Whatever you might think of its strategy or its tactics, the Obama administration has been genuinely committed to achieving a two-state solution before it is too late.

I don't disagree, but the administration's strategy and tactics are horrendous.

Instead of helping Israel drive itself off a cliff -- as George W. Bush did -- the Obama administration is trying to prevent that disastrous outcome.

This is a curious reading of history, given that by the end of his term GWB had them talking in the same room and even had Olmert offering the Palestinians something strikingly similar to what you, I, and most reasonable people know will be the final negotiated settlement.

Obama, on the other hand, can't even get them talking through intermediaries. The Israelis have little trust in him after he went back on assurances the previous administration gave them, and after the current and past browbeating. Meanwhile, the Arabs don't trust him much more, if at all, because he can't deliver what he led them to believe he would. Obama has screwed up so royally, that it will be seen as a major accomplishment when he gets them talking through intermediaries. That's it. Passing notes through third parties.

And of course, despite the fact that he can't even manage getting them talking, that is ridiculously easy compared to arriving at some kind of peace treaty. (And one assumes that there would have to be some kind of Palestinian reconciliation prior to that, as the Palestinians need a leader with a mandate to speak for all of the Palestinians. However, just getting the Palestinians speaking to and agreeing with each other is a monumental task in its own right.)

I know Prof Walt you are a realist, an academic and measured writer, but can't you for a minute step out of your dress shoes and say:

"The US needs to stop blindly supporting Israel not only for Israel's sake, but because Israel's occupation is inhumane; it has been depriving Palestinians of the most fundamental human rights; and in many cases (see: Gaza, Hebron, house demo's, torture, etc), is subjecting them to outright persecution"

?

I think your audience should hear that part of "reality".

The Israeli-Palestinian obviously cannot be solved by the United States alone. I agree that the Obama administration- especially Secretary Hillary Clinton and Envoy George Mitchell- are doing the right thing by pressuring the Israeli Government and airing their grievances in a very public matter. This is a warranted development, because Israel really hasn't been pressured to do all that much with regard to the Mideast peace process. But all of the complaining in the world wont do any good if P.M. Netanyahu doesn't smarten up and ally with the moderate Kadima Party.

Currently, Netanyahu is unable to concede to U.S. demands, due in large part to his dependence on right-wing settler movements in the coalition. Ditching the religious fanatics and replacing them with a pragmatic party in Israeli politics may be the only way to solve this settlement issue and get the proximity talks back on track.

Or if Netanyahu is prepared to resign his position, he could stop the East Jerusalem project now. But somehow I don't think that is going to happen.

-Dan DePetris

http://www.depetris.wordpress.com

The American view:

"Achieving a two-state solution is obviously in America's strategic interest as well, because it would remove one of the major sources of anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim world."

and

"A two state solution is also the best guarantee of Israel's long-term future. By showing real backbone this time and explaining to the American people why his approach is right, Obama could be a true friend to the Jewish state."

The reality:

"I had lunch the other day with Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, one of the largest West Bank settlements. He told me breezily that there 'can be no Palestinian state,' and that 'Israel and Jordan should divide the land.' I liked his frankness. It clarifies things."

Quote from Roger Cohen (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/opinion/16iht-edcohen.html).

Israel isn't interested in the two state solution; it is dead. So where does that leave American foreign policy? Answer: In the toilet and no one wants to admit it.

Caro President Obama,

I'm sure you've see the film, The Godfather. What does Michael Corleone do when a corrupt cop and a rival crime lord try to assassinate his father, Don Vito? He invites them to dinner and shoots them dead.

Now as Mr. Netanyahu has assassinated your plans to drive the peace process forward directly in the presence of your consigliere, Mr. Biden, and has failed to show you onore and rispetto, not to mention the recent humiliation of one of our Congressional delegations, you cannot smile and take the affront, as Mrs. Clinton seems to be doing. Now extreme Corleone methods would surely be abhorrent to yourself as you are a gran' signore but the moment of the horse's head has surely come. It's your call, of course, sir.

