious hit.  The Arab League's Secretary General, Amr Moussa, went on record to say "failure is in the atmosphere ... all of us are deeply disappointed" and that "we're not impressed".

In a sense, Clinton's prevarications aren't hard to understand. Since September's U.N. General Assembly tri-lateral meeting, the administration has been trying to extricate itself from Netanyahu's blunt refusal to meet the U.S. demand for a settlement freeze.  The Obama team chose not to escalate in the face of this rejectionism from its ally in Jerusalem. The U.S. message to both sides became: "Good Israeli progress on the settlements -- we expect more, but in the meantime, let's re-launch negotiations." Clinton was in effect reiterating that message with greater force during this trip -- and perhaps venting frustration at the Palestinians' lack of enthusiasm for this formula. However, that does not change the bottom line: The United States created an expectation for a settlement freeze, did not meet it, and is now paying a price of diminished standing in the region. 

2. Was Clinton right in describing the Israeli concessions as "unprecedented"? 

One of the more criticized aspects of Clinton's remarks was her repetition of Israel's policy of "restraint" toward settlement growth as "unprecedented" -- suggesting that the U.S. condoned that policy. Technically, yes, the policy is unprecedented -- Israel has not before publicly delineated a limited number of specific housing units (only those already under construction) beyond which it would not build in the West Bank. 

In terms of substantive impact, use of the term "unprecedented" is on flimsier ground. The approximately 3,000 housing units that Israel will continue to build is par for the course for its annual settlement expansion. And of course, the exclusion of East Jerusalem renders the arrangement a nonstarter to the Palestinian and Arab side, since no two-state solution can be envisaged without a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. 

The arrangement could, however, become genuinely unprecedented if the 3,000 units already under construction were explicitly acknowledged as the final settlement expansion of any kind, full stop. That may be the logic of the U.S. effort, but it has not yet been unequivocally articulated.

3. Should a settlement freeze be a precondition for negotiations?

The Palestinian leadership has been arguing that absent a settlement freeze, there is little point in resuming negotiations on a two-state solution. The original Oslo Agreement states that "Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations." This is a clause that the Palestinians have consistently referred to in claiming that settlement building is a violation of past signed agreements. Yet the Palestinians never before made such a stand on the issue. In Jerusalem on Saturday night, Netanyahu reiterated that, in the 16 years of previous negotiations since Oslo, a settlement freeze has never been an explicit precondition for talks -- and he was backed up by Clinton, who confirmed that "what the prime minister is saying is historically accurate." Netanyahu and Clinton were both right.

It is also worth noting that, contrary to much reporting, the Obama administration never made negotiations conditional on a settlement freeze. Rather, they argued that the freeze would be part of the actions needed to create an environment conducive to successful talks.

Nevertheless, the United States should view the current Palestinian insistence on a settlement freeze as a long overdue course correction. Had a settlement freeze been insisted upon when talks began in 1993, an agreement today would be dramatically more attainable. Back then, 111,000 Israelis resided in the West Bank alone, while today that number has surpassed 300,000. For most Palestinians, this belated insistence from their leadership is better late than never and perhaps the only way to revive any faith in the efficacy of a negotiated path to Palestinian freedom. For the PLO leadership, negotiating over an ever-shrinking territory has been an exercise in political self-emaciation. It is an exercise they can ill afford to continue, especially given the internal political challenge they now face from Hamas.

4. Do settlements really matter?

Yes, and then some. No single development during the peace process has done more to undermine Palestinian confidence in the possibility of the two-state solution. Likewise, nothing is as politically foreboding for an Israeli prime minister who is actually ready for a viable two-state deal than the awaiting confrontation with the settlers and their supporters.

Clinton seemed to be commending Netanyahu on a restraint policy that includes a commitment to "build no new settlements, expropriate no land." While this sounds like an impressive concession, the actual impact of this policy on the ground will be very limited.

Since Oslo began, Israel has considered it diplomatically impolite to officially create new settlements. Successive Israeli governments found convenient alternatives -- expanding existing communities, creating new suburbs of existing settlements (sometimes several kilometers from the original site), and most notably facilitating the establishment of over 100 new "outposts." The outposts are not formally authorized but they normally have the necessary infrastructure, water, electricity, and security needs provided by Israel's governing authorities and they are not removed -- settlements by another name.

Over 40 percent of the land of the West Bank is already within the municipal jurisdiction of the settlements, even though only about 2 percent is currently built up. So "no new land confiscation" is an empty and irrelevant gesture. For a full settlement freeze to really be meaningful, it would have to include a prohibition on advancing permits for planning and zoning of new settlements, and it would have to deal with the entirety of the settlement infrastructure. Netanyahu's jargon regarding the settlements needs translation -- and the translation is that such commitments are meaningless. 

5. So, what's next?

The Obama administration still seems to be pushing the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as the key goal. Under current circumstances, that would be a hard pill to swallow for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, especially if Palestinian elections are on the horizon. But even if talks were restarted, many in the Middle East are struggling to see the point of yet more negotiations after all these years.  The issues and their solutions are largely known, but the expectations that negotiations would deliver anything meaningful are nearly nonexistent. Another option for the U.S. would be to initiate back-to-back talks with the respective parties -- this approach may actually be more productive than bilateral talks between two parties who have proven that they cannot resolve this conflict on their own.

After all of my questions, it is worth recognizing the question that is actually being asked of America from the citizens of the Middle East themselves: When will there be a serious American implementation plan for a two-state solution that recognizes the asymmetries of power and vital needs of each party and that is determinedly pursued by an administration which has, from day one, made Israeli-Palestinian peace a strategic American priority? On this question, we are all still waiting for an answer.

Marc Lynch has been kind of enough to allow me to publish this guest post on his blog at Foreign Policy with five observations on the latest deterioration in the internal Palestinian political situation.  

Rumors have been circulating in recent weeks of the imminent signing, in Cairo at the end of this month, of an Egyptian-brokered Palestinian reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas. There is even what purports to be an agreed draft document in existence. Over the past week, that unity deal appeared less and less likely, notably against the backdrop of the fallout from the PA’s abandonment of the Goldstone report at the UN Human Rights Council and the dramatic impact that had on the already compromised standing of the Fatah leadership (and the way it strengthened Hamas’s hand).

Well as of yesterday, the reconciliation agreement has been put on indefinite hold. PLO Chair and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas gave a televised speech in Ramallah in which he explained and defended the PA Ramallah’s position and launched a frontal verbal assault on Hamas. Within hours, Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal responded from Damascus with an assertive pushback, a withering critique of Abbas’s leadership and a definitive ‘no’ to any unity under current circumstances. Deposed Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh weighed in today from Gaza in support of Meshaal’s position, and on the flip side, some of Fatah’s leaders have begun to rally around their embattled leader.

It is not clear what Egypt’s next steps will be or how this will unfold in the coming weeks. Marc Lynch has been kind of enough to allow me to post this guest blog with five observations on this latest deterioration in the internal Palestinian political situation.

1. Abbas tries to shore up his base, Hamas overplays its hand

Mahmoud Abbas’s account of the PA/PLO’s management of the Goldstone report and his insistence that it will now be acted upon will do little to sway or convince his domestic political opponents or just about anyone in the NGO/human rights community, or third party/independent political forces in the Palestinian territories or diaspora. But they were apparently not his target audience in yesterday’s speech – rather, he seemed to be appealing to his home base inside Fatah.

To recover from recent setbacks, Abbas has apparently decided he needs to first of all re-establish his standing inside Fatah, and he has started to do that by taking off the gloves and offering lots of red meat in his attacks on the enemy… not Israel, stupid, but Hamas. After a summer of impressive politicking by Abbas with the Fatah conference and filling of vacancies in the PLO’s Executive Committee, everything was beginning to fall apart as key Fatah members joined the unprecedented outpouring of anger expressed over the PLO’s Goldstone decision.

Abbas provided just enough yesterday to give those parts of the Palestinian press that are PA-controlled (and who also found themselves having to join the criticism), and the PA-Fatah nomenklatura a just-about-plausible narrative to fight back with.

Abbas received help from an unlikely source – Khalid Meshaal, who overplayed his hand by abruptly saying ‘no’ to reconciliation, thereby allowing some of the blame in the public debate to shift from Fatah to Hamas. This was picked up eagerly by the pro-Abbas elements of the PA-Fatah echo chamber, for instance in today’s editorial in the pro-PA Palestinian al-Quds.

2. The Abbas-Fatah-PA Position Remains Tenuous
Even though Abbas came out punching in his press conference and has shored up some Fatah support, it is still very unlikely to be enough to reverse the trends of the past weeks which run heavily against his leadership group. Even yesterday’s statement failed to provide a reasonable explanation on the Goldstone affair, to really accept responsibility, or to draw a line under this episode. The criticism of Abbas & Co. in the past fortnight has been dramatic. The handling of the Goldstone report was the latest and by far the most damning of a series of setbacks.

