A Chastened Obama Searches for a Negotiating Strategy

After a year of well-intentioned but counterproductive diplomatic effort, President Barack Obama’s interest in and ability to achieve a diplomatic solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians appear to be waning.

In a common assessment of the impact of the stunning Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, Ha’aretz’s Aluf Benn wrote, “Obama spent his first year in office on fruitless diplomatic moves that failed to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians. From now on, it will be harder for Obama. Congressional support is essential to the political process and in the current political atmosphere in the U.S.—in which the parties are especially polarized—Netanyahu can rely on Republican support to thwart pressure on Israel.”

In comments to Time magazine (see page 8), Obama placed himself at the head of a growing chorus of voices expressing disenchantment with a diplomatic impasse that Washington’s efforts during the past year have, if anything, exacerbated. Notwithstanding extraordinary declarations over the past year by U.S. officials of an American national interest in a solution to the conflict, there is today an unprecedented lack of clarity to U.S. intentions and, as a consequence, to the stalled diplomatic effort spearheaded by Washington. Just days after special envoy George Mitchell, in an extended television interview, spoke at length of the continuing U.S. commitment to progress (see story page 10), the president’s statements, made on the eve of Mitchell’s visit to the region, were widely interpreted as an admission of failure and lowered expectations (see story page 7).

This atmosphere is being fed by the absence of an agreed upon mechanism for diplomatic engagement, a situation not experienced since the darkest days of the second intifada.

U.S. officials have recognized since mid-year that their promotion of a settlement freeze was an impediment rather than a gateway to negotiations on issues of final status (see story page 4). The damage sustained in that effort, however, has continued to plague U.S. efforts to create an agreed foundation for a renewal of talks. “As long as settlement activity does not stop and we don’t know which international principles will guide the peace talks,” explained Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Mahmoud Abbas, “we won’t return to the negotiating table with Israel.”

Since late summer 2009, the U.S. has been anxious to move beyond the focus on a settlement freeze that it earlier championed. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton now notes frequently that “Resolving borders resolves settlements; resolving Jerusalem resolves settlements.” The U.S. effort has been focused since October 2009 on winning Israeli and Palestinian agreement to “terms of reference” that will enable a renewal of direct talks aimed at establishing an agreed upon border within nine months. “The United States,” reiterated Clinton on January 8, 2010, “believes that through good faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements.”

Both Israeli prime minister Benjamin Natenyahu and Abbas well understand that Washington’s aspiration to solve the conflict creates a contest for each to tilt the new, emerging “rules of the game” in their favor. Neither has been satisfied by Washington’s effort. Obama’s downbeat assessment, followed by his domestic political travails, has discouraged Palestinian expectations of effective Ameri−can leadership, while encouraging Netanyahu and his political allies in their belief that just as with the settlement freeze, an American peace “plan” can be neutralized.

An effort to stack the American diplomatic effort with “made in Israel” ideas is at the heart of Netanyahu’s negotiating agenda. On the one hand, there is an ongoing effort to win U.S. endorsement of Israel’s security agenda on the West Bank as it has in Gaza, including a permanent Israeli military presence in the West Bank and control of the border with Jordan, as well as support for the vague concept of “settlement blocs” to be annexed by Israel. On the other hand, Israel’s domestic political-security scene is moving incrementally toward a (unilateral) disengagement on the West Bank, an idea most recently championed by former minister of defense Shaul Mofaz, to establish a Palestinian entity on 60 percent of the West Bank. The territorial basis for an Israeli redeployment was foreshadowed in both the 1995 Oslo II accords that established Areas A and B on 41 percent of the West Bank and the map produced by Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002 and the “closure” policy that followed. Israeli commentator Ben Kaspit noted that “the Mofaz plan is actually the Peres plan, which is also in fact the Barak plan. And if you think about it, it is also the Netanyahu plan.”