25 April 2009

By Khalid amayreh

Increasing indications are that Obama will act to see the implementation of a Palestinian state, regardless of the prevarications of Tel Aviv, writes Khaled Amayreh in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem

In his latest visit to Palestine-Israel last week, US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell repeatedly urged the right- wing Israeli government to endorse the two-state solution with the Palestinians, but apparently to no avail. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Mitchell that Israel didn't wish to "rule over another people", and that Israel was still interested in reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians. However, the obvious prevarication didn't impress the former US senator who told his hosts resolutely that the Obama administration was committed to the creation of a Palestinian state on territories occupied by Israel in 1967.

Mitchell reportedly went as far as telling his Israeli interlocutors that the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem was a strategic American interest. Unaccustomed to hearing American officials say "No" or even a "half yes" to Israel, Israeli leaders are now at loss as to how to deal with the "crisis" in Washington. Indeed, a fleeting look at the mostly right- wing Israeli media would give the impression that the ultimate threat to Israel's national security just came from across the Atlantic rather from Israel's neighbours.

Indeed, the manifestly rude reception Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman gave Mitchell during their meeting in West Jerusalem last week, which was incompatible with diplomatic tradition, may be interpreted as a defensive reflex by a government -- and a country -- that always took the US for granted and expected successive American administrations to be at Israel's beck and call. Lieberman, arrogantly placing his hands in his pockets, refused to walk with or shake hands with the American envoy following their meeting. The former Moldovan immigrant told Mitchell that "the Americans have their view points and we have ours, and that Israel is a democratic state."

For his part, Mitchell told reporters following the meeting that, "I reiterated to the foreign minister that US policy favours, with respect to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, a two-state solution which will have a Palestinian state living in peace alongside the Jewish state of Israel."

Advised to refrain from testing the limits of Obama's patience, Netanyahu is increasingly resorting to all sorts of diversionary and stalling tactics, for the purpose of throwing the ball into the Palestinian court. Prior to Mitchell's visit, Netanyahu declared that the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA) was conditioned on Palestinians recognising Israel as "state of the Jewish people". The statement is neither innocuous nor innocent. A Palestinian recognition -- even an informal acknowledgment -- of Israel as "a state of the Jews" would give Israel the right to expel, sooner or later, most or all the estimated 1.5 million citizens of Israel who are Palestinians on the grounds that Israel is an exclusively Jewish state.

The leaders of the Palestinian community in Israel are taking this issue very seriously as it relates to their very survival and continued existence in their ancestral homeland. Last year, a number of Arab Knesset members obtained a commitment from PA President Mahmoud Abbas that there would be no Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. In addition, the "Jewish state mantra" would also preclude the return of millions of Palestinian refugees to their homes and towns in what is now Israel. The refugees' plight, lingering ever since the creation of Israel in 1948, is rightly considered the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Commenting on Netanyahu's latest gambit, the US State Department on 19 April released a statement saying that the United States would continue to promote a two- state solution. The American rejection of Netanyahu's demand eventually forced the Israeli premier to change his mind, ostensibly, saying that the recognition of the Jewishness of Israel was a preference not a pre-condition.

According to Israeli commentators, Netanyahu is now exploring ways and means to evade a serious resumption of the peace process. Ideas being circulated in the Prime Minister's Office include using Hamas as a red herring, raising the "terror" issue anew, and imposing on Washington a linkage between the resumption of talks with the PA and an American commitment to force Iran to give up on its nuclear programme by whatever means necessary.

As to Israeli settlement expansion, Netanyahu is reportedly planning to tell the Obama administration that most of the settler units being built on occupied Arab land were planned and approved by the previous government and that Israeli law doesn't allow him to undo planned settlements. However, it is increasingly clear that the Obama administration is not in the mood of receiving "instructions" from Netanyahu and his extremist foreign minister.

Last week, the White House rebuffed Netanyahu by calling off a proposed meeting in Washington in early May. Netanyahu had hoped to capitalise on his attendance at the annual American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference to visit the White House. Moreover, Obama is now demanding almost incessantly a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank. Sources in Washington have also indicated that the Obama administration is dropping erstwhile American opposition to Hamas becoming part of a future Palestinian national unity government.

In such circumstances, when relations with a given US administration go sour, or when Israel doesn't get what it wants from Washington, Israel asks the Zionist nerve centre in the US (of which AIPAC is one core) to use its muscles, especially to bully the US government to heed Israeli demands. However, Netanyahu and his supporters believe that it is too soon and too risky to resort to pressure tactics against the Obama administration lest this lead to an uncalculated and unexpected boomerang effect.

Last week, the Israeli press reported that "our man at the White House" (White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) told an unnamed Jewish leader that "in the next four years there is going to be a permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn't matter to us at all who is prime minister in Israel."

The mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot also quoted Emanuel, whose father was a commander in the pre-state Itzel terrorist gang, that "any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory." "In other words, US sympathy for Israel's position vis-à-vis Iran depends on Israel's willingness to live up to its commitment to get out of the West Bank and permit the establishment of a Palestinian state there and Gaza and East Jerusalem."

In this light, it is expected that the Israeli government will spend the next few weeks meticulously studying "appropriate ways and means" to deal with the "new reality" in Washington. Some Israeli commentators have argued that Israel is facing a real dilemma in its relations with its guardian-ally. For if the Netanyahu government refuses to bend to Washington a real crisis will break out, while and if the governments capitulates to American pressure with regards to the two-state solution, it will risk its own collapse given the opposition of nearly all of Netanyahu's coalition partners to "territorial concessions" to the Palestinians.

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