First Abbas attended the New York trilateral meeting without initially securing an Israeli settlement freeze, contradicting his own commitments (and the claim that he was just attending a meeting, not resuming negotiations–while actually quite logical and diplomatic–was not effective in political terms). Even prior to New York, a powerful anti-PA narrative existed regarding its ongoing security and economic cooperation (for the critics, read: collaboration) with Israel, suggesting the PA was acting for personal and patronage self-interests, and as a subcontractor of the occupation, rather than standing up for and defending Palestinian interests. Then came the release of 20 female Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Hamas producing video evidence of Gilad Shalit’s well-being (and Abbas hosting the released prisoners in Ramallah fooled nobody).

The Goldstone debacle was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and yesterday will do little to reverse that tide. Abbas continues to be in an unenviable position. That is likely to remain the case until there is either a shakeup in Palestinian politics or until Fatah presents and acts on an alternative to its longstanding strategy of being exclusively negotiations-dependent. The Fatah leadership is simply still bought-in to a political strategy that has been fatally undermined and flawed, namely that with US support it will negotiate with Israel a way out of occupation and to independence, and will do so without a serious effort to mobilize international pressure or domestic resistance whether of the non-violent or violent kind (I’m not advocating any of the above, just setting out the debate).

The US, put simply, has not delivered Israel. The Israelis are not dismantling the occupation of their own free will, and the PA-Fatah strategy has precious little traction with its own people.

3. Can any good come out of this latest spat?

In actual fact, the collapse of the latest Cairo effort may not be such a bad thing. The draft document under discussion raised more questions than it answered, and a unity effort based on such a document would likely have collapsed in very short order. One of Abu Mazen’s closest confidants was heard recently to say that if the previous unity agreement lasted three months, this one would have barely lasted three days. Partly this reflects the state of play and more deepened animosity between the key actors in Fatah and Hamas. But it also has something to do with the mediation effort.

The Egyptian monopoly in leading the reconciliation effort is just not helpful or conducive to success. Egypt has a role to play but it cannot be the exclusive mediator. Following the visit of Saudi King Abdullah to Damascus last week and the ongoing rapprochement between the Syrians and the Saudis, there is a strong case to be made for broadening the mediation effort to include these two key actors and perhaps others in addition, notably Turkey, Qatar, and if they were willing to play a role, Jordan too.

A reconstituted Palestinian polity and national movement is likely to be crucial to any successful peace effort, and an optimistic take on the latest set-back to unity is that it could presage a redoubled effort in the future that is more effectively and solidly structured.

4. A Pyrrhic victory for Israel

The Israeli government has largely refrained from commenting thus far on these developments. If previous positions are anything to go by (and in this case, they most certainly are), then Israel’s political leadership will be encouraging further Palestinian division and enjoying every moment of it. At first glance, it would seem to make sense for Israel to favor a divided, and thereby weakened, Palestinian interlocutor/adversary.

For any Israeli government seeking to maintain the status quo and avoid any hard choices on peace, a logic of win-win may even apply here. If the Palestinians remain divided then Israel can bemoan the lack of domestic legitimacy or capacity to implement of its Palestinian partner (“What’s the point of cutting a deal with Abbas? He can’t deliver anyway,” they would say).

If there is a unity agreement, then Israel can claim that the Palestinian interlocutor has done a deal with the devil (as in Hamas), is now tainted with terrorism, and is therefore no longer a legitimate negotiating partner. In today’s circumstance, one can even throw a further ‘win’ into the mix – the Palestinian political standoff will make it even more difficult for Abbas to begin negotiations  without a settlement freeze, Israel ain’t doing a settlement freeze, and the Palestinian can be blamed for the lack of progress!

The Israeli government’s standard modus operandi would now be to very publicly declare the need to strengthen its Palestinian partner, throw them a few economic bones, maybe a new frequency for a second mobile phone operator, or even a minor and highly sectarian prisoner release. The entirely predictable effect of this is, of course, to further stigmatize and delegitimize the Palestinian recipient of this faux largesse.

Such a strategy may all seem terribly smart to its Israeli designers but I would suggest that this is an enormously costly and tragic pyrrhic victory. The net effect of this ongoing approach is to render ever less viable and likely a two-state solution. That in itself is far more threatening to Israel’s future than to the Palestinians (who, unlike any adherent to Zionism, can accept or even prefer a one state outcome).

5. What does it all mean for America’s peace efforts?

I’ll keep this brief. Abbas is now in an even worse position to sign up for the new formula of resuming negotiations sans settlement freeze. Such bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations would anyway now be rendered even less likely to produce a groundbreaking or even constructive outcome.

I’ve argued elsewhere that for all the criticism that it has encountered, the Mitchell approach actually has its advantages and has created some useful potential pivots for the US peace effort. The diplomatic shuttling of Special Envoy Senator George Mitchell between the parties is likely to prove more productive at this stage than getting the parties to sit together. The most important conversations will anyway need to take place between America and each of its interlocutors – the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the Arab states. Those conversations should now be shifting to a more sustained focus on the nature and details of a post-occupation two-state reality.

The US needs to continue to work towards an appropriate moment, in the not too distant future, for presenting an internationally backed American implementation proposal for a viable and dignified two-state outcome.

In that effort, the lack of a resumption of direct talks does not represent a setback, but the deepening division inside the Palestinian polity does. The Obama Administration cannot continue for much longer to sit this one out (de facto encouraging the split). A public U-turn is unnecessary; rather, the US should be quietly encouraging its allies and non-allies in the region to step into the breech (the aforementioned Saudis, Syrians, Turks, Qataris …etc) to supplement Egyptian efforts, and to help restructure a Palestinian national movement that can carry forward a serious peace effort.

 Israel's parliament, the Knesset, reopened today after a long break for the summer and the Jewish holidays. In line with protocol, Israel's president opened the winter session and Shimon Peres had this to say on the linkage between reaching peace with the Palestinians and addressing the Iran issue:

In my opinion, if we move forwards with peace and make peace with the Palestinians, and if we start negotiations with Syria and Lebanon, we will remove the main pretext for the Iranian madness - against us and against the other residents of this region. (President Peres, October 12th in the Israeli Knesset).

Now Mr. Peres is in reality not exactly the dove he is portrayed to be (he authorized many of the settlements, he supported Israel's recent wars with Lebanon and Gaza, and he never really earned his own Nobel peace prize), but this was nonetheless an interesting acknowledgement of the linkage from Israel's head of state--and it seems to directly contradict the messaging coming from Israel's ambassador to Washington D.C., Michael Oren.

Here's Michael Oren in an interview on October 3rd for Newsweek:

Q: Do you believe that the Arab states would make their support of action against Iran contingent on progress in the peace process?

A: No, there is no linkage whatsoever. The Arab states understand that the peace process is going to take a while, and we don't have a while with Iran. The peace clock and the Iranian nuclear clock are running at completely different speeds.

Oren was simply, and spiritedly, sticking to a lame PR line that has now been exposed as rubbish by none other than Israels' own president. On entering office six months ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu tried a similar trick, arguing that Iran would have to be dealt with first and that the Palestinian issue could be placed on the backburner. But President Obama wasn't buying any of that, insisting that both issues be addressed in parallel, and much to the chagrin of the Likud hawks, making Israeli-Palestinian peace a priority--something he repeated when responding to being awarded the Nobel peace prize last Friday.

The linkage, though aggressively denied by occupation apologists, is all too real (and credit to President Peres for acknowledging that). Here's how it works.

Iran's ability to spread influence and use leverage in the region is partly a product of the largesse it spreads around and of the allies it has through denominational allegiance or simple patronage. But crucially, it also depends on the narrative that Iran espouses--and the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict is central to that. Iran does not have an appealing story to tell the region when it comes to it system of governance based on an interpretation of Shia jurisprudence (Velayat-e Faqih) or when it comes to its internal freedoms and achievements.

Rather, the narrative which allows Iran to speak to the Muslim and notably Sunni street, above the heads of Arab leaders, can be paraphrased as follows:

Only we, Iran, are standing up to the Israelis and the Americans in defense of our downtrodden Palestinian brothers and sisters; you, the Arab leadership who are close to America, host American troops, visit Washington and do Washington's bidding, and are even openly or sometimes secretly in contact with the Israelis--all these friendships have done nothing to help the Palestinians or address their grievance; our version of resistance is therefore honorable when compared to your shameful collusion.

It may be grating to the ear and make us feel uncomfortable, but that is a message that resonates. And that is what President Peres seemed to understand in suggesting that peace with the Palestinians would, in his words, "remove the main pretext for the Iranian madness."

Ending the occupation and delivering peace would fundamentally undermine Iran's narrative and its leverage.

Realizing a comprehensive peace can be done as part of a process of U.S. dialogue with Iran in which these issues are also raised, or it can be done in parallel to an engagement with Iran (it should not be done as part of a blunt, unsophisticated frontal assault on Iran, as was tried at Annapolis during the Bush presidency).

 This piece was co-written with my colleague Amjad Atallah, with whom I direct the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation.

It was first published at the Guardian.

