Hope for peace ‘very dim’

The image of Israel, certainly its present-day leaders, among Americans, particularly a high portion of American Jews, has received a devastating blow after the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu for a fourth term last month.

In turn, President Barack Obama is now seen as an influential pacesetter who will hopefully resolve the 67-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict before his presidential term ends in little more than 20 months.

What has brought this about has been the appearance of Netanyahu, at the invitation of Republican House Speaker John Boehner, at a joint session of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate last month.

The Israeli leader’s arrogance, endorsed by the Republican congressmen, was otherwise dismissed as reprehensible by the Democrats and certainly by the American president who was not advised of the event ahead of time.

Netanyahu’s re-election on March 17 has not calmed the political atmosphere in Washington, especially when arrogant Netanyahu declared publicly that there will be no Palestinian state during his term in office, which he supported previously.

Additionally, he criticised the ongoing talks between the so-called P5+1 nations (the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany) and Iran over the latter’s nuclear ambitions — a position that was loudly lambasted by Obama.

In a hard-hitting article on Mondoweiss, a popular news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from “a progressive Jewish perspective”, noted that “last month has seen the greatest change in the US relationship with Israel… maybe since… the creation of the state”.

In an article by Philip Weiss, the co-editor of Mondoweiss, noted that Obama had “repeatedly fault[ed] the Israeli prime minister’s conduct” and that his chief of staff had declared before a Jewish audience in Washington that the Israeli “occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end”.

Weiss also underlined that “today for the first time in decades, we can see an open divide inside the Jewish establishment over Israel”.

Meantime, a large group of American lawyers, known as the Virginia State Bar, has cancelled its midyear legal seminar scheduled to be held in Jerusalem in November because of Israel’s “unacceptable discriminatory policies and practices pertaining to border security that affects travellers”. 

In a petition, 39 bar members who were concerned by Israeli practices, said: “It is without question that Israel employs discriminatory entry and exit policies for US citizens, particularly visiting Arab- and Muslim Americans.” 

Israel’s particular callousness towards the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, where about 2,200 died in last year’s 50-day war launched by Israel, attracted the attention of former president Jimmy Carter, who said that “none of the underlying causes of the conflict have been addressed”. 

In a column published in The Washington Post last Sunday, he maintained that the people in Gaza “are experiencing unprecedented levels of deprivation, and the prospect for renewed armed conflict is very real”.

He went on: “The international community, including the Obama administration, should be given credit for recognising the need to unify the Palestinian political system in order to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and stabilise the security situation.”

In other words, the former president urged that “a reconciliation agreement” between Fateh, the Palestinian group dominant in the West Bank, and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group, is essential in order to stabilise the situation there, adding that “it is incumbent on the world to engage at the highest levels with the Palestinians, Egypt an Israel to push this process forward”.

Coincidentally, the UN special coordinator for Middle East peace process, Dutch diplomat Robert Serry, who appeared despondent on his last day in this position, told The Washington Post in an interview that “the stark truth is that despite all our efforts, Gaza is our collective failure”.

His view is that there will never be peace in the Middle East unless the problem of Gaza is solved.

He suggested a “Gaza first” strategy, “in which Hamas relinquishes control of the crossings into the coastal enclave, reported William Booth, and “embraces the new but ineffectual Palestinian unity government and pledges to maintain a truce with Israel to allow Gaza to be rebuilt”.

The outgoing UN envoy did not think that talks between Israelis and Palestinians would be productive at present, echoing a statement by Obama last week that the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace “seems very dim”.

He suggested in the interview that the UN could propose the broad outlines of a peace plan, should conditions permit it.

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.