Category: Israel-2009

Mitchell includes Syria, Lebanon

It’s now confirmed. US peace envoy George Mitchell, now on his fourth trip to the Middle East, will travel to both Syria and Lebanon this week.
He met this morning in Tel Aviv with Ehud Barak, and is meeting– possibly as I write– with Avigdor Lieberman and PM Netanyahu. Tomorrow, Mahmoud Abbas, in Ramallah. So Damascus maybe Thursday?
This is excellent news. Mitchell certainly shouldn’t have delayed so long in going to Syria, a country that is a necessary and pivotal part of any comprehensive peace between Israel and all of its neighbors.
The type of peace, that is, that will end the state of war that Israelis have lived in, with their neighbors, throughout all the 61 years since the establishment of their state in 1948.
(How will Jewish Israelis– whose national culture, mindset, and economy have all been built importantly, though not wholly, around their sense of of being surrounded by hostile others– deal with the prospect of such a ground-shifting transformation in their situation? This is a non-trivial question that too few Israelis have ever studied in much depth… )
When I was interviewing Syrian foreign minister Walid Moualem and other high Syrian officials in Damascus on Tuesday-Thursday of last week, they expressed eagerness to receive Mitchell and to be fully included in the peace-making venture that he leads.
Syrian officials are also very eager to have a serious discussion with the Obama administration on issues of joint concern regarding Iraq.
They told me they have a strong interest– in common with the Obama administration– in seeing the Maliki government in Baghdad increase its effectiveness and strength: something that will both prevent the whole region from collapsing into a chaos that would be very harmful for Syria, and will allow US troops the smooth exit from Iraq that Obama is now committed to.
(In discussions with a few Syrian private citizens, I heard a little speculation that if the situation in the Gulf area is for whatever reason too chaotic to allow US troops to exit Iraq through that route, they might even be allowed to exit through Syria…. Interesting!)
More, obviously, from my important Moualem interview later– here and elsewhere.
One of my main observations, after 35 years of reporting on and studying the dynamics of various Israeli-Arab peace-making efforts, is that US peace brokers have a number of different ways of approaching the Syrian (and Lebanese) tracks, and their relationship with the Palestinian track.
Here, in capsule form, are my further thoughts on this subject:

    1. Washington ‘peace’ brokers have very frequently tried to play the Syrians off against the Palestinians.
    2. They do this either over a longer or shorter time frame. That is, sometimes they have both these tracks “in play” at the same time, and there is a literal use of pressure as when Dennis Ross or whoever conveys a message like this: “We’ve got the other track just about ready to reach completion but we wouldn’t have any more energy then to deal with your track– so give me an even better offer!” Sometimes the manipulation occurs over a longer time-frame than that.
    3. The success of that manipulative strategy depends crucially on the maximization of distrust between the Syrian and Palestinian leaderships, and the minimization (or absence) of direct communications between them.
    4. Presidents Clinton and GWB both relied on this manipulation strategy very heavily. The whole Oslo phenomenon, of course, fed very strongly into it.
    5. Neither Clinton nor GWB proved able to secure a final-status peace, on either of these crucial negotiating tracks!!!
    6. So the ‘manipulation’ strategy really doesn’t have any credibility– unless the goal is to delay the conclusion of final peace agreements on these two tracks, which “by an amazing coincidence” gives Israel the opportunity to build more Jews-only colonies in both the occupied West Bank and the occupied Golan.
    7. Obama has committed himself to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within a relatively short time frame– some say two years, some say four.
    8. While he has publicly reiterated that commitment a large number of times, including in Cairo last Thursday, his references to the need for a comprehensive peace between Israel and all of its neighbors have been far fewer, and far less clear.
    9. He has, however, made several approving references to the Arab Peace Initiative, which is based centrally on the concept of a ‘comprehensive’ peace between Israel and all neighbors, and which also stresses the need for Israel to evacuate all the Arab lands occupied in 1967.
    10. In the context of an effort to build an fair, stable, and increasingly trust-imbued order in the Arab-Israeli region, the manipulative, “divide and rule” approach that has marked all US peace efforts since 1993– whose failure has now been amply documented– needs to be laid aside in favor of one that actively welcomes the building or rebuilding of good working relations among all the Arab parties as the Arab parties walk together along the path laid out by their peace initiative of 2002.
    11. It was, remember, only a level of decent working relations among ideologically diverse Arab parties that in 1991 allowed the convening of the breakthrough Madrid Peace Conference. The same is true– but even more urgent!– today.
    12. Decent working relations are therefore now needed both within national communities– as in, between Fateh and Hamas; and also amongst the different large parties in Lebanon– and among the Arab states themselves.
    13. GWB’s malicious and divisive policy of stoking “moderates” versus “extremists” tensions at the regional level needs to be decisively cast aside. The languaging around that policy also needs to be jettisoned.
    14. One big challenge, obviously, is for the Palestinians to find a workable amount of intra-party reconciliation. It is good news that Hamas head Khaled Meshaal traveled to Cairo yesterday– hopefully, to try to break the logjam in the Cairo-mediated talks with Fateh. (It is my hope that one of the big things Obama and Hillary did when they were in Cairo last week was to tell Mubarak and his man Omar Suleiman quite clearly that they want him to succeed in this mediation, regardless of what Mubarak’s own small sectional interests in the matter might be.)
    15. Another challenge will be to build good relations between the Palestinian and Syrian leaderships as the negotiations gather steam. Having a national unity government for the Palestinians would most likely make that easier, as Hamas has had a long working relationship with Syria.
    16. Good relations between these two important Arab parties, and between Syria and Lebanon, (and among all the Arab parties) should be seen at this point as potentially synergistic and very helpful for the peacemaking effort, rather than being feared as presaging the imminent creation of a strong anti-Israeli military alliance– which was always the old fear of Israel and its western backers.
    17. We need to remember that these days, no Arab leaders have either the will or the capability to launch a military attack against Israel. They are all– including Hamas– focused on the peace arena. “Divide and rule” would be a completely counter-productive way for Washington to deal with this situation. Inclusion has to be the name of the game. Oh, and of course, real forward progress on securing the actual peace.

Anyway, as I say, I’m planning blog a lot more on all of this over the days ahead… For now, you’ll have to make do with my “17 points”.