This article also appeared in Haaretz

After his triumphant United Nations visit and trilateral New York summit, the verdict apparently is in: Benjamin Netanyahu is the heavyweight diplomatic champion of the world, defeating Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by a knockout and U.S. President Barack Obama on points. How do we know? Well, we are told, the preeminent goal of the second Netanyahu premiership is now within reach, namely urgent and unconditional permanent-status negotiations with the Palestinians on all issues, with active American shepherding.

Really? Does Netanyahu really want, at the earliest opportunity, to be negotiating the 1967 borders, land swaps, settlement evacuation, and the sharing or dividing of Jerusalem, while there are Palestinians and Americans in the room? I don't think so. So what did he think he was getting himself into?

The much derided and scorned Obama team actually has pulled off one of the more difficult moves in diplomatic choreography. They now have a tricky interlocutor, in this case Israel's leader, enthusiastically embracing their target (endgame two-state negotiations) as his own.

This does not mean we have entered the home stretch, or that a two-state deal is now a foregone conclusion. Netanyahu will no doubt pursue new exit strategies, but several of his more cherished diversionary tactics already have been neutralized, and Israel's prime minister is barely even aware he has been mugged.

Not that this exercise has been cost-free for the Obama administration. A price has been paid, both in the squandering of newly earned goodwill with the Arab and Muslim worlds and in appearing to Israelis to have blinked first. Still, neither of these is irreversible.

Let's be honest: The general assumption when Netanyahu returned to the prime minister's office was that he would do everything to avoid being cornered into negotiating the core two-state issues. That was understandable, given that his opening positions, on territory or Jerusalem for instance, fly in the face of U.S. and international consensus and previous Israeli precedents. And so he did.

The initial rabbit Netanyahu pulled out of the hat to avoid the core Palestinian issues was called "Iran first." That was politely yet firmly rebuffed by a well-deployed counterargument from the Americans. The Iran file becomes harder, not easier, to manage if the Palestinian issue is neglected or allowed to deteriorate further.

Next came the "normalization first" canard: The Arab states must take tangible steps toward normalizing relations with Israel if Israelis are to have faith in a renewed two-state effort. This one showed more promise. Alas, as Nahum Barnea reported last week in Yedioth Ahronoth, when Israel's government takes a meaningful settlement freeze off the agenda, there can be no serious push for Arab gestures.

Finally, we were served the Netanyahu specialite de la maison: "economic peace first." If the Israeli official spin machine had its way, we would all be googling listings for the Nablus cineplex and marveling at the West Asian economic tiger of Palestine's West Bank archipelago. That is not happening either, some overly rosy puff pieces notwithstanding. For one thing, the case rests on flimsy foundations - severe restrictions remain on Palestinian freedom of movement, access to land and resources, and the economy remains precarious.

Just as important, the Obama team, while encouraging economic progress, has consistently insisted that interim confidence-building measures must begin with a full settlement freeze. A clear principle has been established: A prerequisite for a gradual peace effort based on mutual confidence-building measures is a comprehensive settlement freeze now; the alternative is permanent status now. So here we are, with Benjamin Netanyahu on the fast-track to endgame two-state negotiations.

This is an Obama achievement secured with consummate Obama style. He has wrong-footed an opponent without fanfare, without vitriol, and quietly reframed the terms of debate to his liking. Of course, Netanyahu may and probably will continue to seek diversions and escape routes, but his opening moves have all been foiled. It seems Obama cornered Netanyahu rather than the other way around.

However, the problem with this analysis is in its framing. Is the U.S.-Israel relationship really a zero-sum game about who can more effectively hoodwink the other? Israel must desist from making it so. The United States and Israel have certain independent and shared interests. If the latter exist only with a neoconservative, Fox News, and pro-settler evangelical America, then we are in serious trouble. And in truth, such a narrow definition of shared interests is incorrect.

America and Israel are both served by a United States that is stronger, not weaker; more credible, not less; whose message of hope and tolerance resonates louder in the Middle East and elsewhere, not softer. Israel does not have a spare America. Israel and America are also both served by maintaining their partnership and by America's ability to continue to stand by a long-time regional ally. That is why President Obama refers to securing a two-state solution, to ending the occupation that began in 1967, as a strategic interest for America and Israel alike.

We could count down the days to January 2013 and pretend that Obama is fatally naive or politically weakened (or both) - despite polls showing him to be more popular at this stage of his presidency (with 56 percent support) than either Ronald Reagan (53 percent) or Bill Clinton (42 percent) - but that would be a fool's game.

The truth, inconvenient or otherwise, is that the absence of a sovereign and viable Palestinian state devastates American interests, and that should matter for Israel and the U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship. 

Barack Obama's handshake meeting with Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu is not getting nearly the credit it deserves. In fact, Obama's Mideast peace strategy is far more sophisticated than most observers realize.

This piece also appeared in Foreign Policy

Headlines are now being prepared following U.S. President Barack Obama's convening of a trilateral Israeli-Palestinian-American peace summit today in New York. Many will seek to belittle the president's efforts thus far. The summit was being dismissed as a photo-op before it even happened.

The right, in the United States and in Israel, will spin this meeting as further proof of the young president's foreign policy naïveté. Prioritizing Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution, creating expectations in the Arab world, and publicly disagreeing with Israel, on settlements for instance, are all exhibits in the right's case against the new administration (Steven Rosen here on ForeignPolicy.com provided a boiler-plate incantation of this hawkish line).

The spin from the left, in the United States and in the Arab world, is just as predictable. The president blinked on settlements when Israel said boo, the Palestinians have been thrown under a bus, and the U.S. is pursuing more of the same failed incrementalist policies.

In large measure, both of these views are wrong. The contours of a strategic methodical Obama approach to achieving the comprehensive Mideast peace of which he speaks are starting to become visible.

The way in which today's trilateral was announced is in itself instructive. Special Envoy George Mitchell was getting played by the parties last week as they tried to leverage America's desire to see the three-way meeting take place. Sometimes that is the lot of an envoy. It is also an advantage of having an envoy, allowing the president to step in, cut to the chase, and simply announce where and when the parties were expected to report for a meeting with him. The Americans decided that this week's news cycle would not be dominated by the vagaries of Middle Eastern leaders' mood swings or the potentially embarrassing ‘will they-won't they' speculation about an Abbas-Netanyahu meet. Obama decided. The trilateral happened. It's over on Tuesday, now move on to climate change and nonproliferation.

While some on the Israeli side (with many Arab commentators agreeing) will be portraying this as an Israeli win, with Obama weakened and Abbas squaring up to a large helping of humble pie, I think that's a misreading of the current state of play.

Let's take the issue that has received most attention - settlements. Analysts will jump on the fact that a meaningful settlement freeze has not been achieved and that President Obama called today to "restrain" such activity, a seeming climb-down from his previous statements. While it is certainly true that some of the newfound Middle Eastern goodwill toward the U.S. has been squandered by the American inability to deliver a freeze and a price has been paid in America's standing and credibility, something else has also been happening that is likely to prove more significant over time.

By holding Israel's feet to the fire over settlements for a sustained period, America may actually have achieved a great deal in strategically advancing the two-state goal. The most significant effect may be this: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's preferred approach was to focus on interim issues and confidence-building measures (CBMs) and to avoid negotiating the core issues (territories, settlements, Jerusalem, etc.) on which his positions are the most unreasonable. In particular, Netanyahu has attempted to advance an economic peace agenda, with his supporters feverishly spinning the idea that the West Bank is becoming an economic paradise. The Obama team has staked out a clear position - items number 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 on the interim/CBM agenda are entitled "settlement freeze." They have been giving short shrift, including today, to the economic peace narrative (they acknowledge the desirability of progress on the economy and freedom of movement, and should even congratulate themselves that the partial progress made is mainly a result of the heat Israel feels on settlements).

The result: The settlement freeze focus has made Netanyahu's natural comfort zone -- the interim/CBM world -- a prohibitively uncomfortable place to inhabit. So paradoxically, it is Netanyahu who now feels compelled to embrace and prefer negotiations on permanent status end-game issues. That is no small achievement.

In addition, the most right-wing government in Israel's history is, in practical terms, limiting its pro-settlements proclivities, and a tantalizing pivot has been established: namely, that having failed to reach acceptable arrangements on a settlements freeze, the best and obvious alternative is to proceed now to delineate borders. In other words, the territory -- the border component of the two-state deal -- becomes the default solution to what the Americans have established, possibly in a premeditated way, as the never-ending settlement freeze saga.

The cherry on the icing emerged today when the president notably and crucially failed to give a formal blessing to continued construction in East Jerusalem and in almost 3,000 settlement units as an "agreed exemption clause." By not providing this kosher stamp, by calling for restraint, actions not just words, America (just) retained its credibility on the settlements issue. So the settlements focus can best be understood as an important exercise in setting down a marker, even though it is also an important issue in its own right.

