Obama and Israel   

Tikkun Magazine, July/August 2009

Obama and Israel

by Michael Lerner

Congratulations to our president for a powerful and important speech in Cairo at the beginning of June. Barack Obama "gives good talk," as they say.

I don't think that should be minimized. Putting forward ideas is one of the most important things a president can do. If President Obama did nothing more than popularize a new way of thinking in the United States, that would be a great accomplishment. Just imagine how powerful it would be if that new way of thinking embodied our proposed New Bottom Line! To the extent that we have criticisms of Obama, they are about his reluctance to put forward a coherent worldview and then explain how his proposed programs are manifestations of that worldview.

So the Cairo speech was an important step in the right direction. Obama spoke convincingly of a desire to end the enmity that the Bush administration and al-Qaida have jointly managed to create between the Muslim world and the West. He emphasized shared values and made a credible case that the United States would genuinely like a cooperative relationship with the Muslim world.

Of course, as Mark LeVine convincingly argues in this issue of Tikkun, there are some important elements missing. (Please read his guest editorial in this issue.) But I do want to state that we at Tikkun were very much heartened by his speech, feel proud to have him as our president, and pray for the success of his presidency.

There are those who believe that the Obama speech also represented an important transformation in the United States' relationship to the Israel/Palestine struggle. There we are a bit less sanguine.

Compared with George W. Bush, Obama may have seemed bold. But compared with the first Bush, who threatened to withhold housing loan guarantees until Israel stopped expanding its settlements, Obama seemed very timid.

It is not that we think he should have revealed a bigger club. When I found myself debating Alan Dershowitz on CNN in June on the topic of whether or not the United States should get "tough" with Israel, I felt like I was on the wrong planet, since I really thought tough or soft is not the issue. You can view the debate (calling it that is an exaggeration when the whole thing lasted six minutes and all that was possible were tiny sound bytes) at www.tikkun.org/LernerDershowitz.

What the United States needs to do is to abandon its past stance as a neutral broker that has no position on the final outcome. Instead it should build support for a specific vision of what a lasting peace agreement would be. I won't try to rehearse our views on what that would entail here, though you can find them at www.spiritualprogressives.org. You are also invited to read (and circulate) an imaginative new idea proposed by Russell Nieli that attempts to combine the best elements of the one-state and two-state solutions of the past-please read it in this issue of Tikkun (page 33). President Obama has the popularity, charisma, and smarts to talk over the heads of the right-wing leaders of Israel, the rejectionists in the Palestinian world, and the pro-right-wing Israel Lobby in the United States in order to reach the people of Israel, Palestine, and the United States with a vision that could actually change their way of perceiving what is possible. It is this, not a new strategy of coercion of Israel, that is most likely to make a difference.

Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu's speech of June 14 also merits some praise in re-embracing the notion of a two-state solution and calling for negotiations without preconditions. The tone of the speech was constructive and-if you ignore the actual realities of the Occupation, as well as the history of past negotiations with Likud-his first comments seemed on their face to be quite reasonable.

Unfortunately, that reasonableness disappeared when, a few paragraphs later, he announced that he will not negotiate with representatives of Hamas because of their abhorrent behavior. What is that if not a precondition? And it's an unreasonable one at that, because of course one makes peace with one's enemies, and one cannot determine the composition of the negotiating team from one's enemies' side. Had the United States held this perspective, we would still be fighting the war in Vietnam, because negotiations had to be conducted with enemies who, even as the negotiations proceeded, were engaged in terror and in killing U.S. troops.

Moreover, once you recall that Netanyahu is an expert at endless negotiations (his mentor, former Prime Minister Shamir of the Likud party, commenting on why he agreed to negotiations with the Palestinians in Madrid in 1991, pointed out that he would be willing to sit in these negotiations for the next twenty years, and never agree to anything that would end the settlements) the apparent reasonableness of his talk decreases. Netanyahu himself made commitments and agreements at the negotiations pressed on him at Wye River in 1998 by President Clinton-and then failed to implement them. There was nothing in Netanyahu's talk that would lead anyone familiar with this history to believe that he has something different in mind this time.