Big days ahead for the Middle East…

Tomorrow, Pres. Obama will give his much-awaited address “to the Muslim world” in Cairo. On Sunday, Lebanon holds parliamentary elections– and Iran holds its elections June 12.
I’m in Damascus this week. Officials and non-officials here are very eager for improved relations with the US, and express some concern that despite all his rhetoric of “change”, Obama has so far done precious little to implement that promise.
The WaPo’s Glenn Kessler reported this morning that Sec. of State Clinton spoke with her Syrian counterpart by phone Sunday, and made plans for both Israeli-Arab peace envoy George Mitchell and a US military team to visit Syria later this month.
The military delegation will be discussing coordination in combatting insurgent forces in Iraq. That is something the Syrian government has an interest in. But it has an even stronger interest in not having this be the only level at which relations improve. Having a political delegation visit is seen as even more important here…
However, Obama still has not returned to Damascus the ambassador who was peevishly withdrawn by Bush some years ago. (A high-ranking official in the Bush White House recently told me that the US was in a state of “quasi-war” with Syria in those years. What the heck does that term mean? A state of war is a clear category in international relations, that imposes certain responsibilities on both sides. And often, indeed, even in a state of war, the sides still have ambassadorial-level representation in each other’s capitals… But ‘quasi-war’???)
Obama has also done, or failed to do, a number of other things that could have started to improve relations with Syria.
One of my concerns is that unless he and his people (including Mitchell) pay serious and sustained attention to any issue– including Syria, but including other key issues in the region, too– then the bureaucrats in the State Department will just continue on the same kind of auto-pilot course they became habituated to adopting throughout eight years of GWB– and prior to that, eight years of the also strongly pro-Israel Pres. Clinton.
Remember that throughout those 16 years, any State Department employees who– like Ann Wright and a few brave others– strongly disagreed on grounds of principle with the course US policy was taking in the region resigned their posts. And those not courageous enough to resign who still dared to raise different views within the department rapidly found their careers sidelined.
Turning that great ship of the State Department’s bureaucracy around until it is seamlessly and effectively following the lead of the country’s recently elected new “Captain” will take some sustained attention and energy.
(Another question: Is Hillary Clinton the right person to actually do this inside the department that she heads?)
Anyway, what I’ve been hearing for many weeks now, in Washington DC and elsewhere, is that Washington has been waiting to adopt some kind of a new, more inclusive policy toward Syria after the Lebanese elections.
Okay, that’s next week.
George Mitchell will be in the region next week– he already has plans to visit Israel and Ramallah then.
It would make excellent sense if he also visits Damascus then, for the first time in his role as peace envoy.
He needs to hear the views and concerns of the government here, which has a lot to contribute to the peacemaking venture– especially if, as I strongly hope, Obama and Mitchell are aiming at securing a serious, sustainable, and comprehensive agreement that will end all outstanding portions of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
My judgment is that there is now very little likelihood at all that a viable peace agreement can be concluded only on the Palestinian track– which is all that Obama and Co. have talked about, as of yet.
We need to hear him say out loud that a “comprehensive” Arab-Israeli peace is in the US national interest– not just a “Palestinian-Israeli” peace.
… Anyway, I don’t have time to write much here. But regarding the prospects around the Lebanese elections, the best commentary so far is still this piece by the astute Lebanese blogger Qifa Nabki.

Obama-Mitchell peace mission gains a little momentum

Haaretz’s Barak Ravid had more details yesterday of the meeting an official Israeli delegation held in London last Tuesday with Obama’s special Mideast peace envoy Sen. George Mitchell and his team.
He quoted one senior Israeli official as saying after the meeting,

    “We’re disappointed… All of the understandings reached during the [George W.] Bush administration are worth nothing.”

He adds these details:

    The Israeli delegation consisted of National Security Adviser Uzi Arad, Netanyahu diplomatic envoy Yitzhak Molcho, Defense Ministry chief of staff Mike Herzog and deputy prime minister Dan Meridor.
    Herzog spoke to Mitchell and his staff about understandings reached by former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon with the Bush administration on allowing continued building in the large West Bank settlement blocs. He asked that a similar agreement be reached with the Obama government.
    Meridor spoke of the complexities characterizing the coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and said Washington’s demands of a complete construction freeze would lead to the dissolution of the Netanyahu government.
    The Israeli delegates were stunned by the uncompromising U.S. stance, and by statements from Mitchell and his staff that agreements reached with the Bush administration were unacceptable. An Israeli official privy to the talks said that “the Americans took something that had been agreed on for many years and just stopped everything.”
    …The Israeli envoys said the demand for a total settlement freeze was not only unworkable, but would not receive High Court sanction. Tensions reportedly reached a peak when, speaking of the Gaza disengagement, the Israelis told their interlocutors, “We evacuated 8,000 settlers on our own initiative,” to which Mitchell responded simply, “We’ve noted that here.”

There’s a lot to comment on there!
Firstly, why should Pres. Obama be at all worried by the prospect that too “tough” a US line might “lead to the dissolution of the Netanyahu government”??
Secondly, why should any Israelis imagine that a possible ruling of their own judiciary should be expected by anyone else to over-ride the clear requirements of international diplomacy and international law regarding the– actually quite illegal– project of planting Jewish-Israeli settlers in occupied land?
Then, toward the end of the piece, Ravid writes this,

    Defense Minister Ehud Barak will travel to Washington on Sunday [yesterday– or next week? not clear] in an attempt to put further pressure on the Obama administration.

