We’re nine months into Obama, and perhaps at the end of the first round of his attempt to make peace in the Middle East. That started with his generally well received speech in Cairo, and his attempt to halt any new Israeli settlements on the West Bank, an attempt whose failure was underlined when last week he issued a call for “restraint” rather than a “freeze”. The US notably failed to offer any support to the Goldstone report, a failure that is generally seen in the blogosphere as a necessary step for self-defence: if Israel could be hauled to the Hague for Gaza, so could the US for some of its soldiers’ actions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Reading reactions to the Middle East is a lot like reading tea leaves: you can always find just what you’re looking for. But it is most instructive to see the difference in the perceptions between Israeli and US commentators.
From Israel, the result seems clear. In CounterPunch, Uri Avnery says:

NO POINT denying it: in the first round of the match between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu, Obama was beaten.
Obama had demanded a freeze of all settlement activity, including East Jerusalem, as a condition for convening a tripartite summit meeting, in the wake of which accelerated peace negotiations were to start, leading to peace between two states – Israel and Palestine.
In the words of the ancient proverb, a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Netanyahu has tripped Obama on his first step. The President of the United States has stumbled.

And in Haaretz, his fellow peace supporter, Gideon Levy is even more despairing:

When he was elected, President Obama declared that the Middle East conflict was endangering world peace. Nothing is more true. The potential danger between Jenin, Gaza and Jerusalem is no less serious than that in the killing fields of Kandahar and Mosul. But what is the president doing to eliminate the fuel that feeds international terrorism? Or at least to show that he is doing something? He ruins nine whole months over the issue of a construction freeze in the settlements, and even that pathetic goal was not achieved.
It has to be one way or the other: Either Obama thinks a solution to the conflict isn’t a worthy goal and so should get out of the picture and devote his energies elsewhere or he means what he said and must use all his power and act. Meanwhile, instead of change, we have gotten distressing continuity. Instead of “yes we can,” we have gotten “no we can’t.”

But in the US there is more optimism, summed up clearly by Stephen Walt on the most useful Foreign Policy blog:

Yet Obama also reiterated his commitment to two states in forceful terms, and said it was time for the parties to commence permanent status negotiations (something Netanyahu has resisted in the past). This development has led shrewd observers likeDaniel Levy,M.J. Rosenberg, andFP’sMarc Lynchto offer a guardedly optimistic interpretation of the events in New York, suggesting that Netanyahu may have won a tactical victory but suffered a strategic setback.Phil Weissoffers a similar appraisal on the Gaza report, suggesting that Obama and his team decided to let the Gaza report fall by the wayside in order to win over the center of the American Jewish community and put themselves in a better position to broker a two-state solution down the road. In essence, the optimists see Obama as playing a longer game, refusing to get bogged down by what are ultimately tactical issues and focused on the ultimate objective.

Perhaps the most interesting look at where the “peace process” will go, and what Obama will do next comes from Larry Derfner, in the Jerusalem Post:

THIS CANNOT go on. Obama, for the sake of his presidency, cannot allow this to go on.
Which is why I’m optimistic that he won’t. Obama didn’t come this far and didn’t set such lofty goals to be hamstrung, to become a lame duck, so soon after entering the White House. He may not be a gut fighter, but he’s too ambitious, too smart, and he’s surrounded himself with too many barracudas to let the likes of Likud, Israel Beiteinu, Shas and the settlers do him in….I also believe Obama has learned … that there is no meeting point between him and the Israeli government on the peace process, that one of them is going to have to give in, and God help him if he’s the one. Obama’s learning that if he allows the most right-wing government in Israeli history to dictate his Middle East policy, that policy will fail utterly and his presidency will suffer the most devastating blow.
He’s learning that at some point in the not-too-distant future, he’s going to have to either bend Israel to his will or admit defeat in the Middle East and get blamed for the next war….He’s not there yet. But he’s getting there. He’ll have no choice.

I have to agree with Derfner on one thing: Obama absolutely needs some degree of success in Israel/ Palestine negotiations. Without it, his speech in Cairo becomes just words, dissipating before the facts on the ground. That would fatlly weaken his hopes in building some coalitions amongst Muslim states around Afghanistan, and in the continuing problem of Iran. As Defner also points out, the Republicans and the Israeli Government are deeply allied here: when Obama falters, the Republicans are strengthened as much as Netanyahu is. So perhaps what Obama is coming out of this round with is a sense that Netanyahu and he cannot be allies in peace. That might well lead to Obama’s speaking directly to Israelis, over their government, arguing in effect that his approach better meets their security needs than their government’s does. The only thing that’s really certain is that while Netanyahu may be ahead on points, this battle is far from over.


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