This is also the best way to understand the Mitchell team's several months' worth of investment in obtaining Arab gestures toward early normalization with Israel. The point here was not necessarily the immediate deliverables, which may be meager, but rather to create an expectation. This administration is serious about comprehensive peace, and the Arab states will need to be serious about making good on their full normalization pledge, which is part of the Arab Peace Initiative. Mitchell has begun to seriously have that conversation and to get people's heads in the Arab world around the idea of what normalization really means.

What we have been witnessing thus far, including today, has been a table-setting exercise. President Obama's message today continued to emphasize key themes -- the urgency of achieving a two-state solution, his personal engagement and commitment, and why this is an American national interest. Starting on day one, as Obama did, rather than in year seven as his predecessor did, has its advantages. It allows one to invest several months and even to reach an impasse in order to make a point. I would argue that this administration is determinedly and inexorably moving this process toward a moment of truth that may take another several months or more to arrive, but arrive it will.

The straw-man argument that a focus on CBMs and economic peace can substitute for end-game negotiations has been defenestrated. A settlement freeze will continue to be pursued but will now be delinked from these permanent status negotiations, which will be launched in parallel, and the Palestinians will be walked back from their preconditions. Israelis and Palestinians will be brought together to negotiate directly but with an ongoing American presence and guiding hand.

More than that, in fact, one can expect the existing modus operandi to continue, with most of the serious talks and negotiations taking place on three parallel axes of dialogue: American-Israeli, American-Palestinian, and American-Arab states. Most of that will be via the continuous shuttling of Mitchell and his team, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who is more keenly involved in Middle East peace efforts than is often acknowledged) and President Obama being deployed as and when necessary.

Over time, one imagines that those key issues that have been addressed only tentatively thus far, or that have even remained taboo, will also be taken on. Syria, for instance, will at the appropriate moment need to shift from the orbit of hesitantly engaged outlier, to being a centerpiece in a comprehensive peace effort. A way will also need to be found to deal with the Hamas "untouchables." Ultimately, that might mean an indirect engagement via a consortium of regional and other actors (such as the Saudis, Qataris, Turks, and others, including but not exclusively Egypt) or by actively encouraging and accepting internal Palestinian political reconciliation.

If there is indeed a strategy here, and I at least think one can be discerned, then it is heading towards the presentation and active promotion, at the appropriate moment, of an American plan for implementing a comprehensive peace. America will have to recognize that it is dealing on the Israeli and Palestinian sides, for all their differences, with two deeply dysfunctional polities. The parties simply cannot do this of their own volition, and this is too important for them and for America for it to be left to the mercy of the vicissitudes of their respective domestic politics. America will have to create the incentives and also the disincentives.

It is not a question of wanting this more or less than the parties themselves. It is about who is best placed to carry this effort over the finishing line -- and only determined American leadership with international support can achieve that. Senator Mitchell frequently talks about his 700 days of frustration in Northern Ireland and one day of decisive, break-through success.

Today's trilateral may register on the frustrating side of the ledger, but President Obama has set off on a path that can lead to that one game-changing day of peace-making. Given the urgency, as acknowledged again by the president today, let's hope he dramatically trims down that 700 number.

David Frum and I posted our closing statements on The Economist’s website this morning. So far, the the daily polls have been quite consistent, with about sixty percent affirming that “This house believes that Barack Obama's America is now an honest broker between Israel and the Arabs,” and forty percent voting against the motion.  

Since Frum and I posted our opening statements on Tuesday, July 21, the debate has been augmented by articles from some great guest authors: Henry Siegman (president of the US/Middle East project), John Mearsheimer (the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and coauthor of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy), James Zogby (founder and president of the Arab American Institute), Michael Singh (the Ira Weiner fellow at The Washington Institute and former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council), and Aaron David Miller (author of The Much Too Promised Land and public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C.) 
 

Once again, I encourage everyone to both follow along with the debate and vote. Below is an excerpt from my closing statement:

Assuming then that Obama's America, while maintaining and respecting the America-Israel special relationship, wants to play an honest broker role, a key question arises in this debate and elsewhere: are such efforts doomed to failure by American domestic politics, traditionally heavily favouring uncritical pro-Israel positions? I would argue not. A popular American president, who is determined, and can articulate how a particular Middle East policy serves American national security interests, while explaining how that policy also helps Israel (even if the Israeli government of the day disagrees), will eventually carry the day.

Yes, lobbies play an important role in American politics, and the Israel issue is not immune to that—far from it. But even the best-funded lobbies don't win every time. And, the so-called Israel lobby is neither homogenous nor omnipotent. There is also a changing environment. The American Jewish community is overwhelmingly liberal and is now finding new vehicles to express nuanced and progressive positions that are supportive of Israel, but not "Greater Israel". Notable are the successes already notched up by J Street, established fifteen months ago and active in online campaigning and political lobbying (full disclosure: I serve on J Street's advisory board).

So, an honest broker role that acknowledges the specificity of the American context and retains the special relationship is politically possible. It is not, though, by any means politically cost-free.

Continue reading here.

I encourage everyone to take a look. Below is an excerpt from my opening statement. Rebuttals will be posted on Friday, July 24.

"I will argue that within the context of that US-Israel special relationship, the United States can still be an honest broker, should play such a role and has done so on several occasions in the past, and that President Obama's America is beginning to occupy that political space.

Mr Obama is a friend of Israel. It is, however, a different type of friendship from the Bush years, more grown-up and grounded in reality, healthier for both parties. One should understand that the honest-broker effort under Mr Obama will be undertaken while maintaining the special relationship, not replacing it. He will, for instance, be especially sensitive to Israel's legitimate security concerns (but not its territorial expansionism).

An appropriate analogy might be a sister-in-law's role during a couple's dispute: there is clearly a closer tie to one side, but that does not preclude a sufficiently effective evenhandedness. Let us say that Mr Obama's America is now being enough of an honest broker."

 This piece appears on Huffington Post.

Last week witnessed a concerted attack against the credibility of the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), seeking to link supposed fundraising activities in Saudi Arabia with that organization’s criticism (“bias”, according to its detractors) of Israeli practices in the occupied territories, also claiming HRW is soft peddling on Saudi violations. It started in a Wall Street Journal piece, the Israeli prime minister’s office and spokespeople weighed in, and then AIPAC and the rightwing blogosphere got onboard. The attack on HRW has now been ratcheted up according to today’s Jerusalem Post.

The former right-wing Israeli Government Minister, Natan Sharansky (also an ex-Prisoner of Zion, President George W. Bush’s favorite author and occupation apologist) claims that HRW “has become a tool in the hands of dictatorial regimes to fight against democracies.” Ron Dermer, director of policy planning in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office adds: “We are going to dedicate time and manpower to combating these groups; we are not going to be sitting ducks in a pond for the human rights groups to shoot at us with impunity". 

The apparent trigger for this assault on a group that represents the global gold standard in human rights monitoring, analysis, and advocacy, was a visit by HRW’s Middle East-North Africa director, Sarah Leah Whitson, to the Saudi kingdom. I happened to find myself on a panel at The Century Foundation discussing the Middle East with Whitson just days before this storm broke—I went back and watched tapes of that panel discussion. To accuse Whitson of being soft on the Saudis or somehow singling out Israel for criticism is quite astonishing as I’m sure you’ll agree if you take ten minutes to listen to her presentation—of that, more in a moment.

According to reports Whitson was hosted one evening in Riyadh by prominent businessman and intellectual, Emad bin Jameel Al-Hejailan, for a private dinner which included business leaders, civil society leaders, and well-connected Saudis. It was not a fundraising event. HRW was certainly not fundraising from the Saudi government. Spencer Ackerman of The Washington Independent quotes Whitson—“We have never raised any money from the Saudi government or any other agency in the world.” That HRW does not take government money is something that is already well-known.

HRW does, of course, receive contributions from individuals and foundations—something that does not prevent them from producing releases and reports critical of the states from whence donors hail.

Does HRW’s fundraising from private sources in the US prevent it being critical of American human rights violations (and I obviously acknowledge the differences between the US and Saudi Arabia)? Apparently not. Yes, donors have agendas, but as long as the organization adheres to standards of fact-checking and objectivity, its credibility is sustained.

Sadly, these attacks on HRW demonstrate no such objectivity or credibility—they come from a narrow and misguided right-wing Israel advocacy agenda. One group that has been plowing this terrain for some years is Gerald Steinberg’s odiously named “NGO Monitor,” in the attacks on HRW he is being joined by bigger guns. Steinberg accuses HRW of being “linked to the terrorist campaign” (of Hamas …etc), and whines that "Human Rights Watch is an organization with a budget of $40 million a year; they are a superpower”. Poor Mr. Steinberg, his supporters in the anti-HRW campaign over at AIPAC only had an “$80 million purse” at their disposal.

Ms. Whitson at HRW is not rolling over, this was her response: "Please, if there is something we got wrong, if one of the incidents or attacks we described is wrong, I would love to hear it. Because the Gerald Steinbergs of this world, and I guess now the Sharanskys of this world, love to give blanket denials, love to give blanket dismissals. But let's get down to the facts and let me know, did we get the fact wrong on any of these cases."