So Arad, Molcho, and Co. were unsuccessful in snowing G. Mitchell with their arguments– and now, Netanyahu sends Ehud Barak to Washington… to speak with whom?
This does look just the teeniest bit like Netanyahu and E. Barak trying to go behind Mitchell’s back and speak with other heavyweights in washington… Perhaps E Barak also hopes to speak with the president himself?
If it is an attempt to go behind Mitchell’s back, I am pretty certain it will backfire.
Sen. Mitchell had experience of that, after all, during his first go-round with dealing with the Palestine Question, back in 2001. Also, let’s just recall that he is by no means a political lightweight in Washington…
(Small authorial note. I’m in Damascus, having traveled here overland from Capadoccia over the past 48 hours. The combination of travel and being in Syria means I haven’t been as well plugged-in or as timely as usual on these stories. However, I’ve been gathering LOTS of great new material which will appear here and elsewhere over the weeks ahead. ~HC)

Olmert (and Ross?) and a new concept of the Jewish state

Ariel Beery had a very interesting piece in Haaretz yesterday. It describes a new movement among Israelis– and key friends of Israel like Dennis Ross— to fashion a new concept of a state.
Instead of this state being a nation-state, that is, a project that includes all those who live inside its borders, this new kind of state would be what Beery calls

    a node-state – that is, … the sovereign element chosen by narrative and collective will at the center of a global network.

Immediately before he introduces that concept he notes this:

    The State of Israel… was doubly special – first because it claimed to be the state of the Jews even as the majority of the Jewish nation still lived outside its boundaries, and second because it had no desire to integrate other, non-Jewish groups among its citizenry into the Jewish nation. Israel has thus been criticized for not behaving like a classic nation-state.

Beery indicates that when Ehud Olmert was still prime minister, he strongly supported this reconceptualizing of Israel:

    Ehud Olmert set out to transform the conceptual and practical relationship between the state and the Jewish Diaspora. He began doing so last summer, when, in a speech before the Jewish Agency’s board of governors, he said that, “We must stop talking in terms of big brother and little brother, and instead speak in terms of two brothers marching hand in hand and supporting each other.”

For me, as a US citizen, an even more important part of what Beery writes comes next. He tells us that,

    To translate thought to policy, his government tasked the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) with developing a new strategy for the state to involve itself with the Diaspora both fiscally and programmatically, in order to strengthen Jewish identity especially insofar as it is connected to Israel.

The JPPPI is, of course, the institute that was headed until just a few weeks ago by Dennis Ross, now Sec. of Sate Clinton “special adviser” on the affairs of a swathe of countries, including Israel’s current big nemesis, Iran.
We already knew the JPPPI had a close connection with some international Zionist organizations like the Jewish National Fund. But now we learn that Ross also received a direct “tasking” from the Israeli prime minister to engage in a far-reaching reconceiving of the nature of the Israeli state and its relationship with world Jewry??
How can anyone in the Obama administration think that this man has the objectivity to have any say at all– even if only as an “adviser”– in the fashioning of our country’s Middle East policy?
As another footnote we should, of course, zero in on the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of the “herrenvolk” concept that lies at the heart of the transformation of the idea of Israel from being a nation-state to being a “node-state.”
Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, and their friends and allies among the country’s Jewish citizenry, all call unequivocally for the definition of Israel to be the state of all its citizens, with no privileging of one group of citizens over others based solely on grounds of religion or ethnicity.
The idea that Dennis Ross, a Jewish person who has stable (and very influential) citizenship in a prosperous western democracy, should have more say in defining what the nature of the Israeli state should be than, say, a Palestinian-Israeli Knesset member or even just an regular–and fully tax-paying– Palestinian citizen of Israel truly boggles the mind.

Israel’s horse in Iran’s race?

