The pressure Israel only foreign policy isn’t working

President Obama has apparently decided to make a showdown with Israel over settlements his primary foreign policy initiative. Sure he offered an open hand to the Muslim world, but that was just words. The main action he has taken is to reverse his promise to AIPAC last year and effectively push to divide Jerusalem.

It hasn’t worked, so far, because, for one thing the consensus in Israel has changed.

The year 2000, the Camp David failure, the Syrian and Palestinian rejection of generous offers, and Second Intifada destroyed illusions in Israel.

Since then, Israel has groped for a new paradigm. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon offered unilateralism; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni constantly offered more in exchange for nothing. But the more they did so, the more international abuse Israel received.

Now a new approach has finally emerged capable of reversing this situation. It goes like this: Israel wants peace but doesn’t hesitate to express not only what it wants and needs but also what’s required to create a stable and better situation.

(Even the terrorist supporting, viciously anti-Israel activist Helena Cobban recognizes this.Though she describes it as the decline of Israel’s peace movement and sees it as a flaw in the movement, rather than a recognition that their formula for peace has been shown to be obsolete.)

Even if one considers PM Netanyahu, President Obama has failed to engage Israel’s political middle or even its Left, as Michael Doran observes:

If Obama found Netanyahu difficult to coerce, he failed to charm the Israeli Left. Israeli pundits have noted the conspicuous absence of a pro-Obama coalition on the Israeli political scene–this, despite the fact that the Israeli Left detests the settlements as much as or more than Obama himself. Many Israelis simply do not understand how the country’s security dilemmas fit into Obama’s larger scheme. With respect to the issue of gravest concern, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Obama’s strategy remains worryingly opaque. And with respect to the Palestinian question, many Israelis are skeptical about the power of any American president to overcome the Hamas-Fatah split, and to create conditions on the Palestinian side that will achieve a two-state solution capable of guaranteeing Israeli security. In a context fraught with uncertainty, Obama is inviting the Israeli Left to join with him in a fight against Netanyahu in order to achieve… well, what precisely?

In addition to the vagueness of his goals, Obama’s body language has dealt the Israeli Left a weak hand. The Cairo speech cast Israel as a bit player in a U.S.-Muslim drama. The President, stressing his Muslim ancestry, did not take the time to fly to Jerusalem, where he might have reasoned with the Israeli public about the value to it of abandoning the Bush-Sharon agreement. Instead, his advisers denied flatly (and falsely) that such an agreement had ever existed. As a consequence of this disingenuousness, many Israelis fear that the administration aims to buy goodwill from the Muslim world by distancing itself from Israel, and they wonder whether settlements are not simply the first of many concessions that will be demanded. With such doubts swirling in the air, it is difficult for the Israeli Left to trumpet the Obama agenda.

And the President outreach hasn’t gotten much response from the Arab world either.

So Obama gets nowhere with the Saudis and squeezes the Israelis instead, hoping that in doing so he will, at some point, earn enough cred with the Arab street to allow Arab governments the “political space” to make real concessions to the peace process.

Even the Palestinians would rather not be forced to make any concessions to Israel.

Which is why the actual Palestinian position is to pray for Mitchell to fail. If he fails and there is no compromise deal, they are sitting pretty. Washington denounces Jerusalem, bad feeling between them continues, and Obama effectively demands nothing of the Palestinians. Of course, settlement construction continues as well, but the Palestinian leaders aren’t stupid; they know it’s a made-up issue. They know that life in the West Bank is getting better, the economy is improving, the Israelis are removing roadblocks and obstacles to movement — and they know that settlement construction provides badly needed employment for Palestinian construction workers. So, Mitchell’s failure would be sheer heaven for them, while a compromise — well, Erekat said it. Bad news.

In the end, the President has picked unnecessary fights with an ally that has benefited American foreign policy nothing.

But this leads to questions that Jonathan Tobin asks:

This is yet another moment to ask not just the ubiquitous Alan Dershowitz but also the legion of Jews who raised money for Obama, vouched for his pro-Israel bona fides, and then gave him three quarters of the Jewish vote last November: Is this what you wanted? Did the majority of Jewish Democrats who are devoted friends of Israel expect that Obama would seek to create a rift between the U.S. and Israel — not about remote West Bank settlements but over Jewish rights in Jerusalem?

For some, like J-Street, Israel Policy Forum and Americans for Peace Now, this is exactly what they hoped for. They wanted the United States to impose its will on a recalcitrant Israeli government. But for others, who are not as far from the mainstream, I suspect this isn’t what they wanted.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.