If you’re getting a little uneasy about President Obama reprising Bush Administration policies with new gloss — my personal favorite being his decision to continue the policy of ‘rendition’, under which terror suspects are sent to third countries where the rules governing interrogation are more permissive, but Obama promises to do it “with greater oversight” — his Middle East peace plan is unlikely to make you feel much better.
As I wrote here, Obama’s Mideast peace plan appears to be a hybrid between President Bush’s “roadmap” and his “Annpolis” initiative — Roadmapolis, if you like.
President Bush’s “road map” first emerged as the US began preparing to invade Iraq. Key Arab regimes had long made clear to Washington that the price of even tacit support for the war was American willingness to address a conflict that generated immense hostility towards the US on the Arab street. The “road map” read like a crack of the whip, outlining a timetable that promised a provisional Palestinian state by the end of 2003 and a resolution of all final status issues by the beginning of 2005. But the Bush administration gave the Israelis and Palestinians no reason to take it seriously; its purely symbolic purpose was plain to see.
The Bush administration made a second high-profile stab at the peace process in the form of the Annapolis Conference held in November 2007, which drew in not only the Israelis and Palestinians, but also a range of Arab states – in what it portrayed as a symbolic affirmation of the administration’s policy of building an alliance of Arab moderates with the US and Israel against the region’s radicals, namely Hamas, Hizbollah, Syria and Iran. Again, there was little reason for the Israelis or Palestinians to take the process seriously. Annapolis simply invited them to talk among themselves about what a peace agreement could look like. The conversation went nowhere, of course, but the fact that it was happening at all was the point for the Bush administration, whose new priority had become rallying Arab support against Iran and its allies.
Despite the Israelis giving him a no-but answer on his demand for a settlement freeze, Obama will soon unveil a plan for a resumption of final-status talks between the two sides, on a two-year time frame. The initiative will be launched with a high-profile summit.
As jaded as this may seem, it’s hard not to label the new process “roadmapolis”. While it would mimic the high-profile launch of Annapolis, it will avoid the mistakes of leaving them to talk among themselves by putting US officials in the room. And like the road map, it will provide a strict timeline and a detailed set of benchmarks. The US is unlikely at this stage to outline proposals of its own for resolving final status issues.
But the roadmap set strict timelines, which were ignored — and the Israelis are already making clear that they plan to ignore much of what Obama is demanding of them — and Annapolis actually proved the futility of relying on bilateral talks to resolve a conflict in which the balance of power between the adversaries is so hopelessly unequal.
In the best-case scenario, Obama is kicking the can down the road. A gloomier explanation might hold that like Bush before him, he’s simply going through the motions in the hope of rallying Arab support against Iran.
As someone who has worked on Palestinian-Israeli issues on and off for almost forty years, I believe there is no way to move towards an agreement without a major confrontation with Israel over settlement policy. And there are no signs Obama is willing to do that. The Netanyahu government is playing the new administration for a sucker and Washington is too timid to fight it. I’ve traveled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1972. Israel’s not leaving and a settlement based on a politically viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state is no longer possible.
Yep, the only challenge US policy is rising to is how to pretend they’re doing something when they’re doing nothing.
We hear that Bibi is no friend of Obama. That’s a real pity because — ask Van Jones — Obama only gets tough with his friends.
Hate to say “I told you so” but…. I told you so. Obama has never had the slightest intention of making any genuine change to US policy towards Israel. His policy of talks about talks about talks – because that has been so succesful in the past (not!) – is proof of that. If he really wants to make progress, he is going to have to make substantial threats to Israel, by, for example, saying that US charity to Israel will henceforth depend on them dismantling (not just halting growth) in the settlements and absolutely NOT using US weaponry against civilians.
But pigs will fly before Obama does anything like this. I don’t claim any particular prescience, but this was abundantly clear to me from the day Obama announced his candidacy, if not before.
It’s simply impossible to make peace when inhabitants of the region are so thirsty for war. But that’s the situation in the MIddle East right now, and current trends suggest it will get worse before it gets better.
We hear that Bibi is no friend of Obama. That’s a real pity because — ask Van Jones — Obama only gets tough with his friends.
But pigs will fly before Obama does anything like this. I don’t claim any particular prescience, but this was abundantly clear to me from the day Obama announced his candidacy, if not before.
About 1 in 25 adolescents in the United States announced an antidepressant used.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s recent study of adolescents aged 12-17 had first examined the use of antidepressants. 12 thousand Americans of a prospective study of 25 adolescents, 10 adults were also used by a person’s antidepressant.
According to the report, men, women, whites and African-Americans have been detected more drug uses: recorded
June Cleaver (“Leave It to Beaver”) or Charlotte York Goldenblatt (“Sex and the City”) They have been arguably the most stat-unfriendly organization in baseball, which is a losing strategy for a small market team