Which candidate would Israel favor the most in the upcoming Iranian Presidential contest?
It’s of course a loaded question. No candidate in Iran would wish to be seen as favored by the Islamic Republic’s perceived nemesis.
And we also should add that Israelis, particularly those analysts who follow Iran matters closely, might disagree considerably. So let’s narrow the question to refer to the current Israeli prime minister. :-}

Gvirtz: Prioritizing Peace over Settlements

    I am pleased to be able to publish this important essay from Amos Gvirtz, a longtime member of Kibbutz Shefayim, in Israel. JWN readers may recall the interview I published with him back in March.
    Gvirtz is a pillar of the Israeli nonviolence movement, and was a founder of Palestinians and Israelis for Nonviolence. He was the founding chairperson of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, and every week since summer 2006 he has published a short essay under the title “Don’t Say We Did Not Know.” You can find some older samples of these essays here, along with the email through which to subscribe to them. ~HC

Prioritizing Peace over Settlements
By Amos Gvirtz
A short while after his victory in the 1977 elections and his appointment as prime minister, Menahem Begin announced: “There will be many more Elon Morehs [an early ideological West Bank settlement].” And he went on to say, “So that a left-wing government will not be able to return the territories.”
In order to give weight to this announcement, the Begin government declared the settlements to be areas of national priority. This meant that the government viewed the construction and development of settlements in the occupied territories as a supreme Israeli interest. And in fact, since then and until today the settlers receive extensive benefits, far beyond what is allocated to any other population in Israel. This is also true for industrialists and business people who build their factories and businesses in the occupied territories.
Since the Begin government, no Israeli government has changed this priority, including the Rabin government, which while it froze settlement construction, paved bypass roads for the settlers, with all their ramifications.
Thus even during the seven years of the Oslo process, no Israeli government changed the policy which viewed the establishment and development of settlements as a supreme Israeli interest! We witnessed a political process, which seemed to most of us to be a peace process, at a time when the occupation actually continued to deepen! And in fact, during the time of the Oslo process, the number of settlers increased from 110,000 to 204,000; Israel demolished more than 1,000 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories; implemented two expulsions; and confiscated some 40,000 acres of Palestinian land. From the Palestinian point of view, these are unilateral acts of war by an occupying power against a defenseless civilian population.
After the 1999 elections, Prime Minister Ehud Barak added fuel to the fire when he appointed Yitzhak Levy of the National Religious Party as Minister of Housing in his government. The results were not long in coming: construction in the settlements reached new heights. The Meretz Party, which also sat in Barak’s government, fought against the corruption of the Sephardic religious party Shas (thereby deepening the rift with the Sephardic population in Israel), but failed in its role as guardian of the peace process. This failure marked one of the biggest mistakes of the Israeli Left, which occupied itself with political issues, while the Right created facts on the ground, with the goal of making the settlement process irreversible.
Israeli governments have developed a fixed pattern of behavior: they “agree” to American and European demands on the peace process, and at the same time deepen the occupation. We saw how the Olmert government did this during the Anapolis process.
Given all this, I have reached the conclusion that today the central demand of the Israeli Left must be, first and foremost, the cancellation of the priority status of the settlements in the occupied territories; the total cessation of funding for the settlements and the illegal outposts; upholding the law against settlers who expel Palestinian farmers from their lands and then take them over; the cessation of all land theft; a total cessation of house demolitions; a total cessation of the expulsion of Palestinians from the areas of the Southern Hebron Hills, the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim; the encouragement of settlers to return to Israel; and of course an end to the theft of West Bank and Golan Hight water. Only when these conditions are fulfilled, can it be said that the government of Israel has changed its policy from prioritizing the occupation to prioritizing peace, and only then will there be a chance for a political peace process to succeed.

George Mitchell is doing what??

In this piece on the Israeli settlements issue in the NYT today, Isabel Kershner and Mark Landler report this:

    Mr. Mitchell has been negotiating reciprocal measures with Israel’s Arab neighbors, in which they would take steps, like granting visas to Israeli citizens or allowing Israel to open trade offices in their capitals, in return for Israel’s action on settlements. But administration officials say the onus is on Israel to show progress.

