The Foreign Service Journal, March 2010

M A R C H 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 39 As Israel’s sole protector, the United States has become the target of sustained asymmetric warfare by terrorists who espouse extremist Muslim agendas. Governments al- lied with the United States or de- pendent on it — especially those in Arab and Muslim countries — are targets, too. The threat we Americans now face derives less from al-Qaida than it does fromwideningMuslim rage at continuing humiliation and injustice. A Central Strategic Task A just and durable peace in the Holy Land that secures the state of Israel should be an end in itself for the United States. But the fact that the conflict there enrages and rad- icalizes the Islamic body politic worldwide shouldmake the achievement of such a peace an inescapable, central task of United States strategy. This is why it was right for Pres. Obama to take time last June to deliver a message of rec- onciliation to Arabs and Muslims in Cairo. Despite all the other urgent tasks, he focused on resolving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. He has repeatedly expressed deter- mination to stabilize Israel’s relations with its Arab neigh- bors through a “two-state” solution. The administration’s initial efforts have, however, met with contemptuous re- jection from Israel, feckless dithering from the Palestinians and skepticism from other Arabs. This should not surprise us, even if it seems to have surpised our president. The current government of Israel rejects trading land for peace. It sees itself as on the verge of achieving a level of colonization of Palestinian Arab land that will make any- thing resembling a Palestinian state physically impossible. In the exclusively Jewish state of Israel that its leading fig- ures envisage, only Jews will be full citizens. Some Arabs will have limited rights, but most will live in an archipelago of checkpoint-ringed ghettos. They will be free, should they wish, to call these ghettos a “state;” but once they leave Palestine, Israel will not allow them to return. Given this Israeli vision, the American attempt to arrange a settlement freeze so that negotiations can create a Palestinian state is, from the Israeli government point of view, at best an unwelcome distraction and at worst a hos- tile act. PrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu does not fear pressure from the U.S. to change course. He is confident that his American lobby will arrange for Congress to punish the president if he tries to punish Israel for its intransigence. An Israeli Cabinet-directed as- sassination campaign has long work- ed to ensure that “there is no one to talk to” on the Palestinian side. With a little help from their Israeli con- querors and us Americans, surviving Palestinian politicians remain hope- lessly divided. Israel has not presented a proposal for peace to the Palestinians. Sadly, if it now did so, there would be no one with the authority to accept on behalf of the Pales- tinian people. The United States, meanwhile, is seeking to ease Pales- tinian suffering in ways that improve the political standing of collaborators with the Israeli occupation authorities. Will Palestinian leaders emerge who are willing to take what- ever they can get from Israel and who are able, somehow, to call off the resistance to it? That seems to be the hope, if not the plan. It is not, of course, the trend. The Obama administration is unwilling, at least for now, to put pressure on Israel. Instead, it has fallen back on the use of diplomacy as psychotherapy for Israel’s political pathologies. It is trying to induce better behavior by ar- ranging Arab gestures that appease Israeli apprehensions and signal acceptance of the Jewish state in their midst even before its borders are fixed, or the status of both its captive Arab population and those who fled to the refugee camps in neighboring countries is resolved. American diplomats see these gestures as down pay- ments on the normalization of relations with Israel that the Arab League proposed at Beirut in 2002 in the so-called “Arab Peace Initiative.” But the Arabs premised their will- ingness to accept Israel on its reaching an acceptable agree- ment with the Palestinians. With Israel now neither doing nor promising anything that might lead to an acceptable status for the Palestinians, the Arabs see no reason to ap- pease it. Nor do they any longer feel obligated by friend- ship to accommodate what they judge to be ill-considered American requests. Two Dreadful Ironies Adding poignancy to the impasse are two dreadful ironies. The state of Israel was established to provide the world’s Jews with a homeland in which they might safely enjoy the pursuit of happiness free from continuing perse- cution by Gentiles. But the Jewish state has become the most dangerous place on the planet for Jews to live. And with anti-Semitism now universally rejected in its tradi- F O C U S The Obama administration is unwilling, at least for now, to put pressure on Israel.