FP on Aluf Benn's NY Times Op-Ed

I mentioned yesterday in my take on the Martin Indyk interview in The Daily Beast that Haaretz’s “editor at large” had been complaining in a NY Times op-ed two days ago that Obama has been “ignoring” Israel.
FP has published a response by Steve Breyman that skillfully deconstructs Benn's illogical whining. It's a must read for anyone interested in the current state of affairs between Israel and the Obama administration.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/29/is_obama_ignoring_israel

Indyk: Israelis "love to be loved"

Interesting piece out of The Daily Beast today: a short article from Benjamin Sarlin who interviews former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk about how Obama can get “back on track” with Israel. At no point in the article does anyone really question if Obama is off track with Israel at all. It’s taken as a self evident truth that because Netanyahu is in a huff about Obama’s pressure over settlements, something must be done on the American end to soothe his hurt feelings.

Indyk argues that because the Israelis “love to be loved” and received “a blank check of love” during the Bush years, they’ll need to be reassured that they are still in favor in Washington. Haaretz reported that a lot of these hurt feelings grew out of Obama’s much celebrated Cairo speech in June in which he extended an olive branch to the Arab and Muslim worlds. Apparently peaceful rhetoric towards the Arab and Muslim worlds, and being an ally to Israel, is mutually exclusive.

Elliot Abrams Defends Settlements in the Washington Post

I recently revisited an op-ed piece Elliot Abrams’ wrote in April for the Washington Post in which he argues that the settlement freeze is a red herring for Arab-Israeli peace. Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and was the deputy national security advisor for Near East and North African Affairs in the George W. Bush White House. While that last job position should be alarming to anyone who follows American involvement in the Middle East, anyone familiar with Abrams’ resume is probably already aware that he lacks much credibility. He was convicted for lying to Congress nearly 20 years ago during their Iran-Contra investigation. His track record in Central America – where he allegedly covered up atrocious violence perpetrated by right-wing Governments – apparently provided a solid foreign relations background for dealing with the Middle East.

His take on an Israeli settlement freeze is shockingly ignorant of what it’s actually like in the Occupied Territories and contains a number of falsehoods as well. He argues that while Israel hasn’t always “kept to the rules” concerning settlements (no new ones, no financial incentives to move to one, no new construction except within boundaries of pre-existing ones) it doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter because it won’t affect a final negotiation presumably because Palestinians would have to take land in the Negev desert in exchange for the land on which settlements have been built. He suggests that this is the deal offered to the Palestinians by Ehud Barak in 2000 and Olmert in 2009.

But Abrams shows a stunning ignorance of both history and geography. Firstly, the deals offered by Barak and Olmert for “between 94 and 98 percent” of the Occupied Territories were horrible deals that the PA had to reject. Without getting into the specifics, the territory offered to the Palestinians wasn’t contiguous, creating a series of mini-states similar to their current situation. This setup has been accurately compared to the Bantustans of South Africa. One of the reasons these Cantons would need to be created is to sustain the Israeli-only network of roads that connect Israel proper with their settlements within the Occupied Territories. To suggest that the settlements have no impact on even the idea of land swap is completely disingenuous.

Secondly, the settlements in the Occupied Territories do not have the same value to warrant a one for one land swap with Israeli territory in the Negev desert. Israeli settlements are constructed close to or on top of the few fresh water reservoirs in the region. According to Israeli Human Rights group B’Tselem, Israelis consume five and a half times more water than their Palestinian neighbors on a per capita basis making the control of water a primary driver in settlement policy. Abrams knows this but he’s hoping the average Washington Post reader doesn’t. This problem has been left out of discussions about land swaps since the Barak “offer” was made in the hope that public opinion would see the failure of such a deal as Palestinian intransigence.

Lastly, Abrams is suggests that it doesn’t matter that Israel continues to violate the “rules” that he helped create (during the Bush administration’s Road Map phase). That most settlement expansions “do not affect much Palestinian life” is another fallacy. Palestinians, and the Arab world in general, look to the settlements as an example of Israel’s unwillingness to make even the smallest of concessions. Freezing settlement expansion is literally the easiest thing Israel will have to do if they really want a peace with the Palestinians. It doesn’t involve serious existential questions about Jerusalem or the compensation and return of refugees. It’s continually cited by the UN, the Quartet and most heads of state as the single most pressing issue and yet Israel is still unwilling to stop settlement expansion. What, I wonder, will happen when they have to actually remove some settlements?