Sincerely,

Walt has it exactly wrong when he describes the alternative to a two state solution to be "occupation forever" and apartheid.

First some preliminaries:
A. The Palestinians are not "occupied". They never had a State, and refused one offered by the UN. Only the territory of a State can be "occupied". That's black-letter international law.
B. It is evidence of intellectual bankruptcy to echo the Arab propaganda line of "apartheid". Arabs, Christians, all are citizens of Israel. Most Israeli Jews are of Middle Eastern, not European origin. Skin color, race, and religion do not apply; there is such a large Arab membership of the Knesset (about 20 percent) that on critical matters in which the main parties disagree, they hold the deciding vote. It is the Arabs who are running apartheid, Judenrein, anti-feminist territories, and then projecting their own shameful behavior on the Israelis.

Now to the substance. The following two articles appeared today:

Gazans are moving out
Yoav Sorek
Israelinitiative.com – 2010-03-16

Recently, it has been reported that religious extremism is on the rise in gaza. The Sha'aria (Muslim religious law) is spreading, and a “modesty police” makes sure that men and women are kept separate in public places.

These reports have also shown that 23% of young Gazans, and 30% of the entire population would like to move abroad. Through talks with aid workers in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Initiative found that the real numbers are much higher, to the extent that it includes almost the whole population. Don't forget, 85% of Gaza's population is made up of refugees.

It turns out that the generous donations that Gaza receives from the world do not include aid towards an important goal: emigration. The international community gives Gazans food and medicines, even weapons, but no one gives the million refugees life with hope. If an organization would allow families to leave the Gaza Strip and find a better future elsewhere, everything would look different for the Gazans and for Israel. Instead, the world and the Palestinian leadership continue to allow the Gazans to live with the delusion that they will “return” – a delusion that involves erasing the State of Israel from the map, and returning to “Palestine.”

The smart and just step for Israel to take would be to fulfill the wishes of the Gazans that want to leave, and allow these refugees to be rehabilitated quickly and efficiently in different countries around the world. The money is there, but it is directed to the wrong place. If hundreds of millions of dollars sent to UNRWA each year were used to rehabilitate these families of refugees, the Palestinian problem would no longer exist, and the entire region would be calmer.

--------------

Proposal to Close Jerusalem Refugee Camps, Learn from Cape Town
Maayana Miskin
IsraelNN.com – 2010-03-16

'[Editor's Note: UCI has featured a special guide to the Israeli Initiative featured in this article. This is an important first step in solving the refugee problem as a humanitarian issue.. rather than the neverending political issue it has become.]

The Israeli Initiative,' an Israeli non-governmental organization, called this week to close down refugee camps in Jerusalem. A recent decision regarding refugees living in South Africa sets a precedent allowing cities to shut down camps whose residents refuse to resettle, the group argues.

City officials in Cape Town plan to clear out the local Blue Waters Refugee Camp this week and force its 340 residents to find new accommodations. A Cape Town court ruled that the city could evict refugees from the camp after the refugees rejected the municipality's offers to help them relocate.

The Cape Town verdict demonstrates that cities are not obligated to provide endless support to refugees who refuse to resettle, said the Israeli Initiative. Once refugees are given the option of rebuilding their lives, they can no longer use the “refugee” label to continue living off of aid, they argued.

Ending the saga
The organization turned to Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and asked them to shut down the Arab refugee camps currently operating within Jerusalem municipal limits. “Rivlin recently said it is disgraceful that there are refugee camps in Jerusalem,” said Israeli Initiative director and former minister Benny Elon. “He's right, of course. Now we need to turn that understanding into action.”

Closing the camps will be beneficial even beyond the Jerusalem city limit, said members of the organization. “The benefit to the city of Jerusalem and to the Palestinian refugees from the end of this sixty-year-long saga will be enormous,” the group said. “And equally importantly, we will create a model here that reminds the world that the refugee problem is a humanitarian problem that can be solved, and there's no need to wait for a diplomatic solution, which apparently is not going to happen in the near future.”

