Blaming Bibi

This week’s Baltimore Jewish Times featured an article (previously mentioned here) U.S.-Israeli Ties: What’s Really Happening? by Dr. Robert O. Freedman.

Over the course of the article Dr. Freedman covers much important territory; unfortunately he also lets his prejudices get in the way of drawing proper conclusions.

For example in explaining the views of the Obama administration, Dr. Freedman writes:

The operative assumption of the Obama administration appeared to be that if you met your opponent halfway, he would reciprocate. While such an assumption appeared to be dangerously naive to many critics of Mr. Obama, including those in Israel, the administration held fast to this policy during its first year. A second aspect of the administration’s approach involved outreach to the Muslim world. In speeches in both Turkey and Egypt, Mr. Obama sought to portray the U.S. as a friend of the Muslim world, despite the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A third aspect of the new policy was a cooling of ties with Israel, after the warm, if not cozy, relationship of the Bush years. Mr. Obama appeared to feel that such a cooling would help the U.S. appear more even-handed in the Arab-Israeli conflict and thus facilitate peacemaking efforts to solve the conflict.

Why is perceiving the naivete of the administration attributed only to the President’s critics? The results of the first year of his outreach showed that he was rebuffed by much of the Muslim world. For example, Saudi Arabia refused to offer any sort of compromise regarding its dealings with Israel.

In the next paragraph, Dr. Freedman wrote:

Early in his administration, Mr. Obama called for a halt in settlement construction, including in Jerusalem, despite the understanding reached by Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon in April 2004. In addition, despite trips to Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Mr. Obama failed to visit Israel, despite being urged to do so by a number of American Jewish organizations, including those affiliated with the liberal “J-Street” movement. Reinforcing the chill in relations was the fact that while Mr. Obama was a left-of-center liberal, Mr. Netanyahu was a right-of-center conservative. Gone were the days when the conservatives Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon could easily relate because they saw the world in the same focus. Indeed, in the very first public meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu in May 2009, the tension between the two leaders was clearly visible in their “body language” as they issued statements following the meeting.

The sentence which begins “[R]einforcing the chill” attributes a factor in the current chills between the United States to differing political orientations. This isn’t entirely unfair. Yet elsewhere in both these paragraphs Dr. Freedman correctly notes that President Obama purposely distanced himself from Israel and refused advice to visit Israel. Under President Obama there clearly would have been a conflict between the U.S. and Israel even if Tzippi Livni or Ehud Barak had been Prime Minister.

In explaining the political realities of Israel, Dr. Freedman wrote:

The Israeli elections of 2009 reflected a clear move to the right by the Israeli body politic. Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party jumped from 12 to 27 seats and the right-of-center Yisrael Beiteinu Party of Avigdor Lieberman rose from 11 to 15 seats. At the same time, the left-wing Meretz Party dropped from five to three seats and the left-of-center Labor Party fell from 19 to 13 seats. Explaining the shift to the right, one factor is clear — the policy of unilateral withdrawals in an effort to win peace had not worked.

Although Ehud Barak had unilaterally withdrawn from Southern Lebanon in 2000, instead of attaining peace with Lebanon, Israel had to endure repeated rocket attacks leading up to a major war with Hezbollah in 2006, which the centrist Kadima Party did not wage effectively. Similarly, Israel’s withdrawal of both settlements and military bases from Gaza in 2005, instead of facilitating the peace process, brought increased rocket fire from Gaza, which Hamas had seized in 2007, leading to a major Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 (Operation Cast Lead).

Given these events, the majority of Israelis were not only wary of any further withdrawals, which, as Mr. Netanyahu pointed out in the campaign, would bring Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport into rocket range, but were also highly suspicious of the Palestinians, whose Hamas-Fatah split made any final Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement a far-off possibility, at best. Making matters worse was a general feeling that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was well-meaning but weak, and that his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, was honest but without a political base.

First of all, as I’ve pointed out many times, Israel’s “move to the right” still meant that the Israeli government would be closer in its views to Peace Now of twenty years ago than the Likud of twenty years ago. PM Netanyahu, himself, withdrew Israel from most of Chevron during his first term as Prime Minister.

But by explaining very well why Israelis would be skeptical of further withdrawals and concessions, Dr. Freedman undermines his labeling. The results of the 2009 Israeli election were the rational reation to previous failed policies; not an ideological move. Barry Rubin, in fact, described the results of election as representing a new consensus in Israel. President Obama’s problems with Israel are the result of his ideological orientation and his rejection of the views of a majority of Israelis, not the ideology of his counterpart, PM Netanyahu.