Whitson had also been accused of using HRW’s criticism of Israel and the hits that it takes on that score in order to curry favor with potential Saudi backers. According to reports, Whitson discussed HRW’s work on both Saudi practices and on the Israeli occupied territories among other issues. Jeffrey Goldberg in his Atlantic blog shares a thoughtful exchange on this with the executive director of HRW, Ken Roth.

I would suggest that Human Rights Watch is not at fault here, but rather those whose agenda is to smear its good name. The event held in Riyadh that has come under scrutiny is undoubtedly replicated by HRW in similar venues around the world and is crucial to their work in sensitizing elites—especially in countries where violations occur—to a broad human rights agenda, including its applicability to the venue in question.

The most perfunctory fact-checking debunks the claim of HRW having an anti-Israel obsession as being patently absurd. As Ali Gharib of IPS has pointed out, of more than 30 releases in June and July (so far) about the region, Israel was criticized three times, Saudi Arabia five times, and Iran on nine occasions.

And here’s how cuddling up to the Saudis and perhaps even seeking private Saudi money led to self-censorship by Sarah Leah Whitson in her criticism of Saudi Arabia at that TCF event: Whitson attacked the lack of due process in the recent Saudi terror trials. She described Saudi Arabia, along with Syria and Libya, as being on the less free side in terms of “the most basic human rights” violations in the region. She attacked Saudi Arabia’s lack of a penal code, and Whitson had this to say about women’s rights in the kingdom: “Saudi Arabia is the absolute worst. Women are treated as legal minor, as children.” Two of HRW’s recent releases are about women’s rights and domestic worker abuses in the kingdom.

So, why this coordinated attack on HRW all of a sudden? It pains me to say it, but this is all about Israel. The Israeli prime minister’s office was shameless enough to announce that it has decided to wage a battle with human rights NGOs and started with Human Rights Watch. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, (apparently without irony) accused HRW of having “seriously lost its moral compass.”

AIPAC then promoted the attack on HRW. The timing is not a coincidence. Human Rights Watch, similar to other global, respected human rights NGOs, obviously follows developments in the occupied Palestinian territories and obviously had something to say about Israel’s “Operation Cast Lead” in Gaza six months ago. Their recent Gaza report focused on the use or, rather, misuse of drones during these military attacks. Amnesty International has been similarly critical of the use of drones, asserting that Israeli forces did not employ insufficient care in preventing civilian casualties.

Or maybe, just maybe, something troubling from a human rights perspective might be taking place in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories. This is a case of “shoot the messenger” on steroids. What happened to Gaza during Operation Cast Lead is being revealed not only by international sources, but also by Israeli sources, including this latest report from Israeli combat soldiers of the Breaking the Silence group, a collection of testimonies by Israeli combatants who served in Gaza.

Unfortunately, Israel did not—as was recommended by Israeli human rights groups including B’tselem—conduct its own credible state inquiry into the Gaza events. By leaving the Israeli Defense Forces to conduct their own cursory, closed, and, ultimately, not credible investigation, Israel has sent the signal to the international community, and notably to the human rights NGO community, that it will not do the job - that they will have to.

The logic of Israel’s continued occupation is such that the steps Israel is taking to maintain and entrench its presence in the territories are leading to ever-greater human rights violations. Often these practices are exposed, obviously human rights’ NGO’s do a lot of that exposing. In that context, one can expect the attacks on the human rights community to be ratcheted up. As Matt Yglesias has pointed out, there is “an increasing tendency by the Israeli government and by hawkish Jewish organizations to respond to criticism of Israel’s human rights record by lashing out against human rights groups.”

Attempts to defend the indefensible do not make for pretty viewing, even when beloved Israel is the subject (for another example see The Israel Project’s recent defense of settlements in the West Bank).  Surely, one can both be a supporter of Israel and it’s security while at the same time, defending human rights by, for instance, advocating an end to the conflict, a two-state solution, and an end to the occupation. Surely, supporting Israel cannot be about undermining efforts to advance human rights around the world. That is not just fundamentally wrong, it strikes me as being fundamentally un-Jewish, and goes beyond the pale of what is legitimate or ethical.

This article also appeared in yesterday's Haaretz

There has been something almost grotesque about much of the mainstream Israeli reaction to post-election developments in Iran. Certainly one shouldn't be surprised that official Israel has viewed the situation as an opportunity to advance its arguments against the Islamic Republic's current leadership. This approach is probably legitimate, and Tehran's leaders most certainly deserve the rebukes. But Israeli discourse, especially among the commentariat, has gone well beyond that, becoming an occasion for bashing the Obama administration's supposed weakness in the face of the Iranian crisis.

Although Israeli political leaders have hinted at such criticism, it is really the analysts and commentators of the press who have set the tone. In so doing, large segments of the punditry class have indulged in an orgy of self-righteousness, while revealing an awful lot about their ignorance of Iranian affairs, of Israel's potential role in influencing developments, and indeed of the limitations on constructive external involvement in this situation.

Leading the attack have been Ari Shavit in Haaretz and Ben Caspit in Maariv, both echoing the approach of the now thoroughly discredited neoconservatives in the U.S. While most of America has moved on, the extremes of far-right rhetoric, advocating a more aggressive foreign policy, still resonate in Israel.

The Obama administration has so far managed to avoid the pitfalls of self-defeating grandstanding. And the American public is with its new president. A new CNN poll highlights that only 33 percent feel the president should be more belligerent, while the vast majority approve of Obama's handling of the situation, and oppose direct American intervention, or any U.S. military action. 

President Obama has achieved something that is both difficult and rare in national political life - he has demonstrated an ability to act on the understanding that while Americans may perceive their country as an unblemished beacon of freedom and democracy, the real-world perception of that image is not quite so generous, thereby rendering certain interventions, even rhetorical ones, counter-productive.

Obama appreciates that an over-enthusiastic embrace on his part of the Mousavi protesters would actually work against their interests. As he himself put it: "The last thing I want to do is have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States." And he has maintained this restraint in the face of rightist Republican calls for the president to "do more, do something." Obama is also clearly cognizant of the limitations of what the U.S. can actually do for the opposition in Iran; to make unkeepable promises would be beyond irresponsible, and also endanger the physical well-being of thousands.

The protesters themselves, and the overwhelming body of Iran experts in the U.S., have sided with Obama's line. Azadeh Moaveni, the Iranian author of "Lipstick Jihad," has been quoted as saying, "The protesters in Iran have a perhaps surprising view on Obama's cautious approach - keep it up."

This finely calibrated American approach was described just last week in these pages by Ari Shavit as "the paralysis that seized the king of the world in the face of Iranian evil - he [Obama] stammered and hesitated and apologized." Ben Caspit also bemoaned Obama's "stammering": Where is the wondrous rhetorical ability of Barack Obama?" he asked, calling him a "new version of [Neville] Chamberlain." Caspit, in an op-ed co-written with Maariv colleague Ben-Dror Yemini, did not stop there, also attacking Europe and the West in general, contrasting their supposed silence over Iran with their hyper-activism in responding to Operation Cast Lead and other Israeli misdemeanors in the territories.

Never one to be outdone, the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick accused the Obama administration of "effective support of the mullahs against their people."

Unfortunately, this is the kind of hypocrisy, self-indulgence and ultimately stupidity that Israel's punditocracy has been treating us to for the past fortnight.

Let's start with the hypocrisy. Caspit, on the eve of the Iranian election, did not make do with calling on Israelis "to convince friends in Iran to vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - [As] no one will serve Israel's PR interests better," he even offered to "pray that Ahmadinejad will win." Glick, post-election, went even further, arguing that if Israel led international support for Mousavi's supporters but later was "compelled to attack [Iran]," the protesters would understand and remember who had stood by them.

Neither Iranians nor the rest of the world are stupid. They can read. They can recognize Israeli self-interest and the lack of any genuine human empathy today from those very people who just weeks ago were agitating for their country to be bombed, or supported Ahmadinejad's re-election for selfish reasons. They are also aware of the regime of closure, checkpoints and violence imposed by Israel in the territories, including the over 900 civilians killed in January's Gaza operation. How can apologists for the occupation hold any appeal for the Tehran protesters?

Indeed, Israel needs to develop a self-awareness that, unfortunately, one effect of the continued occupation is the silencing of Israel's moral voice on the world stage.

But, most of all, what is happening today in Iran is simply not about Israel or America - it is about Iran. Iran expert Suzanne Maloney, of the Brookings Institution, in Washington, noted that, "No matter how much Americans like to think that they are shaping events in Iran, it's just not true." Israelis, too, should heed Maloney's advice. This is not about Israel.

Or as Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American and author of "The Ayatollah Begs to Differ," said of the neocons and other Iran hawks who had supported military action and aggressive regime change in Iran, but belatedly embraced the Mousavi protesters: "You are offensive, go away." 

 This piece appears in today's Ha'aretz.