Israeli Initiative manager Yoav Sorek accused the United Nations agency UNWRA, which was tasked with helping Arabs who fled pre-state Israel and their descendants, for the continued existence of refugee camps more than 60 years after the original “Palestinian refugees” left during the War of Independence. UNWRA “sees its goal as keeping the refugees in their current situation,” he charged.

The Cape Town model
The Cape Town case, in which the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) worked to resettle the refugees outside their camp, demonstrates how the refugee issue should be tackled, he said. “The way the UNHCR handled the issue was correct. It was characteristic of an organization that seeks to rehabilitate refugees, an organization that works toward a humanitarian goal and does not serve political agendas,” he said.

The Israeli Initiative seeks to create a new approach to the Israel-Arab conflict. It proposes extending Israeli sovereignty to Judea and Samaria and reaching a peaceful settlement with Palestinian Authority Arabs in cooperation with Jordan. Arabs from the refugee camps would be resettled in various countries and those who remain in Judea and Samaria would have Jordanian citizenship.

"Achieving a two-state solution is obviously in America's strategic interest as well, because it would remove one of the major sources of anti-Americanism in the Arab and Muslim world"

This idea goes along with the thought that the occupation began in 1967 and all Israel needs to do is withdraw to the pre-1967 borders. The occupation of Palestine began in 1948. The crimes of the Irgun militias and the sale of land by absentee Arabs to Jewish immigrants brought about a discriminatory nation on a land that (contrary to the popular expression) did have a people living on it.

A two state solution is crazy. As a realist myself, I understand that the two have so much animosity towards each other to live in their own states without plotting against their new neighbor. One state with equal rights for the two people is the just way to go about solving this conflict. The biggest argument against this has been the loss of the Jewish identity of Israel. I have Jewish blood in me, so I will preface this with a request to keep the anti-semite accusations to a minimum BUT ....so what if the Jewish identity is lost? Since when is that the most important factor? There are religious/ethnic groups all over the world. They all do not demand a state of their own.

In May 2008 I posted a Youtube video, with a recording from a John Hagee sermon, that went viral, was broadcast on networks worldwide, and was widely credited with causing John McCain to renounce his political endorsement from Christians United For Israel founder John Hagee.

But to this day, very few who comment on Christian Zionism as a political phenomenon bother to study what Christian Zionists such as John Hagee actually write and preach.

Here is some of the vicious anti-Jewish vilification from John Hagee's 2006 book Jerusalem Countdown:

“The fisherman come before the hunters. First God sent the fishermen to Israel. These were the Zionists, men like Theodor Herzl who called for the Jews of Europe and the world to come to Palestine to establish the Jewish state… A fisherman is one who draws his target toward him with bait… Herzl was deeply disappointed that the Jews of the world did not respond in greater numbers.

God then sent the hunters. The hunter is one who pursues his target with force and fear. No one could see the horror of the Holocaust coming, but the force and fear of Hitler’s Nazis drove the Jewish people back to the only home God ever intended for the Jews to have-Israel.”

That text can be found in John Hagee's book Jerusalem Countdown, on page 133 [note - there are multiple printings of Hagee's book, each with different pagination.] Now, consider what Hagee writes on page 185, in a chapter entitled “Who is a Jew”,

“God promised to be at war with the descendants of Esau and Amalek forever, until their remembrance was stricken from under heaven. (See Exodus 17:8-16.) Esau’s descendants would also produce a lineage that would attack and slaughter the Jews for centuries… It was Esau’s descendants who produced the half-breed Jews of history who have persecuted and murdered the Jews beyond human comprehension.

Adolf Hitler was a distant descendant of Esau.”

Readers who have accounts at Amazon.com can verify the accuracy of my quotes, above, by going to the paperback copy of Jerusalem Countdown that offers a “look inside” feature and searching on the terms “Esau” and also “Theodor Herzl.”

