The week of speechifying about the Middle East has blessedly come to an end. The refrain from “My Fair Lady’s” Eliza Doolittle keeps popping into my head: “words, words, words, I’m so sick of words.” But sometimes words reveal important changes in views. So let’s take a closer look.
President Barack Obama seemed intent upon doing several things in his two speeches — one at the State Department last Thursday and one before the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee on Sunday.
First, he signaled his sympathy for the Arab democratic uprisings, but I doubt if many of his Arab listeners were impressed. This is an arena in which words count far less than actions — and Arab democrats still remember that the Obama administration was slow in lending its support to the demonstrators in Tunis and Cairo. And the rather modest offers of aid to these the new transitional regimes is not impressive.
Most of the controversy surrounding Obama’s speeches focused on what he did or did not say about Israeli-Palestinian peace. To his credit, he made a solid case for why it was important to push hard for a solution to this conflict. The Arab spring, he argued, made it more, not less, crucial to find a two-state solution.
He did not, however, spell out a full outline of the parameters of such a settlement. Instead, he noted that the final borders between the two states should be based on the 1967 lines — with mutually agreed land swaps.
This was treated in some circles, and by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a new and unwelcome statement. But every president since Lyndon B. Johnson has said something very similar.
Netanyahu pocketed all the friendly words that Obama uttered about Israel and its legitimate security concerns and proceeded to give him a very patronizing lecture about the “realities” of the Middle East.
From that mini-tantrum and his two speeches, to AIPAC and to a joint session of Congress, we know clearly what Netanyahu will not do. He will not accept the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps as the basis for negotiations; he will not negotiate the future of east Jerusalem; he will not remove Israeli forces from the Jordan Valley, and he will not accept the return of any Palestinian refugees to pre-1967 Israel. He will not negotiate with the Palestinian leadership until the Fatah-Hamas unity agreement is abrogated. For all of these “no’s,” Netanyahu was treated like a rock star by our congressional leaders.
Netanyahu justified his refusal to accept the 1967 lines as the reference point for negotiations by describing them as “indefensible.” This is boilerplate language for Israeli prime ministers — especially Likud leaders. But it is worth noting that Israel fought two wars quite successfully, in 1956 and 1967, starting from precisely those borders.
The issue is not so much Israel’s ability to defend itself within the 1967 lines. It is that roughly a half million Israelis, with strong inducements from their government, have decided to live beyond those lines, and many, perhaps most, will have to return to pre-1967 Israel — if there is ever to be a viable two-state solution.
Oddly, Obama, who made such a big issue of Israeli settlement activity earlier, did not mention it this past week. But it does, in fact, continue to be one of the stubborn realities that complicate peace efforts.
If Obama has a strategy for what to do next, he has kept it well hidden. He has not named a replacement for his Middle East envoy, George Mitchell. (Just as well, in my judgment, since envoys have rarely achieved much in this business.) He has not announced any plans for a trip by his well-traveled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to go to Jerusalem and Ramallah as a follow up on the speeches. He has not announced any plan of his own to go to Israel and Palestine, to make his case to the peoples most directly involved.
In short, this was a pretty good week for Netanyahu. He got to show his people and his party that he could stand up to the U.S. president and pay no price for doing so. He demonstrated that Congress is solidly in Israel’s corner — even if Obama is not. He even added to his list of “nos,” without having to offer the sweetener of a few “yeses.”
I kept hoping during the testy exchanges between Netanyahu and Obama that followed their Oval Office speech, that the president would lean over and say, “Mr. Prime Minister, I have been listening carefully to your concerns and I think I understand what you are not prepared to do. But I have yet to hear you say anything about what you are ready to do for peace.”
So what happens next? Probably not much in the near term. The Palestinians have to work through the details of their unity agreement. Obama has to look ahead at the prospect that pressures will build in September for some move at the United Nations to endorse the principle of Palestinian statehood. For reasons that elude me, he has ruled out the possibility of adding America’s voice to those that are ready to support that principle.
The argument that the United Nations is the wrong forum for such action is bizarre. Where did the original concept of two states in Palestine, one Jewish and one Arab, get its legitimacy if not at the United Nations in 1947 — with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181?
While I still sense that Obama would like to do something significant to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace, I have to conclude that he has just about run out of ideas. Bold moves, like convening an international conference, or fleshing out more fully the principles of peace, would subject him to a firestorm of criticism from his prospective Republican adversaries, who are eager to turn everything into a partisan issue.
The larger lesson to be drawn from the speeches of the past week – and from the events of the past months – is that the momentous changes underway in the Middle East are largely unfolding without much concern for what the United States or Israel says or does.
Leaders in most of the region’s capitals are not paying much heed to what Obama says. And they have no use for anything coming from the current Israeli leadership. What is true for the regimes is even more true for those in the streets demanding change.
While the United States is too powerful to be merely a by-stander in the Middle East, it certainly seems as if the tide is turning against our ability to shape events. Perhaps an earlier, and more forthright, embrace of the Arab Spring phenomenon would have helped. Perhaps a better designed peace strategy would have made a difference.
But Obama’s caution and Netanyahu’s obduracy — both on full display this past week— have won out. The result for both the United States and Israel is unlikely to be to their advantage.
Front Page Features