Speaking at Bar-Ilan University last Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to be targeting three distinct audiences with his messages. First was an audience of one - the president of the United States. The words "Palestinian state" were intended primarily for his ears. Next were Netanyahu's supporters in the United States, desperate for ammunition in the battle to depict their Israeli champion as reasonable, and to push the blame for any impasse back onto Arab and Palestinian shoulders. Third, and no less important, was the premier's domestic constituency. That his speech did not spark even the slightest coalition crisis reveals more about the stinginess of his words than it does about the sturdiness of his coalition.

So who was Netanyahu not talking to that night?

Certainly, the Arab and Palestinian publics, including 1.3 million of his own citizens, were not priority audiences. Yes, technically, the premier did turn to "all Arab leaders" and to "our Palestinian neighbors"; he is, of course, ready to meet them, any time, anywhere, and to cooperate on advancing an "economic peace." But Netanyahu was not engaging, or even reaching out. He was offering a history lesson.

By far the longest section of the Bar-Ilan speech was devoted to answering a question that Netanyahu himself posed: "What is the root of the conflict?" For him there is only one narrative: a narrow, unreconstructed and self-righteous nationalist discourse. It is designed to resonate well with the Israeli-Jewish public, and its exclusivity guarantees its inability to muster any legitimacy on the other side.

The emphasis Netanyahu placed on this narrative begs the question: Can it coexist with a two-state solution? Before one even begins to address that, two important caveats should be noted. The prime minister raised a host of practical issues (among them territory, settlements, Jerusalem, refugees and security), all of which he would have difficulty swallowing for a two-state solution to become reality, and that would probably happen only under a strong, U.S.-led external push. His narrative also precludes any true equality for the 20 percent of Israel's population that is Palestinian Arab. Irrespective of any two-state arrangement, Israel finally needs to square the circle of being both a democracy and a national home to the Jewish people. Indeed, the "Jewish state" framing has thus far fallen woefully short in practice.

If Netanyahu really believes that in order to make peace, the Arabs and Palestinians will need to become Zionists, then there will be no peace. If retaining this recalcitrant narrative is his way of delivering a rightist-led yet viable two-state reality, however, then things get interesting. As Likud leader and bearer of Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Revisionist legacy, Netanyahu should understand the inadmissibility of the former proposition. Jabotinsky understood that the Palestinian Arabs would never embrace Zionism - regardless of the economic peace and industrial parks on offer. One could even argue that the Abbas-Fatah leadership, in bucking this trend, was doomed to fail: It unconditionally accepted Israel, rejected resistance and assumed the mantle of peace partner, even while the Palestinians remained under occupation. Israel under Netanyahu is offering nothing to such a Palestinian partner, and perhaps it is more honest and even healthier that way. But can narratives be one thing and practicalities another?

Such an approach would have clear implications. It offers a cold peace of the kind that has worked and withstood the test of time with Egypt and Jordan. It should inform Palestinian strategy and drive the need for Palestinian national reconciliation. Most of all, it calls for a mature and dispassionate reading of those power dynamics by all the key protagonists.

I would agree with Palestinian academic Ahmad Khalidi, who suggested in The Guardian last month that "despite their current split, the majority of Palestinians - including Hamas - have accepted the political reality of Israel." Nonetheless, he went on to argue, it would be a mistake to think they will "acknowledge Israel's historic and moral claim to what were once Palestinian Arab lands." Hamas has not gone far enough in recognizing the limitations and counter-productive nature of indiscriminate violence. The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has gone too far in limiting its toolbox exclusively to negotiations with Israel and in giving a nod to the idea of governance and security capacity being prerequisites to de-occupation. Neither Palestinian party has sufficiently appreciated the efficacy of nonviolent resistance to occupation.

Israel may have a longer journey to acknowledge the overreach constituted by continued occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its thickening of the infrastructure of that occupation. Israel may be the world's highest defense spender relative to its population (according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), but there are limits to what that spending can deliver (as witnessed recently in both Gaza and Lebanon).

The increasingly aggressive and egregious measures that Israel's occupation takes against the Palestinian civilian population are beginning to threaten, on an unprecedented scale, both Israel's democracy and its international support. And this is no longer a conversation just among ourselves. Truths are being belatedly spoken to all sides where it matters most - in Washington. Israel now has a friend in the White House who is willing to hold a mirror up to these hard realities of political power. 

 By Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah

 This piece also appears at The Huffington Post.

"One giant leap for Benjamin Netanyahu, but just one small step for Middle East peace."
That was how commentators in both of Israel's leading dailies, Yehidot Ahronot and Ma'ariv, chose to describe the Prime Minister's address yesterday. One thing can definitely be concluded from the speech, Ben Rhodes has not been on loan from the White House and stationed in Jerusalem for the last week. It was a poor speech stylistically. Even the historical and biblical quotes were of the predictable and plodding kind, it lacked grandeur or any sense of occasion. More importantly, it was also a mean-spirited, often petty and parochial speech in its substance, "a speech without a gram of nobility," as commentator Ofer Shelach wrote in Ma'ariv.

Israel has just lived through two prime ministers who made significant journeys from their right-wing roots and even if neither entered the promised land of peace, both made gestures in that direction. Ariel Sharon acknowledged the occupation as did his successor Ehud Olmert, who went much further in recognizing a Palestinian narrative and displaying some empathy to, for instance, the Palestinian refugees. Judging from the Bar-Ilan University speech, Benjamin Netanyahu has barely set out on that journey. For him, there was no occupation, talk of Judea and Samaria but no West Bank, and there was no sense of humanity in his approach to the Palestinians. Although they are his neighbors and even 20% of his own citizenry, their world would seem to be totally alien to him. He called, for instance, on the Arab world to develop together joint tourist sites, such as, "around the walls of Jericho and the walls of Jerusalem," with no apparent appreciation for the irony of referring to walls in this context.

Netanyahu, perhaps understandably, spoke to a lowest common denominator - Jewish Israeli consensus, and his right wing coalition was sleeping easy last night. And yet, he uttered those two magic words, Palestinian state. The list of conditionalities surrounding the establishment of that state may have been so extensive as to drain the very idea of statehood of any meaning but still, he said it.

The Obama administration had asked for two things: on a settlement freeze they received a blunt 'No'; on Palestinian statehood, it was a highly conditioned 'Yes, but...'. As Israel TV and Ma'ariv analyst Ben Caspit put it, "welcome Mr. Prime Minister to the 20th century. The problem is that we're already in the 21st."

So what happens next? What are the consequences of this speech and what can be done in its wake? Here are five suggestions, most of them for the Obama administration but a thought also on the Palestinian response.

First, as the White House Press Secretary immediately did, pocket that Palestinian statehood commitment. However minor it may seem, however wrapped in negatives, it is something to build on. It is also clearly something that cannot be left to the parties themselves to translate into a workable plan for actually realizing a two-state reality. That will be a job for the US and its international and regional allies.

Second, treat the Israeli Prime Minister's emphasis on security issues and conditionalities as an invitation. Once he got past the historical lecture, Benjamin Netanyahu actually laid out some reasonable concerns with regard to the security arrangements and guarantees that a peace agreement would have to address. Netanyahu spent three paragraphs outlining the demilitarization, monitoring, air-space requirements, and other security factors weighing on his mind, and Netanyahu made a direct plea, "today we ask our friends in the international community, led by the United States for what is critical to the security of Israel."

The Obama administration should respond and present a detailed plan for answering Israel's legitimate security concerns in the context of a two-state solution. There will of course be a parallel ask of Israel from its "friends in the international community led by the United States" - end the occupation, agree to a border based on the '67 lines with only minor reciprocal modifications, including arrangements for Jerusalem, and for the refugees, and for real Palestinian sovereignty.

Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday opened the door for this kind of an arrangement. He also notably did not mention the effort of American General Keith Dayton or the Palestinian Security Forces. The message is clear. Security will have to be an internationally-led effort and capacity-building in the Palestinian security sector should from now on be treated as something that is perhaps useful but of a secondary order of magnitude.

Third, the Obama administration and the Quartet must push back in response to Netanyahu's settlement freeze rejectionism. Netanyahu promised there would be no new settlements or additional land confiscations but there would be a normal life, which is referred to in the technical jargon as "natural growth". The settler leadership understood this ruse for what it is, and when Israel Channel One cut from the speech to settler leaders in Ma'aleh Adumim, they were celebrating. "We do not need new land or new settlements," said local mayor Benny Kasriel, former head of the settlers' council, "just to keep building." One can see his point. The West Bank settler population has increased from 111,000 to over 290,000 since the Oslo process began in 1993 (the number reaches almost 500,000 including East Jerusalem). The vast majority of that was under the rubric of natural growth, and there are vast expanses of land annexed to settlement municipalities awaiting construction.

The Obama administration needs to stick to its principle of a total freeze, whether in public or private conversation, and as former ambassador Daniel Kurtzer pointed out in Sunday's Washington Post, there are no previous understandings on this matter between Washington and Jerusalem (and supposed friends of Israel, like Elliott Abrams, are a danger to Israel and to the America-Israel relationship when they claim otherwise). There can be only one place for a discussion of the future of settlements and that is delineating a permanent status border between Israel and Palestine.