In his book John Hagee also claims Jews themselves "birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come." [page 93, Jerusalem Countdown] - Why ? Well, as Hagee explains on page 92, "It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day."

As Hagee explains on page 93, that "disobedience and rebellion" was "utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God."

The Jewish people have learned they can trust no other people or state with their lives. The Arabs have learned that freedom is only secured by power not by laws international or otherwise. Until they conclude that their lives and power/freedom are best secured by alliance the rest of the world will use both peoples for their own benefit and they will continue to pay the price in lives and lost development.

1. I do not doubt that Obama thinks that putting pressure on Israel on settlements is the right thing to do. The problem lies in the particular battle he chose to fight. Coosing to draw the line at building in Ramat Shlomo, which is a Jewish suburb just north of West Jerusalem and which was built in an unpopulated area where Arabs never lived was simply stupid. If you ever wanted to unite all of Israel behind Netanyahu, telling Israel that Jews can not build in non Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem is the way to do it.

2. We can already see the result of Obama's ignorance. The Palestinian government is denying Israel's right to build in WEST Jerusalem and even organized violent riots to protest the rebuilding of a West Jerusalem synagogue which Arabs had destroyed twice in the last 100 years.

3. It is clear that Walt is not a friend of Israel nor is he particularly interested in peace. If he were he would be just as focussed on how to fix the civil war between Hamas and Fatah. He would be just as interested in stopping the Palestinian government's incitement of violence and its honoring of he worst terrorist attack in Israeli history by the Palestinian government during Biden's visit. But he is not interested in looking at all of the difficulties at getting to peace. He is only interested in demonizing Israel an he is utterly transparent in that effort despite his laughable attempts to say otherwise.

Obama's basic problem is that he is seen as attacking an ally that is currently wildly more popular in this country than he is. Polls show Israel close to its all-time high in approval in this country, while Obama is entering Bush 2nd-term popularity. He can't win this fight. He will back down once he understands the political calculus.

What is there to discuss?

What use is negotiating with a nascent govt which says it will never try to enforce an abridgment of violence on those who believe their religion compels upon them an individual moral responsibility to wage jihad against the invaders?

Imagine if Ben Gurion had had this attitude about Begin and the Irgun in 1947-8?

That's why this talk about two states is RIDICULOUS except as a diplomatic canard to convince some fools that a solution is possible right now.

It is a GENERATION OFF at a minimum the way things are.

Israel's existence and determination to remain in existence can INFLAME those who can make American security for military personnel more difficult, but if a solution was achieved, those same problems will still be there subject to many other irritations, some of which will be JUST as inflammatory.

And none of this has a damned thing to do with any influence by any group here in the USA.

That's a bitter and ugly pill. But that is how it is.

Until the Palestinian peoples THEMSELVES decide to make the world different for THEMSELVES by rejecting the rejection their leaders have instilled since Haj Amin Al Husseini nearly one hundred years ago.

The location of the 1,600 apartment units in jerusalem whose announced construction so “insulted” President Obama was included even on Yasser Arafat’s map used with then Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the Camp David negotiations. Does President Obama tell Mr. Abbas where the Palestinians can build their apartments?

This blow up is not prompted by Israel; rather, it is prompted by the failure of President Obama’s always-doomed initiative of naivete towards Iran. It is a take-off on wag the dog, in which Mr. Obama is pulling the Israeli dog’s tail to divert our attention from the fact that he has failed to stop Iran from pushing forward on its quest for a nuclear weapon that the President faux-claims he finds, “unacceptable.” The only true insult here is the one to our intelligence; does the President actually think people will fall for this contrived fight?

No good will come of this. The Palestinians and the Israelis talked directly with each other since Oslo. Then, Mr. Obama made it a pre-condition of talks for the Israelis to stop building settlements. The direct negotiations ended. Now, the indirect negotiations have also been derailed, as George Mitchell's scheduled trip to further negotiations, a long shot to begin with, has now been put on indefinite hold. Worse, this morning’s news reports are of Palestinian riots. It may not stop there.