Meanwhile, the Occupation continues, and with it Palestinians' anger rises and pushes them to despair, leading them to embrace Hamas' fundamentalism and its fantasy of destroying Israel. The likely outcome: there will be more terror attacks, which will be used as an excuse for abandoning or postponing the negotiations even after they've started, and nothing much will change in the daily life situation of Palestinians. Rejecting the U.S. insistence that "natural growth" of West Bank settlements be stopped, and ignoring the fact that the world community, including the United States, has never recognized the legitimacy of any West Bank settlements or Israel's annexation of the Arab sections of Jerusalem, Netanyahu made it clear that his notion of security requires the continued presence of the 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank. His call for a demilitarized Palestinian state may be code for the continued presence of the Israeli army in the West Bank, as well as the continued presence of roads accessible to settlers but not to Arabs. His insistence that a Palestinian state not be allowed to make treaty agreements with Iran is of this same nature. What exactly does it mean to have a Palestinian state if Israel is determining its policies? Not very much.

The Obama administration, faced with Netanyahu's refusal to stop natural growth, should articulate more fully the steps that Israel must take immediately to create a positive climate for negotiations. The steps should include the following:

1. Remove all roadblocks and checkpoints inside the West Bank. Israel has a perfect right to these roadblocks at its 1967 borders, and perhaps even just before the entrance to Israeli settlements, but not on West Bank roads linking Palestinian cities and villages.
2. Remove all parts of the Israeli wall that extend beyond the Green Line (the 1967 boundaries of the State of Israel).
3. End Israel's blockade of Gaza and allow free entrance into Gaza of food, water, medical supplies, fuel, and consumer goods.
4. Enable free, unrestricted travel between the West Bank and Gaza, as was promised by Israel in the Oslo Accords.
5. End the blockade by Israeli gunboats of Gaza's access to the sea and re-establish the right of Gazan fishing boats to fish.
6. Free Palestinian prisoners who have not been granted a public trial and hence have never been convicted of any crime.

Far more than stopping "natural growth" of the settlements, implementation of these steps would actually make quite a significant difference in the daily lives of Palestinians.

In turn, and without preconditions, the Palestinian Authority ought to respond to Netanyahu's demand for positive reassurances by publicly and unequivocally stating that the Palestinian people have had enough of this conflict. Its leaders should say: "We recognize the right of the Jewish people to a state of its own in this land. We will live side by side in true peace. The State of Israel is the national homeland of the Jewish people and will remain so."

Many Palestinians claim that they've already agreed to this and it never seems to be heard. Well, if so, it will cost Palestinians nothing to say it over and over again. Netanyahu reminded his listeners that "The tragedies that arose from the Jewish people's helplessness show very sharply that we need a protective state." Palestinians must recognize that, even though Israel has immensely greater power, the Jewish people are still suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that we need to hear reassurances over and over again that we will not be forced to re-experience a sense of helplessness again. Conversely, the Palestinian people are also suffering from PTSD, and it is Israel's responsibility to recognize that and reassure Palestinians that their need for a homeland and for reparations is taken seriously by Israel.

If these needs are not taken seriously by Israel, then they must at least be addressed by President Obama and the United States. The United States should talk over the heads of the Israeli and Palestinian leadership and over the heads of the pro-right-wing Israel Lobby in the United States to present a full vision of what a peaceful resolution of this conflict should be. And President Obama should insist that both sides of this struggle hear the legitimacy of the other side's version of history. Both sides should approach each other in a spirit of repentance and open-hearted forgiveness. In the final analysis, only that can heal the PTSD on both sides and make it possible for each side to embrace the peace that majorities on both sides deeply desire and deeply believe is impossible.