Fourth, Netanyahu's speech should provide a spur for Palestinian national reconciliation and unity (though we doubt this will be the case). The disappointed PA response, while understandable, was somewhat beside the point. The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza have heard an Israeli national narrative and position. Adhering to Palestinian divisions, and a strategy exclusively based on negotiations has even less logic or credibility as of yesterday. The Palestinians will need to find a way to sufficiently unify their own national narrative. Simultaneously they need to develop a common position on negotiations in parallel with a willingness to use nonviolent struggle in opposing the continued occupation (as President Obama hinted at in his Cairo speech).

Finally, the Obama administration should interpret both the venue of Netanyahu's speech (the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies) and his repeated reference to Begin-Sadat as a subliminal message. Benjamin Netanyahu is asking to go down in history as a historical leader of Israel just as Menachim Begin did, and this time by securing a comprehensive peace and final borders with all of Israel's neighbors, including the Palestinians (Menachem Begin settled for just Egypt). Begin never thought he would withdraw from all of the Sinai and evacuate the settlements there, but with American guidance, it happened and has vitally served Israel's interests.

 This piece was also published at TPM Café .

The Obama team’s remarkable wordsmithery and the president’s unparalleled capacity for delivery were exquisitely on display again today in Cairo. But this speech should perhaps be remembered as much for what was not said. Gone was the arrogance and lecturing: there was no lavishing of praise on Egypt’s undemocratic leader – the word ‘Mubarak’ was not even mentioned once. Out too was the purple finger version of democratization and even the traditional American condescension toward the Palestinian narrative. But perhaps most remarkably of all, the words ‘terror’ or ‘terrorism’ did not pass the president’s lips. Here was a leader and a team around him smart enough to acknowledge that certain words have become too tainted, too laden with baggage, their use has become counter-productive, today the Global War on Terror framing was truly laid to rest.

Particularly striking was that President Obama almost certainly has emerged from the Cairo speech having accumulated additional capital rather than expending it, with greater popularity, traction, and respect among not only his ostensible target audience, the Muslim world, but also globally, including at home in America and even in Israel and with the world’s Jewish community. His future leverage across a range of issues has been enhanced.

It’s true that whenever the speech descended from the lofty heights of 30,000 feet to the 100-feet resolution of policy specifics and details, the magic dust seemed to dissipate as it emerged from the clouds, and those details were too often more autopilot than reset. But this was a big picture speech, and there is room later to make those course corrections on policy detail.

Here then are ten quick thoughts:

1. The Mother of All Resets

 The president’s speech literally in one fell swoop will have much of the Muslim world and certainly elites, opinion leaders, and activists scratching their heads and recalibrating their stance toward America. Yes, for everyone the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, what comes next and whether policy changes on specific issues. The immediate effect though is to buy America space and time. It gives those who share an affinity with American values a new lease of life, causes the majority who are not hostile to the US but deeply skeptical of its intentions to reconsider and suspend judgment, and it will induce in America’s enemies a splitting headache.

At a most basic level, the president managed to connect. He spoke humbly and touched on buzz words for this audience, discussing dignity, justice, and the truths we hold in our hearts. He even uttered the word colonialism and mentioned denial of rights and cold-ward proxies. Obama evoked Islam’s contribution to the world and to America, and yes, he quoted the Quran.  Above all, he restored balance, confining the label of enemy only to those violent extremists who threaten America’s security, while opening up to the vast majority of practicing Muslims, including, I would argue, Islamist movements.

2. In Cairo the Conversation with Political Islam Began

By narrowly focusing on al-Qaeda as the enemy and apparently articulating an understanding of the non-al-Qaeda Islamist narrative, the president seemed to extend a tentative but visibly unclenched fist to mainstream political Islam. It is those Islamist movements that we should be most closely watching in the weeks and months ahead as they begin to work through their own responses to the new administration.

Obama seemed to implicitly accept the legitimacy of political Islam and its role in the democratic process while challenging it to unequivocally reject violence against civilians. There was a stark contrast, for instance, between the president’s message to al-Qaeda (we will defeat you if you threaten us) as compared to his message to Hamas (whom he addressed directly as having a role to fulfill Palestinian aspirations and unify the Palestinian people).

The president’s historical analogies may not have been the best ones. In discussing the nonviolent resistance of black America to the “lash of the whip” in achieving equal rights he obviously made a powerful and reasonable point but one that may be more relevant to a Palestinian struggle for a one-state democracy rather than for national liberation and de-occupation. By claiming that the same story can be told in South Africa and elsewhere, he simply rewrote history – the ANC did of course use armed resistance in their struggle as did so many other successful liberation movements.

That said, Obama’s effort to carry the argument in somewhat sympathetic terms to the Palestinian resistance–“violence…rockets…is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered”–was a valiant one and should be encouraged, not least in Israel. I might be reading too much into this but the speech could be seen as an acknowledgement that a process that engages Hamas is more likely to produce results than one that does not.

Responding immediately on al-Jazeera, Ahmed Yusuf, advisor to Gaza Prime Minister Haniyeh, lavished praised on Obama’s “Martin Luther King-like speech” and his rejection of the clash of civilizations discourse while defensively questioning his call for Hamas to accept the international community’s three preconditions (end violence, accept past agreements, recognize Israel).The distinction though was clear and the years of wrong-headedly lumping together the Salafist jihadis of al-Qaeda with the Muslim Brothers of Hamas or the Hezbollah movement is over.

3. Regaining the Moral Clarity of 9/11

Almost eight years on, there it was, an American president explaining to the world what happened on that day and the war of necessity against al-Qaeda that was launched in its wake. It was an important moment in resetting and reconfiguring for international and Muslim public opinion what happened then and has happened since. It is also perhaps the most damning indictment of all for the Bush presidency that in 2009 such a reiteration by an American president is so necessary.

President Obama also reissued a clear statement of America’s interests across a range of issues from getting out of Iraq and achieving a Palestinian state to its goals in Afghanistan, and shared values with so much of the Muslim world in promoting basic freedoms, religious pluralism, women’s rights, and development.

4. Finally a President Who Can Talk to Palestinians

 Obama’s words on the Palestinian situation were not remarkable for his advocacy of a two-state solution, his mentioning of Palestine, or his opposition to the settlements. All of that we have heard before, and in fact, the speech gave precious little by way of actually articulating a plan for Palestinian de-occupation and statehood. But that was also its strength.

The idea of a Palestinian state, even before it exists, has lost much of its luster and appeal for Palestinians precisely because American and Israeli leaders talked about statehood as a technical fix for a Palestinian problem, in exclusively economic, governance, and security terms. In so doing, they ignored or demeaned and denied the Palestinian narrative and made the whole arrangement sound rather unappetizing.

Today, President Obama began to redress that. PA capacity and economic opportunities were something of a footnote. And thankfully, the building of Palestinian security forces was not even mentioned.

Instead Obama spoke a language that actual Palestinians could relate to, recalling the 60-year “pain of dislocation,” the “wait in refugee camps” (without in the same breath emasculating the refugees of any rights). He spoke of humiliation, occupation, and an intolerable situation – in other words, Palestinian daily reality. Only after recognizing the Palestinian experience did he chart the course for achieving “the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity,” namely, via a Palestinian state. This shift in discourse may be lost on most American ears, not so for Palestinians and in the Arab and Muslim world, and it begins to give Obama a moral authority that will allow him to address this issue in speaking directly to the Palestinian people above the heads of their divided leadership.

5. Shimon Peres Could Not Have Done a Better Job

In what is becoming classical Obama, he at the same time presented perhaps the most compelling justification and explanation of Israel’s rights and its existence ever spoken in an Arab and Muslim capital. No Israeli has ever done a better job, he is a true friend. In the most unequivocal of terms and in a speech that so captured Muslim world attention, Obama placed the notions of threatening Israel’s destruction, stereotypes of Jews, and Holocaust denial, as being irredeemably beyond the pale and unacceptable. And he reaffirmed America’s “unbreakable bond with Israel.”

Tellingly, if unsurprisingly, it is these messages that are leading the Israeli news coverage of the speech. While the government of Benjamin Netanyahu may be squirming in discomfort at Obama’s reasoned and repeated calls for a settlement freeze, for reopening Gaza, and for Palestinian statehood, the Israeli public will, I think, be both reassured and keen to believe in the hope for change and a better future for them also.

One imagines too that the day is not so far off for an honest, empathetic, and home-truths Obama speech to Israel and the Jewish world. Expect that speech to be not only well-received but also to bring us dramatically closer to finally ending the Arab-Israeli conflict and achieving that two-state solution. Obama’s use of the phrase, “align American policies with those who pursue peace,” will also be noted in Jerusalem. Finally, by referring to “Jewish homeland” rather than a Jewish state, Obama, I think, studiously avoided giving succor to the slew of racist laws being presented in the new Israeli Knesset. 