It’s a shame Abrams couldn’t have retired like his former boss. Surely his twenty plus years of screwing up other countries has left him with a nice nest egg?

Israel: America can keep its money

Haaretz is reporting that the Israeli Finance Minister is not just dismissive of the possibility that the US could withhold loan guarantees worth billions of dollars but doubts that the state of Israel even needs them.

"I don't see any limitations on the horizon. It's not time to be concerned about that" said the Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, "I don't see any need to use them in the near future.”

This comes as a response to the increased tension between the US and Israel over the latter’s plan to move ahead with an illegal settlement construction in the West Bank despite condemnation from President Obama.

Relating back to my post yesterday, I’m not sure if this is Israel calling Obama’s bluff on economic sanctions (not that he’s even suggested them… yet) or if this is a reflection of the relative influence Israel now has over the United States. I’m sure the tough talk (tough in a teenager sort of way: “I don’t even need your stupid allowance Dad!”) has been mandated by Netanyahu and the chorus of “no other country can dictate Israeli policy” that we saw yesterday seems to suggest such a position. But it is interesting that Israel seems to be pushing this issue rather than simply continuing its settlement expansion while trying not to draw American ire. This is starting to look to me like a fight Netanyahu thinks he needs to start. Which in turn begs the question: Is this a fight he can win?

Who is more powerful: Israel vs. The US --- REDUX

My post yesterday on the resounding chorus of Israeli politicians decrying the external "pressure" and "challenges to its sovereignty" (sound familiar Ayatollah Khamenei?) was a lead into the question I posed and half answered: Who is more powerful: Israel of the United States?
Let me expand a bit...
First let me confess that using the term “powerful” is a bit misleading. What I’m trying to get at is “power” in the sense of who has a bigger influence on the other’s policy making. This isn’t a question of who is militarily stronger or who has a more effective international diplomatic reach. This is purely a question of which state is more reliant on the other.
Now I should also admit that historically the case has always been that Israel has benefitted greatly from American patronage. Without a doubt the United States has always been “more powerful” than Israel. The military aide – and more importantly the weapon sales concessions – that Israel has received from the US has gone a long way in solidifying the Israeli Defense Forces as one of the premier militaries in the world. Diplomatically, the Americans have been involved in most of the successful (and failed) peace efforts between Israel and its neighbors (Egypt and Jordan), and the Palestinians. There has been no equivalent to Camp David – no “Camp Adam” to facilitate peace between the United States and Cuba.
So has that balance shifted in the opposite direction? Sort of…
I doubt that Israel will ever be in a position to negotiate a settlement between an American President and Raul Castro. Israel, in many ways, benefits more from its perceived position of weakness in relation to the US. It relies a great deal on funds raised in the Diaspora for various “emergencies” and while immigration from the West has dropped considerably in the last two decades there is no doubt that there still exists a strong emotional connection between a great many diasporic Jews and their perceived homeland. This is maintained considerably by Israel projecting a sense that their existence is under siege. I won’t get into whether it’s true, or why they think they face these existential threats but that perception (valid or not) has been a great boon to Israel’s state coffers.
But the nitty-gritty of this question of relative power really comes down to need. Who needs who more? I don’t remember a time when the two men leading these states have had as much of an ideological gap between them as today. While Obama is hardly the Marxist Muslim many feared, his liberal centrism is about as far away an American President can get from Benyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s extremism has been bolstered by his own far right leaning coalition government and the country’s domestic fatigue for the ongoing stalemate with the Palestinians. The only person who is trying to moderate Netanyahu – the only person that counts – is Barack Obama.
So when Netanyahu announces that, despite firm proclamations from the Obama administration that the settlement construction in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (East Jerusalem in particular) must stop, Israel will continue with said construction regardless, we have Obama’s first real challenge in his effort on the Arab-Israeli front. How can Netanyahu get away with such intransigence? Because Netanyahu is gambling that Israel is no longer beholden to American power. In fact, he may think that the dynamic is quite the opposite.
Without overstating their influence, we have in the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies. Detailed in their book “The Israel Lobby” Professors Mearsheimer and Walt have laid out a damning indictment of Israel’s influence over American foreign (and in some cases, domestic) policy. In courting the vote of AIPAC supporters (quick: where did Obama make his first major speech after winning the Democratic nomination?) Obama had to continuously assert that American support for the state of Israel is unwavering. On top of that, and in words that should come back to haunt him, he said “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, secure and undivided”. AIPAC has long been controlled by vocal supporters of the Likud party (now under Netanyahu) and the need to vigorously court the support of AIPAC voters has to be seen as a compromise to Likudniks.
Now, it would seem, Netanyahu is cashing that check Obama wrote in front of the AIPAC audience back in June.
Obama, on the other hand, has little to offer Israel. There is no effective organ for promoting American interests among Israeli voters like AIPAC does stateside. Israeli hawks are benefiting from a status quo that hasn’t seen an American President do anything but murmur displeasure with Israeli actions. And even economically – as dire straits as the Israeli economy may be in – they are no longer the struggling economy they once were. On the other hand, being viewed as Israel’s unquestioning patron has cost the United States billions of dollars in both direct aide and costs through association. Their diplomatic stature suffers in both the Arab street and in more progressive European capitals. At some point a Realist look at the US-Israel relationship will conclude that the costs outweigh the benefits when you have so little influence you can’t stop the construction of a single apartment building.
Or, they may conclude that toning down that relationship may be too costly politically. And if this is the conclusion, is it that much of a stretch to suggest that Israel now has the upper hand in its relationship with the United States?

