This is my $64,000 question to the Barack Obama administration, echoing yesteryear’s popular television programme, where, if you correctly answer the first question, you get your first dollar and then you go up to the second question, which is worth double the preceding prize, and so on and so forth until you earn your $64,000 (Dh235,392).
I wonder why the Obama administration has so far failed to twist Israel’s arms for failing to reach a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians since 1967. In his just-published memoir, Robert Gates, the former secretary of defence in the Obama administration, revealed that he had once a heated discussion with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the $60 billion US arms sale to Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu asked Gates: “How about a counterbalancing investment in our military? How do we compensate on the Israeli side?” Gates replied: “Exasperated, I shot back that no US administration has done more, in concrete ways, for Israel’s strategic defence than Obama’s.” He went on: “I used the line that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Netanyahu, Gates reported, “Replied acidly — ‘In the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is my frenemy” (a corruption of ‘friend and enemy’).
According to Bloomberg News, Gates also had some criticism for Israel in his book Duty. He wrote: “I believe Israel’s strategic situation is worsening, its own actions contributing to its isolation.”
Well and good. Gates hit the nail on the head. Secretary of State John Kerry will be facing serious problems in his upcoming talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders over the so-called “framework” agreement.
As already indicated publicly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas cannot possibly accept the Israeli demand that Israel should be recognised by the Palestinians as a Jewish state. What seems obnoxious about this position is the elementary view that since one-fifth, if not more, of Israel’s population is Arab, Muslims and Christians, such a recognition would be most unlikely. Moreover, some 200,000 Palestinians in neighbouring Arab countries are said to be planning to return and live in their usurped homeland, now Israel — a point that will obviously tip their ratio in the country.
The other serious obstacle is the Israeli demand that its troops have a presence in the Jordan Valley that will be serving as the natural border between the West Bank, that is the state of Palestine, and the Kingdom of Jordan. What is more irrational here is that Israel already has a peace treaty with Jordan, so why should Israel need any protection for cross-border penetration?
Although there was no public mention of the fate of occupied Jerusalem in the “framework” draft, there is no doubt that the Palestinians will not forgo their right to maintain a serious presence in occupied Jerusalem, certainly occupied East Jerusalem, where many Christian and Muslim institutions have lived for centuries and hopefully will serve as the capital of the state of Palestine.
But what has been most unfortunate for the Obama administration is the dispatching, last week, of Vice-President Joe Biden to participate in the funeral of Ariel Sharon — the Israeli military leader and former prime minister, who is scorned worldwide even by some Israelis since his name, to quote the Washington Post, is “more curse than blessing”. Former president Ronald Reagan had described Sharon in his diary as “the bad guy who seemingly looks forward to war”.
Yousuf Munayyer, executive director of the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund, wrote: “Sharon’s wanton disregard for civilian life was most pronounced in 1982 during the massacres at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in (Beirut) Lebanon. Israel, which had invaded and occupied southern Lebanon at the time, effectively controlled the area. In the camps, Israeli-allied Lebanese Phalangists entered and committed large-scale killings of Palestinian civilians, while Israeli forces guarded the perimeter. Sharon, who was then the minister of defence, was once again at the centre of a massacre of Palestinians.”
Thereafter, an Israeli commission led by the president of the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the Israeli forces were indirectly responsible for the massacre and that Sharon himself bore responsibility. The commission recommended that Sharon should be removed from office and to never again hold a ministerial position. But he did.
Well, the consequential question for the Obama administration is: Why isn’t it time to start twisting Israel’s arms so that it can live peacefully in the region instead of continuing its usurpation of Palestinian land? Or else, gone are the $3 billion in annual US assistance and Palestinians ought to seriously consider seeking help from the United Nations and other international organisations.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com
