Yesterday a Tikkun reader asked me for a response to an article in the Washington Post, “Palestinians say new U.S. approach imperils peace,” which started like this:

Palestinian officials on Sunday criticized the United States for what one called “backpedaling” on demands that Israel stop settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, saying the Obama administration’s change of approach on the issue damaged the likelihood of a peace agreement.

Here are my thoughts on this matter:

Obama demanded a settlement freeze as a precondition for any progress on Middle East peace. The world rejoiced that for the first time since George Bush the elder threatened to freeze loan guarantees to Israel unless it stopped expanding settlements, a U.S. government was going to take a serious stand against the expansion of Israelis into Palestine.

The Palestinians, while actually needing more than a freeze — they need a dismantling or making the settlers citizens of the new Palestinian state — climbed on board with Obama’s strategy, and then he abandoned them and said that he now is pushing the Palestinians to negotiations while the settlements continue to expand. That is totally useless for the Palestinians to do — they don’t need to sit at a table with a government that has no intention of ending the Occupation and makes that clear in every possible way.

Similarly, Obama pressured the Palestinians to distance from the Goldstone report. The PA leaders did that and provoked a massive outcry of rage from Palestinians who saw what Israel did to Gaza and have every right to demand a full accounting of the war crimes committed, just as Israel has every right to demand a full accounting from Hamas of the war crimes committed by them. But the United States has come down one-sidedly on Israel’s side and against Goldstone’s report, a report that was balanced in calling for both sides to allow independent, public, and credible investigation of the charges.

The UN entered the situation and messed it up yet further by embracing the demand for Israel to carry out an investigation but dropping the part of Goldstone’s recommendations calling for Palestinians to have an investigation of the war crimes committed against Sderot by Hamas bombing of civilians. To add to the mess, the U.S. Congress is passing a resolution condemning the Goldstone report, instead of condemning the mis-use of the report by the UN, and instead of endorsing the report’s call for investigations of both sets of war crimes. It’s all a tragic mess, and a terrible disappointment of hopes that Obama himself raised in the spring and in his talk in Cairo.


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