Soccer Dad

Engagement delays peace

While there are problems with this article an analysis by Glenn Kessler observes Administration missteps hamper Mideast efforts. Here's the key:

The administration's key error, many analysts say, was to insist that Israel immediately freeze all settlement growth in Palestinian-occupied territories. The United States has never accepted the legitimacy of Israeli settlements, but the Obama administration took an unusually tough stance. It refused to acknowledge an unwritten agreement between Israel and Bush to limit growth in settlements, with Clinton leading the charge to demand a full settlement freeze.

U.S. officials say that in the wake of the war in the Gaza Strip in the winter, they wanted to send a signal of toughness and push both sides to take positive steps to build an atmosphere for talks. By that measure, there has been some progress: Israelis and Palestinians have been deep in conversations trying to set the parameters for negotiations.

But Abbas, emboldened by the U.S. rhetoric, announced that he would not begin negotiations until settlements were frozen. Facing Israeli opposition, the administration appeared to back off the demand for a full settlement freeze, first exempting East Jerusalem and then signaling approval of an Israeli plan to exempt nearly 3,000 housing units on the West Bank.

A parallel editorial observes the same thing:

The administration set the stage last spring for this diplomatic impasse by demanding "a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth -- any kind of settlement activity," as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton put it. No Israeli government has agreed to such terms, and the administration's public insistence on them only served to boost Mr. Netanyahu's approval rating with Israelis, while Mr. Obama's plummeted to the single digits. The administration now wants to set the issue aside and move on with the talks; officials say a settlement freeze was never a precondition. But Ms. Clinton is having trouble clambering out of the hole she helped to dig: Last weekend she praised as "unprecedented" an Israeli proposal for limiting settlement growth; this week, after Arab protests, she backpedaled.

Mr. Abbas has a similar predicament. Having adopted the original U.S. demand as his own, he cannot easily drop it. Arab leaders could provide Mr. Abbas political cover, but neither they nor he seems to share Mr. Obama's notion that the time is ripe for a deal. Apart from the settlement issue, the Israelis and Palestinians are far apart in their proposals for what negotiations would cover and how quickly they would progress. Israelis note that Mr. Abbas already rejected a far-reaching peace offer by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert. Palestinians rightly suspect that Mr. Netanyahu would be less compromising than Mr. Olmert.

The Post's editors go on to say that the best possible option now is Salam Fayyad's efforts to build institutions of governance. The problem is that Fayyad has no real following.

And then we have this:

Omar Hilmi Al-Ghul, a top advisor to the PA's caretaker Prime Minister Salam Feyadh, said on Wednesday that Clinton is being bribed by "the Zionists" to support their interests in her attempts to revive the long-stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

"Why, Mrs. Hillary? How much did the Zionists bribe you, and what weight does AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] carry in your decisions and inclinations? Have you asked yourself who is occupying whose land? Which side is plundering the land, murdering [its] inhabitants, sowing death, violence, and terror, and destroying human civilization in the region?" he wrote in an article in a Palestinian daily under the headline, "Clinton, Why Must You Lie?"

Al-Ghul, who is considered to be a "moderate" and a peace partner by the US government, made the remarks after Clinton praised the Israeli proposal for restrained settlement building during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, describing it as an "unprecedented" settlement concession.

Remember that this is a declared "moderate."

This was accompanied by a cartoon that looks like it came from Nazi Germany. Hamas is improving its missile technology. Fatah considers the Balfour Declaration a causus belli. And as we just noted, Iran is arming Hezbollah.

Can anyone still think that real obstacle to peace are "settlements" or the "hawkish" government of Binyamin Netanyahu rather than the "false inevitability of Middle East moderation?"