Was there ever a more predictable end to a Middle East peace effort than the demise of John Kerry’s recent initiative? Earlier this year, in a rare effort to be optimistic, I suggested this could be the Secretary of State’s year, noting that “his biggest advantage, perhaps his only advantage, is that all sides know this may well be the last chance for a peaceful settlement.” I should have stuck with my dour Yorkshire skepticism.
Even before Kerry could get the two sides to sit down and negotiate, the Israeli government gave him the bum’s rush, approving a new wave of settlement construction and delaying a release of Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinians reacted by applying for membership to various international organizations, and that was that. Not even dangling the possible release of Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy, could rescue things for Kerry. And when he pointed out the simple truth that the failure to release the prisoners and the announcement about the settlements had precipitated the collapse in the peace process, he faced accusations from prominent Israelis, not for the first time, of being biased, and possibly even anti-Semitic.
In this country, the postmortems are still coming, including a despairing column by Tom Friedman, a longtime observer of the Middle East, in Wednesday’s New York Times. “We’re not dealing anymore with your grandfather’s Israel, and they’re not dealing anymore with your grandmother’s America either,” Friedman writes. “Time matters, and the near half-century since the 1967 war has changed both of us in ways neither wants to acknowledge — but which the latest impasse in talks only underscores.”
That’s at least half right. As Friedman points out, Israel has become a much more religious and stridently ethnocentric country over the years, and it’s got to the stage where, he notes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who originally came to power on a platform of rejecting concessions to the Palestinians, is regarded as a moderate conservative. The settler movement is central. At the time of the Camp David peace agreement, there were less than a hundred thousand Israelis in West Bank settlements. Now, there are close to half a million, with the number growing by the day.
What hasn’t changed is U.S. policy toward Israel, and the way that it is marketed. From James Baker to Madeline Albright and now Kerry, senior U.S. diplomats have tried to present the United States as an “honest broker” between the two sides, interested only in the promotion of peaceful coexistence. About the only people who take this idea seriously are U.S. officials and commentators. The United States isn’t, and can’t be, a neutral mediator in the Middle East. It has long acted as Israel’s closest ally, biggest benefactor, and ultimate guarantor of its security. In an op-ed in the Times earlier this year, Avi Shlaim, the eminent Israeli historian who teaches at Oxford, pointed out some awkward realities:
Shlaim’s op-ed appeared in the International New York Times, formerly the International Herald Tribune, rather than in the American print edition of the paper (though it was available online). In this country, a type of cognitive dissonance rules. Politicians of both parties fall over each to express their undying support for Israel. At the same time, though, the U.S. government insists that it wants to participate in the peacemaking game as an umpire rather than as the primary backer of one of the teams.
Occasionally, somebody in authority questions whether unqualified fealty to Israel is in the national interest. In 2010, General David Petraeus, who was then the head of U.S. Central Command, warned that Israel’s intransigence on settlements, and the U.S. government’s failure to do anything about it, was undermining U.S. influence elsewhere in the Middle East. But nothing really changes, and Netanyahu and his allies are well aware of this. In 2010, they humiliated Vice-President Joseph Biden by unveiling a plan for new settlements during one of his official visits. This time, it was Kerry’s turn to be swatted aside like an annoying bee.
It’s been clear for years that the one thing that might—and only might—change the Israeli government’s thinking is a credible threat by the United States of pulling away, cutting back its military aid, and joining an international effort to isolate the Jewish state. If the United States were to remove the universal presumption that, ultimately, it will always take Israel’s side, it could actually play the role of honest broker. But what are the chances of that happening?
A recent article in The Economist raised the possibility of the United States “ditching” Israel, but that was just speculation. The Israel lobby in Washington is as strong as ever, and recent polls show that a sizable majority of Americans believe the United States should continue to support Israel, or even support it more vigorously.
With little public pressure for a shift in policy, it’s hard to see why one might come about. As Israel continues to build settlements in the West Bank and establish unalterable “facts on the ground,” the United States will continue to back it up militarily and economically. Since that stance appears to reflect what most Americans want, it can be, and will be, rationalized as a reflection of public opinion. But, please, let’s end the pretense that the United States doesn’t take sides.
Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty.
