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The flagging peace process: Is Israel too strong for Barack Obama? | The Economist

The flagging peace process: Is Israel too strong for Barack Obama? | The Economist

Nov 5th 2009 | CAIRO AND JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition
As America drops its demand for a total freeze on the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, angry Palestinians say there is no scope for resuming talks

Illustration by Peter Schrank

FIVE months after Barack Obama went to Cairo and persuaded most of the Arab world, in a ringing declaration of even-handedness, that he would face down Israel in his quest for a Palestinian state, American policy seems to have run into the sand. The American president’s mediating hand is weaker, his charisma damagingly faded. From the Palestinian and Arab point of view, his administration—after grandly setting out to force the Jewish state to stop the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land as an early token of good faith, intended to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to negotiation—has meekly capitulated to Israel.

The upshot is that hopes for an early resumption of talks between the main protagonists seem to have been dashed. Indeed, no one seems to know how they can be restarted. The mood among moderates on both sides is as glum as ever.

Mr Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made matters worse by actually praising Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for promising merely to “restrain” Israel’s building rather than stop it altogether, as he was first asked to do. Previously Mrs Clinton had insisted that stop meant stop. There should be no “organic growth” of existing settlements and no exceptions for projects under way. Nor did she specifically exempt East Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as their future capital but which many Israelis see as theirs alone. And she had earlier castigated Israel for demolishing Palestinian houses in the city’s eastern part. Now, in Israel on October 31st, she changed her tune, seeming to acquiesce in Mr Netanyahu’s refusal to meet those earlier American demands and congratulating the prime minister on his “unprecedented” offer to build at a slower rate than before.

Mr Netanyahu’s case is that being “prepared to adopt a policy of restraint on the existing settlements” is indeed a concession. No new settlements would be started, no extra Palestinian land appropriated for expansion. But some 3,000 housing units already commissioned must, he said, be completed. Building must go on in East Jerusalem, he has repeatedly said, as it cannot be part of a Palestinian state.

Mrs Clinton later awkwardly backpedalled, assuring the Palestinians that she still considered all settlements “illegitimate”, while pleading with them to resume talks. That seems unlikely. A storm of abuse raged in the Palestinian and Arab press. Mr Obama, it was widely deduced, had caved in after his own ratings in Israel had slumped, according to some Israeli polls, to as low as 4%. Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Fatah party who presides over the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, expressed extreme disappointment—and continued to insist that talks could not resume until there was a full building freeze.

Among Palestinians at large, Mr Abbas has been derided for putting his faith in the new American administration. Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, the smaller of the two main parts of a future Palestinian state, mocked him for ever thinking that Mr Obama could change American policy towards the Middle East.

Last month he called a general and presidential election for January 24th. But with opinion polls showing his popularity diving, on November 5th he said he would not stand for re-election. Hamas, in any event, said it would refuse to take part in the polls. Mr Abbas, it seems, has been forced to acknowledge that his authority—and his ability to grapple with the Israelis in negotiations if they had resumed—has been eviscerated.

Besides, even if talks did start again, no agreement would stick without the acquiescence of Hamas, which won the last Palestinian election, in 2006, and is still strong enough to kibosh any deal done without it. Yet discussions between the two rival groups, under the aegis of the Egyptians, have been stuttering along for more than a year without getting anywhere.

Mr Netanyahu, on the other hand, was cock-a-hoop. The right-wing and religious ministers who make up the bulk of his coalition government can scarcely believe his luck. The prime minister is riding high in the Israeli people’s esteem. Building work is proceeding apace in many of the settlements. He looks as if he has emerged unscathed from a brush with a hostile American president.

Mr Obama is being criticised, even by Israelis and Americans on the left, for making demands of Mr Netanyahu that he should have known would never be met. Some say the president should himself fly to Israel to address the Israeli people directly with a game-changing plan of his own. But no one, least of all in Washington, seems to know what that might be.

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Al Jazeera English - Americas - US House rejects Goldstone report

Al Jazeera English - Americas - US House rejects Goldstone report

RT 11/3/09 AlJazeera

The US House of Representatives has rejected as "irredeemably biased" the findings of a UN-sponsored report which says Israel committed war crimes during its military assault on the Gaza Strip.

The house on Tuesday voted 344 to 36 in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on Barack Obama, the US president, to maintain his opposition to the report, which was written by a panel led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge.

The report accused Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group, which has de facto control of Gaza, of war crimes during the 22-day conflict in December and January.

But most of its criticism was directed towards Israel's conduct during the offensive, in which human rights organisations say about 1,400 Palestinians - many of them women and children - were killed.

Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were also killed over the course of the war, Israel has said.

Steny Hoyer, the Democrat House majority leader, said it was important to adopt an official resolution against the Goldstone report as it "paints a distorted picture".

It "epitomizes the practice of singling Israel out from all other nations for condemnation," he said on Tuesday.

UN assembly pressure

The US house vote came a day before the United Nations General Assembly is expected to debate its own resolution endorsing the findings of the Goldstone report.

Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the UN in New York, said that while the majority of the assembly's member nations were expected to vote in favour of the resolution, the US vote on Tuesday, although non-binding, was likely to dampen its impact.

"Remember - the key recommendation of Goldstone is to get a credible investigation into the alleged war crimes that the Goldstone commission found evidence of in Gaza, and the UN Security Council is the only body that can move forward and demand an investigation," she said.

"The general assembly just does not have that power. Of course, on the security council, the United States is a veto-wielding member and, as the congressional vote underscores, the US is not going to be interested in moving forward in the security council to call for an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), or anyone else for that matter."

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, has previously criticised the report, calling its recommendations "unprecedented for any country, not just Israel".

The United Nations Human Rights Council, which sponsored the Goldstone commission, has already voted to endorse the report.

Bias claims

Steven Rothman, a Democratic congressman from New Jersey, told Al Jazeera that the report was biased against Israel, even after the Goldstone commission's mandate was expanded so that it could investigate war crimes alleged to have been committed by Hamas.

"The report was not written to talk about 12,000 rockets intentionally sent by Hamas to slaughter Israeli men, women and children, versus the Israelis trying in many respects to minimise the damage to Palestinian civilians," he told Al Jazeera.
"So there have been completely different standards applied."
But when asked if he had read the Goldstone report in full, Rothman said he had read only the report's executive summary.

"I did not read the 400 or 500 pages, but I read the executive summary designed for members of congress and other world leaders to read, and I found it terribly, terribly biased and one-sided," he said.

Keith Ellison, a Democrat congressman for Minnesota, criticised his colleagues for rushing to judgement on the issue.

"I urge members to oppose this resolution because it will undermine President Obama's belief that all countries, including our own, should be held accountable for their own actions," he said during the debate.

Goldstone clarifications

Goldstone last week sent a letter to the US House of Representatives saying that the text of the US resolution had "factual inaccuracies and instances where information and statements are taken grossly out of context".

He offered several rejections and clarifications of the ideas expressed in the resolution.

In response to Goldstone's criticism, three parts of the resolution were amended on Tuesday to clarify that Goldstone had sought an expansion to the commission's mandate so that his team could investigate claims that Hamas had violated international law during the Gaza war.

The Goldstone report, which accused Israel of using "disproportionate force" and of deliberately targeting civilians, called for independent investigations to be held into Israel's and Hamas's conduct during the war.

The report called for the cases to be referred to the ICC in The Hague if Israel and Hamas do not investigate the war crimes allegations against them within six months.

Hamas has agreed to hold such an investigation, but Israel has not.