Mr. Obama’s tirade has therefore, 1. put a further roadblock in the roadmap; 2. inflamed passions that might develop into a third intifada or even a wide-ranging war launched on Israel by Hamas and/or Hezbollah; and 3. by pushing Israel away, actually increased the chances that Israel will act unilaterally in dealing militarily with Iran.

On the surface, picking on Israel has little international cost for Mr. Obama. Let us hope the President knows how to force back in whatever may come out of Pandora’s box.

Keevan D. Morgan, Chicago

Always have to back down every damn time?? I am sick and tired of the United States and the world blaming Israel for every little problem the Palestinians have. I remember world condemnation when Israel tried to root out Hamas in 2 wars. I remember Hamas, and Hezbollah and their suicide attacks against Israel, and no one saying a word about the attacks, yet condemning Israel for protecting their people. I remember Israel bending over backwards, giving up land to try to appease people who had no inclination to deal in good faith.

If it wasn't the new building of settlements, it would be something else the Palestinians would be mad at. You can't please the militants. It's impossible!!! I was no fan of the Bush administration, but if it did do something right, it did so by standing by Israel. Too bad the Obama administration wants to deal with Israel in a completely different manner.

The cat’s out of the bag
Look, it’s over here!
No! Grab it over there!
No! The cat is everywhere!
It can’t be snagged,
It can’t be gagged
And it can’t be bagged
In it’s game of tag.

The statement of General Petraeus is, I think, wonderful.
I totally agree with every word.
But it clearly addresses the root causes of U.S./Muslim antagonisms,
and their significance.
Isn't that the clear and explicit brief of the State Department?
Has the Secretary of State (make that any SecState)
ever made such a clear (and accurate) statement directly to Congress?
If not, why not?

Under the Bush-43 administration,
there was a clear dysfunctionality in that
Defense kept doing policy work that should have been done by State.
Not that seems to be continuing.
Why is State such a failure at
clearly evaluating and publicizing what America's problems are
and how they can be solved?
And if you want an example of where they failed,
when did any Secretary of State ever clearly say that
"They hate us because of our freedoms" is so much bullshit?
(Sorry, I don't know how to translate that into professor speak.)
Professors Walt in Taming American Power
did a wonderful job of clarifying those issues.
Too bad he isn't the National Security Adviser,
or one of the deputies.

According to Yediot Ahranot, it seems President Obama has said that, there is no crisis with Israel, that friends do disagree sometimes, and laid the problem on the shoulders of Minister Yishai. So, I guess you can take it easy now both; Hasbaras and Baras.
khairi janbek.paris/france

What the current Israeli government wants is that- No divided Jerusalem-No return of Palestinian refugees except those in the age category of coming to die in Israel rather than live-No Jordan Valley borders under the control of the PNA-Settlements to stay where they are with exchange of territories from behind the Green Line where Arab population exists. For all intents and purposes, the PNA wants the opposite of all this, not to mention that Hamas is running its own life anyway. So, what is the alternative now?. I would say both sides should sit together; proximity, distant, or any other type of talks, and hammer out between themselves the points of the their convergence and those of their divergence, then proceed into seeing what is the maximum they can achieve from each other. The talk of war, I think is too abstarct to contemplate under the current circumstances.
khairi janbek.paris/france

What has Israel done for the US? (Besides make us a target of terrorism and sink the Liberty....)

The time stamp on these posts is wildly off. For example I just posted something at 7:02 pm Pacific Time on 3/18, and the FP time stamp appearing almost immediately is 2:02 am Eastern Time on 3/19.

Maybe its another "existential threat" aimed at the Jews and the apologists for Israel, as apparently even the time stamp as problems with your comments and considers them wildly off.

Maybe it could be explained to me...
In 1948 the Jews accepted the U.N. resolution that divided the land between Jews and Arabs.
The Arabs rejected it, started the war, and still reject it.
Since they rejected it, how can it be "their" land?
The correct nomenclature is "disputed land"...

They never miss the oppurtunity to prove their solidarity to israel.