Noah Efron on the Ultra-Orthodox Riots

Noah Efron has written a fascinating article for Foreign Policy about the recent Ultra-Orthodox riots in Jerusalem and the social inequities that are increasingly pitting secular Israelis against the Ultra-Orthodox underclass.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/07/20/israel_turns_on_itself

Israel: No "Subidiary" of Another State

Israeli politicians are up in arms at the increasing chorus of international leaders who argue that the proposed settlement construction in occupied East Jerusalem should be stopped.
Haaretz quotes…
Prime Minister Netanyahu: “Israel will not agree to edicts [American, European, Russian] of this kind in East Jerusalem”.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon: Israel has an “indisputable” right to build anywhere in East Jerusalem.
Minister of Internal Affairs Eli Yishai: “Israel's government is not a subsidiary of any other world government […] Israel’s Government [is] free to build anywhere in Israel”.
Science Minster Daniel Hershkowitz: “Israel must reject international pressure and the challenges to its sovereignty in Jerusalem”.
It appears that the coalition government is clearly behind the Prime Minister in his refusal to submit to the pressure being put on it by the United States, Russia, France and Germany. And to be honest with you, when it comes to Russia and France, I don’t really blame them. What has either done for Israel recently? The Germans are a curious case in that there are few Western countries who try as hard as the Germans do to stay out of Israel’s affairs and the strong statement from the head of the German Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee suggests that this trend may be slowly changing or it may be an indication of this issue’s importance.
But that of course brings me to the United States. While the Europeans (and Russians even more so) have always posed as a minor irritant in the side of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians (nothing says rebuke like a polite discussion with an Ambassador) as long as their objections remain dissociated from economic sanctions they have little bite in their mute bark. The Americans, on the other hand, are different. I’m particularly struck by Eli Yishai’s assertions that Israel is no “subsidiary” of another state.
Israel takes billions of dollars annually in economic and military aide from the Americans and does little in return. Israel’s inhumane actions towards the Palestinians have endangered the security of the United States enormously. As the financier of Israeli militarism the United States gets little but the unwanted association of their weapons technologies with civilian deaths.
In reality, the relationship between the US and Israel seems to be asymmetrical but not in the way you’d think. If the Israeli’s continue to defy Obama’s claim that the settlement of East Jerusalem is an impediment to peace it would seem that we’ve entered the era where Israeli influence over American policy is as powerful if not more than American influence over Israel’s.

"A Moral Twilight Zone"

A group of 26 unnamed Israeli soldiers are claiming that they took part in abuses against Palestinians during the Israel assault on Gaza this past winter. Among the charges levelled in the report include an accusation that IDF troops were encouraged to "shoot first, worry later" and that many civilians were killed "needlessly". Also in the report were confirmations that the Israelis used illegal white phosphorous weapons against civilians, which has been alleged for months, and that they routinely used Palestinian civilians as "human shields". The human shields accusation is also not new.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/07/15/breaking-the-silence-gaza-israel.html

In the meantime

I've been working on some longer posts that are time sensitive enough I should have had them finished much faster. In the meantime why don't you check out these two videos.

The first is an Israeli cell phone commercial garnering controversy in Israel and the Occupied Territories for its portrayal of the interactions between the IDF and Palestinians. It's getting flack from both sides for it's message (delivered by voice over in Hebrew at the end) that all we want "is a little bit of fun".

This beauty is a marketing video produced by Rafael, an Israeli arms manufacturer designed to remind it's Indian clients of their genuine respect and understanding of Indian culture.