{"id":635,"date":"2012-12-02T17:15:44","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T17:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=635"},"modified":"2013-06-18T14:32:09","modified_gmt":"2013-06-18T21:32:09","slug":"u-s-endorses-no-state-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/?p=635","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Endorses “No State Solution”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ramallah after the vote, December 2012. Photo from France24.com<\/p><\/div>\n

The Obama administration\u2019s refusal to support Palestine as a symbolic \u201cobserver state\u201d in the United Nations sends a strong signal that all will be business as usual during the second term.\u00a0 Worse, with its latest and most shameful capitulation to AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., the United States has essentially endorsed a No State Solution between Israel and Palestine.<\/p>\n

Official U.S. policy has long been in support of a negotiated settlement that would produce two states, Israel and Palestine, existing side by side in peace.\u00a0 But during the \u201cpeace process\u201d of the last twenty years, Israel\u2019s actions have undermined that goal.\u00a0\u00a0 Since the famous Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, which marked the beginning of the Oslo process, settler population in the West Bank has rocketed from 109,000 to more than 350,000.\u00a0 One of the largest settlements, Ariel (20,000) has been absorbed into \u201cgreater Israel\u201d by a separation wall that veers deep inside the West Bank; plans are in place to thus incorporate a second settlement, Ma\u2019ale Adumim (34,000).\u00a0 A ring of Jewish settlements all but surrounds East Jerusalem, crippling the dream of making the Holy City the future capital of Palestine.\u00a0 Settlements, checkpoints, roadblocks, settlers-only roads, and Israel\u2019s full military occupation of 60 percent of the West Bank: all have combined to carve a would-be Palestine into disjointed cantons, not the \u201cviable and contiguous\u201d land that the U.S. officially seeks for Palestine.\u00a0 Rockets from Gaza or, in past years, suicide bombers from the West Bank have clearly undermined the Palestinians\u2019 own case.\u00a0 But the Israeli seizure of Palestinian land has continued apace, regardless of the level of violence.<\/p>\n

These facts on the ground send clear signals that the Palestinians don\u2019t have a partner for peace. With each new housing project, with each clearly-stated intent not to dismantle major settlements or allow Palestinian sovereignty in East Jerusalem or the crucial Jordan Valley, Benjamin Netanyahu, like Ariel Sharon before him, has demonstrated his unambiguous contempt for two sovereign states.\u00a0 Rather, Israeli leaders are turning the Holy Land into a single entity, with land, borders, airspace and underground aquifers controlled by Israel, and with citizenship rights granted only to some.<\/p>\n

In the face of this, Mahmoud Abbas, the weak and unpopular leader of the West Bank Palestinians, had nothing to lose by going to the United Nations for its semi-meaningful statehood declaration.\u00a0 (\u201cObserver status\u201d speaks for itself, though the prospect of Palestine joining the International Criminal Court could subject Israel to war crimes investigations, and Israeli officials to arrest and prosecution abroad.)<\/p>\n

That Abbas wasn\u2019t supported in this modest U.N. effort by the United States actually strengthens him at home.\u00a0 Palestinians have become disillusioned since the soaring rhetoric of Obama\u2019s 2009 Cairo speech gave way to the reality of America\u2019s lopsided support for Israel, and its abandonment of modest Palestinian moves toward self-determination.<\/p>\n

The latest wag-the-dog U.S. reaction: \u00a0Secretary of State-in-waiting Susan Rice\u2019s cynical declaration in the U.N. that \u201ctoday\u2019s grand pronouncements will soon fade,\u201d and Hillary Clinton\u2019s profound understatement that \u201cAmerica has Israel\u2019s back.\u201d\u00a0 The next day, Israel made a mockery of Clinton\u2019s words, announcing it was unveiling plans to build on \u201cE1,\u201d the last piece of land that connects East Jerusalem to the West Bank.\u00a0 Jewish housing there would be the last nail in the coffin for the two-state solution, and finally reveal American officials\u2019 cluelessness as to Israel\u2019s true intentions.<\/p>\n

Yet the U.S. continues to operate under the Beltway perception that \u201cdomestic political considerations\u201d must trump the national interest, and the human interest, even in a second Obama term.\u00a0 This despite the fact that within intelligence circles, Israel is increasingly seen as a strategic liability for the U.S. \u00a0From Cairo to Tehran to Jakarta to Mindanao Island in the Philippines, Palestinians are seen as essential stewards of the Muslim holy sites, and their oppression and occupation by Israel remains a great rallying cry for militants worldwide. \u201cThe status quo is unacceptable,\u201d former CIA director David Petraeus told the New York Times<\/em> in 2010. \u201cIf you don\u2019t achieve progress in a just and lasting Mideast peace, the extremists are given a stick to beat us with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States is now willfully disengaging from its own interests, and that of its citizens, at an immense and as-yet-unknown cost.\u00a0 By failing to forcefully challenge Israel, or to support the modest Palestinian aspirations, the U.S. has essentially, if unofficially, endorsed the end of the two-state solution in favor of a system of one-state dominance by an occupying military power.<\/p>\n

Changing course is always possible.\u00a0 An excellent place to start would be to threaten the removal of American aid to Israel given its bellicose actions in the West Bank, in particular its announcement of plans for building on the landscape of Palestine\u2019s last hope.\u00a0 There\u2019s precedent for that:\u00a0 in 1992, Secretary of State James Baker, with the full backing of President Bush, refused to approve loan guarantees for Israel unless it agreed to halt settlement expansion.\u00a0 The threat worked, for a while, until the Oslo era arrived.<\/p>\n

Now would be the time to try again.\u00a0 It could be accompanied assurances that the U.S. is not abandoning Israel, and a stated understanding of Israelis\u2019 deeply-rooted fears of\u00a0 isolation and vulnerability.\u00a0 But friends shouldn\u2019t let friends drive drunk \u2013 especially you\u2019re both in the same car.\u00a0 The U.S. needs a frank talk with Israel. \u00a0But that would require vision and political will on the question of Palestine \u2013 both of which have been absent from U.S. policy for a long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Obama administration\u2019s refusal to support Palestine as a symbolic \u201cobserver state\u201d in the United Nations sends a strong signal that all will be business as usual during the second term.\u00a0 Worse, with its latest and most shameful capitulation to AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., the United States has essentially endorsed a more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramallahcafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}