Further on, Dr. Freedman writes:

There were several aspects of the crisis. First, after a great deal of effort, the U.S. had gotten P.A. leader Mr. Abbas to agree to resume peace talks with Israel, albeit at the low level of indirect or proximity talks under which the U.S. Middle East Special Envoy George Mitchell would shuttle between the two sides. Mr. Biden’s trip to Israel was aimed, in part, to add the U.S. imprimatur to the start of the talks that had been endorsed by the Arab league, thus giving Mr. Abbas a modicum of legitimization.

So why did Abbas stop talking to Israel? Dr. Freedman never explains. Abbas had been offered quite a bit by outgoing PM Olmert in late 2008 and he rejected the offer. Note in this interview, the language that supposed “moderate” Saeb Erekat uses to describe the PA’s rejection of Olmert’s offer. It’s not very moderate. But what’s clear is that President Obama wasn’t trying to solve the problem of Israeli intransigence here, he was pressuring Israel to make concessions to overcome Palestinians intransigence.

However, as the date of Mr. Biden’s visit to Israel approached, the situation in East Jerusalem had become more explosive. The Israeli government, either with Mr. Netanyahu’s active support, or with his toleration, had begun to accelerate the construction of Jewish housing in Arab-populated neighborhoods of East Jerusalem such as Silwan and Sheikkh Jarrah, while destroying Arab-owned housing in these neighborhoods and elsewhere in East Jerusalem, because they had been “illegally” constructed; that is, built without the municipal permit that, under an Israeli “catch-22” policy, is almost impossible for East Jerusalem Arabs to obtain. This had inflamed Arab opinion.

In addition, the Israeli government in February had added both the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb (a Jewish enclave in Arab Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, surrounded by high walls and watchtowers) to the list of Jewish heritage sites across Israel and the West Bank that have been slated for millions of dollars of renovation work. The Palestinians had seen these actions as further attempts by Israel to unilaterally extend its control over areas that they want for their future Palestinian state. For the Palestinians, control over Arab East Jerusalem is seen as vital because, for both political and religious reasons, they want it as the capital of their long hoped for Palestinian state and, with the Jewish construction in Arab East Jerusalem, it appeared that this hope was rapidly slipping away.

By mentioning the controversy over Sheikh Jarrah, Dr. Freedman implicitly shows that the problem isn’t PM Netanyahu’s ideology. What happened there was supported by Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barakat, no right winger.

And his description of Rachel’s tomb is accurate, but he fails to acknowledge why these fortifications are necessary. They were necessary because Rachel’s tomb was attacked during the Arafat led “Aqsa intifada” ealier this decade.

Apparently the Arab desecration of Jewish holy sites isn’t something that bothers Dr. Freedman too much.

Freedman concludes:

However, whether that type of close coordination is still possible is now questionable. Indeed, whether Mr. Netanyahu can regain Mr. Obama’s trust without a major gesture to the Palestinians that would facilitate the resumption of negotiations is highly doubtful.

As Mr. Obama stated in an MSNBC March 30 interview, Mr. Netanyahu will have to “take some bold steps” to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Whether Mr. Netanyahu is prepared to do so — thereby preserving Israel’s close tie to the U.S. — remains to be seen.

Over the course of his essay, explicitly and implicitly, Dr. Freedman showed the intransigence of the Palestinians and the ideological change represented by President Obama. Yet his conclusion is only that PM Netanyahu must change to regain President Obama’s trust. It’s an astounding conclusion. It disregards one of the effects of the President Obama’s Middle East policy so far. Barry Rubin describes it:

Of course, the U.S. criticism of Israel and the crisis following the announcement of some future Jerusalem construction have been the main news. But that’s because the Obama Administration is ready (sometimes it seems, eager) to criticize Israel but did ot ever criticize the PA during its own fifteen months in office. This last point–which I have repeatedly pointed out–has become so embarassingly obvious that finally the State Department made a small peep. [See note at end of article.]

So it is easy to miss the fact that by their behavior the Palestinian leadership has lost any possible material gain from the administration’s attitude.

Seeing how eager the Obama administration is to please them, the Palestinians now see no reason to compromise, but rather wait for American pressure to change or undermine Israel’s position. The Obama administration’s strategy of only pressuring Netanyahu has backfired.

Now I’m a right winger, so I realize that my view of President Obama is negative. But it appears that even some of those liberals who support Israel and assured us that Barack Obama was pro-Israel are now regretting that. JoshuaPundit notes that Ed Koch has reversed himself.