6. Policy Details – More Auto-Pilot Than Reset.

In a speech that I genuinely think carries game-changing potential for so many issues that America and the Muslim world are caught up in, there was virtually nothing new in detailed policy terms. That is very probably due to the nature of the speech, and the detailed policy changes might follow in the coming months. But if they don’t, Cairo will go down as a moment of unrequited promise and opportunity.

On Israel-Palestine, we dusted off the Road Map (yet again), a Bush relic that should have long ago been filed in the trash can, and the Afghanistan and Iraq plans still do not sound too convincing. It’s unclear how even Obama’s more sophisticated version of democratization will be advanced with America’s staunchest and most democracy-resistant allies, and the way forward with Iran remains opaque. Noteworthy, too, was that in a speech stating that America has no designs on maintaining military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continued American military footprint elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world was not touched upon.

7. Hosni Mubarak and the Perils of Playing Host

Egypt’s rulers would no doubt have been mortified had this speech taken place anywhere else in the Arab or Muslim world. There is an understandable Egyptian sense of pride in their history and sense of longing to still be considered the region’s leading power. Having landed those hosting rights, Mubarak’s regime today had to live with the consequences. Obama spoke to his audience and to the Egyptian people, and in an interesting break from past practice, his presidential host Mr. Mubarak was not even mentioned let alone lavished with praise. It will not go unnoticed.

Obama did mention Egypt’s Christian Coptic minority and of course spoke to human rights and people choosing their own governments to loud applause. So much for all the neocon bleating before the speech about Obama being a valueless realist ready to sell freedom-spirited Egyptians down the river. I was not there, but a sense of being empowered almost seemed to echo around the room at Cairo University and well beyond, and it might have major implications for Egypt and the region that will be played out in the coming years.

And finally, we have an American president who avoided the Pavlovian repetition of how American support for the Egyptian regime is so linked to Egypt’s historic peace with Israel. The way that linkage has played out – that America goes soft of non-democratic tendencies in the Arab world as long as they are pro-Israel – has done a great disservice to the public perception of not only peace but also of America and even Israel.

8. More Hand Less Fist on Iran

There was even some encouragement for Obama’s Iran policy in today’s speech. It was beginning to look disturbingly like the Obama administration would be brandishing the stick of sanctions in one hand and the stopwatch of deadlines in the other, thereby leaving no hand free to shake any prospective Iranian unclenched fist.  Obama moved beyond that. Many will point to his acknowledgement of history: “The United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government,” as being the money line.  It’s true that is a big deal and goes further than what was said in his Norouz message. However, I think this was more important, if not entirely new: “any nation- including Iran – should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the NPT.”

The president also had this intriguing chestnut to share on nuclear nonproliferation: “I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not.” Now I may be a bit Israelocentric in how I look at the world but this sounds like a not too subtle hint to me. Might this be a kind of “yes – we acknowledge there is a double standard here regarding the Israeli nuclear issue, and eventually we will get to that too.” It won’t be a headline, Israel will officially ignore it, and when asked Obama’s spokespeople will obfuscate but in more than a few capitals, including Jerusalem, a parsing industry will grow up around those few words.

9. Giving a Finger to the Purple Finger Theory of Democratization

Obama did it. He reclaimed the democratization agenda by placing it in a broader context as a set of rights and freedoms, and by going on to address religious pluralism, women’s rights, and the challenge of adapting economic development and modernity to traditional values. To be honest, it’s not a particularly difficult one to pull off, but to give him his fair dues, Barack Obama does do it better than anyone else. And there’s something of a new policy here, timely with the Lebanese election elections next week: “…we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments - provided they govern with respect for all their people.”

The genius was in the pivot. Obama respected Islamic tradition and religious piety, and for instance, a woman’s right to wear the hijab, and he then pivoted that into a broader discussion of the values of female education and women’s rights, placing those things in seamless harmony rather than in contradiction. After an American president who was perceived as doing so much to sow division in the Muslim world, one of Obama’s most powerful lines was undoubtedly, “fault-lines must be closed among Muslims… the divisions between Sunni and Shia have led to tragic violence,” and all this couched in a constant appeal to young people.

10. And He Was Also Speaking to the American Public

After years of fear-mongering, Islamofascist awareness weeks on campuses, and tens of millions of copies of the vile “Obsession” DVD appearing in newspapers and mailboxes, yet another, no less important, reset button was pressed today. The president will no doubt be accused of apologetics and moral relativism, but he decided to face this head-on, to go to Cairo, speak with respect and honesty to the Muslim world, and to do what was best for America’s national security interests.

In so doing, he was also broadcasting a message back home. Most American Muslims will no doubt be feeling a great sense of pride and inspiration from this speech. The rest of America was given a timely and even touching reminder of the contributions that American Muslims have made to this country and that Muslims have given the world in general. Oh, and there might have even been a little message in there upping the ante, for Congress and even for his own party–“I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.”

This article appears in Ha'aretz.

The morning after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds his own formula for embracing the two-state solution - perhaps in Cairo next week or in Washington the week after - will we wake up to a new Middle East? I somehow doubt it. There may be internal political criticism (which Netanyahu can harness) and some may call his move courageous, but the focus will soon shift to settling into a diplomatic process in which the ultimate goal of two states is never reached.

With renewed American interest in delivering a two-state reality, the leaderships in both Jerusalem and Ramallah appear to share one common goal: finding a comfort zone, a place where the peace process can continue ad infinitum, and hard decisions can be avoided.

Netanyahu's proposal for three negotiating tracks with the Palestinians (economic, security and political) fits neatly within that comfort zone. While a vigorous discussion with the Obama administration over settlements and mutual steps to be taken by Israel and the Arab states to advance the Arab peace initiative gradually might appear less convenient for Netanyahu, this, too, will have a comforting familiarity to it. It's easy to envisage endless months spent (wasted) on the sequencing of who goes first, on the scope of limitations for settlement expansion, and on the time-honored tradition of mutual recriminations and blame games.

Despite their desperate situation, such a reality has the quiet trappings of a comfort zone for the Palestinian Ramallah-based leadership, too. The bills are paid by donor countries, the political life-support tubes remain firmly attached. The PLO might even succeed in goading the U.S. into an occasional public spat with Israel. The Arab states can grandstand over the injustice of it all, while the resistance movements will decry the hypocrisy of the West and the impotence and complicity of the so-called moderate Arab regimes.

If simply declaring the two-state solution as a goal, but doing nothing meaningful to achieve it, is so convenient and comfortable for all concerned, then why not just go with the flow? One reason is that the narrow interests of political leaderships don't necessarily accord with their respective peoples' broader needs, with the desire for regional stability and certainly not with U.S. national interests. Business as usual, postponing the two-state solution, may well place that option beyond reach, feeding radicalization, encouraging the eruption of greater violence - as witnessed recently in Gaza - and crippling American efforts elsewhere in the region.

Today's fault line on the two-state solution is not about declarations - whether by Netanyahu or anyone else. It is about what one might call the "comfort zone" versus the "decision zone." Consequently, the two critical questions have become: How does one negotiate a two-state solution, and how does one implement a two-state solution? The comfort zone leaves the negotiations up to the parties alone, with their endless bilateral wrangling, and it conditions implementation on the Palestinians meeting a high bar for proof of self-governance capacity. Entering the decision zone would change that equation. The parties can continue talking, but reaching a solution becomes externally-driven, being U.S.-led and involving back-to-back consultations with all the key actors, Israelis and Palestinians included. Likewise, implementation of the two-state solution is no longer conditioned on incubating Palestinian self-governance while under hostile Israeli occupation. Instead, the international community assumes responsibilities and creates a partnership for a period of time, as it did in Bosnia, East Timor and elsewhere, thus playing a decisive role in filling the security and governance vacuum.

Entering the decision zone involves hard choices for all concerned. The Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah will be asked to accept a heavy international footprint (notably in the security arena) during the early years of statehood, and a far-reaching practical compromise on the refugee issue. Hamas will be asked to acquiesce to this outcome as constituting the conditions for a long-term hudna, or cease-fire (yes, Hamas will have to be engaged, whether directly or indirectly, and guaranteed full political participation in exchange for reciprocal obligations).

The Arab states would be expected to make good on the Arab peace initiative and to establish normal relations with Israel. In this respect, the two-state solution should be part of a comprehensive regional approach also addressing Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-Lebanese peace. Iran should be pushed to make good on its own commitment to accept any outcome agreeable to the Palestinians, and if it refuses, then Iran will become a lone voice, no longer able to rally popular regional support for its rejectionism.

Israel, of course, will be asked to dismantle the infrastructure of occupation and cease its control over the West Bank and East Jerusalem (reciprocal and minor modifications to the 1967 lines will have to be delineated alongside other practical and thorny arrangements).

Only the U.S. government can lead this process, invest in it politically, and drive home a resolution to the conflict - which itself will entail international and notably European and NATO support, incentives and active involvement.

Making the transition from the comfort zone to the decision zone will by definition be unnerving and disruptive, but in reality, there is no comfort in continuing a process whose design guarantees that the conflict will be prolonged and that the two-state solution will never be reached.