Another Obama supporter, Prof. Alan Dershowitz also has criticized the President’s treatment of Israel. He goes a step further. He shows that it is President Obama who has kept the controversy alive; contradicting the unsupported assertion of Prof. Freedman that Netanyahu needs to take “bold steps” to restore the relationship between the United States and Israel.

The conflict was largely contrived by people with agendas. The initial impetus for the brouhaha was an ill-timed announcement that permits had been issued for building 1,600 additional residences in a part of Jerusalem that had been captured by Israel in the 1967 war. The Netanyahu government had been praised by President Obama for agreeing to a freeze on building permits on the West Bank, despite the fact that the freeze did not extend to any part of Jerusalem. Thus the announcement of new building permits did not violate any agreement by Israel. Nonetheless, the timing of the announcement embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden who was in Israel at the time. The timing was neither an accident nor was it purposely done by Prime Minister Netanyahu to embarrass Biden. Many believe that the announcement was purposely timed by opponents of the peace process in order to embarrass Netanyahu. Whatever the motivation, the announcement deserved a rebuke from Vice President Biden. It also warranted an apology and explanation from the Israeli government, which immediately came from Netanyahu. That should have ended the contretemps. But some in the Obama Administration apparently decided that they too had an agenda beyond responding to the ill-timed announcement, and they decided to take advantage of Israel’s gaff. They began to pile on and on and on. Instead of it being a one day story, the controversy continues to escalate and harden positions on all sides to this day and perhaps beyond. The real victim is the peace process and the winners are those–like Iran, Hamas and extremist Israelis–who oppose the two-state solution.

The building permits themselves were for residences not in East Jerusalem, but rather in North Jerusalem, and not in an Arab section, but rather in an entirely Jewish neighborhood. This neighborhood, Ramat Shlomo, is part of the area that everybody acknowledges should and will remain part of Israel even if an agreement for a two state solution and the division of Jerusalem is eventually reached. In that respect, it is much like the ancient Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, which was illegally captured from the Jewish residents by the Jordanian army in the 1948 war. The Jordanians then desecrated Jewish holy places during its illegal occupation, and the Israelis legally recaptured it during the defensive war of 1967. No one in their right mind believes that Israel has any obligation to give up the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the holiest Jewish site in the world, despite the fact that it was recaptured during the 1967 war.

Because the Palestinians understand and acknowledge that these entirely Jewish areas of Jerusalem will remain part of the Jewish state even after an agreement, the ill-timed announcement of building permits during the Biden visit generated a relatively mild and routine complaint, rather than a bellicose response, from the Palestinian Authority leadership. The bellicose response came from the American leadership, which refused to let the issue go. Once this piling on occurred, the Palestinian leadership had no choice but to join the chorus of condemnation, lest they be perceived as being less Palestinian than the Obama Administration.

There’s one more point that Dershowitz addresses that deserves further scrutiny.

The shabby treatment accorded Israel’s duly elected leader has also stimulated an ugly campaign by some of Israel’s enemies to delegitimize the US-Israeli strategic relationship, and indeed the Jewish nation itself, in the eyes of American voters. The newest, and most dangerous, argument being offered by those who seek to damage the US-Israel alliance is that Israeli actions, such as issuing building permits in Jerusalem, endanger the lives of American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This phony argument–originally attributed to Vice President Biden and General David Petraeus but categorically denied by both of them–has now taken on a life of its own in the media. A CNN headline on the Rick Sanchez Show blared “Israel a danger to US Troops.” Other headlines conveyed a similar message: “US Tells Israel: ‘You’re undermining America, endangering troops.’” Variations on this dangerous and false argument have been picked up by commentators such as Joe Klein in Time Magazine, Roger Cohen in The New York Times, DeWayne Wickham in USA Today and not surprisingly, Patrick Buchanan and Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.

When the first phony story appeared that Gen. Petraeus claimed that Israeli policies were endangering American troops it got a lot of play. I suspect that the source for the story was someone from the administration. I can’t prove that. However, had the President, Vice-President or other senior official come out and forcefully denied the story, it would have ended the matter. (Gen. Petraeus did once he arrived stateside, but was in no position to contradict the story eariler.) Clearly it was to the administration’s (perceived) advantage to have Israel portrayed as a liability.

The Obama administration clearly has no intention of playing nicely with the Netanyahu government. Dr. Freedman may think that things would be different with a different Israeli leader or if Netanyahu gives in to the pressure. Given the administration’s record so far there is little evidence that this is so. By singling out Netanyahu as mostly resposible for the problem’s an American-Israeli relations Dr. Freedman demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the political dynamics of the Middle East. Blaming Bibi is the intelectually lazy approach to Middle East analysis.

Crossposted on Yourish.