Is this really true? They give no source for the claim.
I certainly hope it is not. There has always been a fear that Washington’s response to the Arab Peace Initiative might be to require the Arab states to make a substantial upfront deposit on the “normalization”-type steps they promise to give Israel in the wake of conclusion of the satisfactory Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
For them to be expected to make good on some of these promises simply in return for Israel stopping undertaking the illegal acts it has been carrying out for 42 years now defies belief.
Remember the history of Oslo…. As a direct result of Oslo Israel won normalization with around 32 countries around the world that had previously expressed their solidarity with the Palestinians by withholding full relations with Israel.
Israel won those enormous benefits, which opened significant new markets for its arms industry in many rich countries in East Asia, while the Palestinians won… nothing except incarceration in the ever-shrinking open-air prisons that the West Bank and Gaza soon after became.
Actually, there is some reason to wonder about the accuracy of the NYT writers’ claim about Mitchell’s position. After all, which of “Israel’s Arab neighbors” might they be referring to? Israel has five Arab neighbors. With two of them– Egypt and Jordan– Israel has full peace treaties, and Israeli citizens and business-people can get visas very easily. The other three are Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon.
Israel itself prevents its citizens from visiting occupied Palestine (except in the context of doing army service there.)
So is Mitchell negotiating the kind of “reciprocal steps” Kershner and Landler write about with Syria and Lebanon? I highly doubt it.
The way the NYT writers and their editors refer to the settlements is also mealy-mouthed and misleading. They write:

    Almost 300,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, among a Palestinian population of some 2.5 million. Much of the world considers the 120 or so settlements a violation of international law.

Why not count the settlers in East Jerusalem, too?
I am certainly assuming and hoping that when Clinton and other administration officials talk about a settlement freeze they at least are talking about the settlements inside Jerusalem as well as elsewhere in the West Bank.
The whole settler-vs.-Palestinians question is at its most intense and tinderbox-ish inside Jerusalem… And Jerusalem is a city that all Arab and Muslim leaders care about, passionately.

Does Obama understand Israel’s war goal in Iran?

If Israel launches a military attack (= act of war) against Iran, what would the main goal of this attack be?
There is good reason to believe that the goal would be not the direct physical destruction/incapacitation of Iran’s nuclear programs but rather, to trigger an all-out US-Iran war in the course of which, Israel’s planners hope, the US would do the dirty work in Iran that it is unable to do itself.
This is a course of action of greatest consequence for Americans.
The best assessments available indicate that– under even the “best case” scenario, from Israel’s viewpoint– an Israeli strike force could not itself “destroy” Iran’s nuclear technology program anywhere near completely, and the Iranian program would be set back by at most a couple of years.
But meanwhile, Iran, subjected to this act of war, would almost certainly retaliate. The retaliation would, with equal predictability, include actions against Israel’s prime ally in the region, the United States. (And, as I have written here many times before, Iran would have considerable justification under international law for including US targets in its retaliation.)
Of course, US forces would in turn respond.
Thus, an Israeli strike against Iran would almost certainly trigger a direct, and of course massive, war between Iran and the US. The US could be expected to launch considerably heavier strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities and to try to inflict other substantial– perhaps even fatal?– damage on the Iranian government.
Iran could be expected to counter with attacks against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, against the vulnerable supply lines that support those forces, and possibly– in the event that the collapse of the Teheran regime seems imminent– with actions designed to paralyze US resupply efforts and world oil markets by blocking chokepoints like the Straits of Hormuz.
Triggering this big US-Iran war, rather than the direct ‘destruction’ of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, would most likely be the actual, though never openly stated, main goal of an Israeli attack against Iran.
I have reason to believe that this analysis of the likely course of events and of Israel’s actual war goal in Iran were clearly understood in the Bush White House.
Bush quite rightly also concluded that an all-out US-Iran war would be disastrous for the US’s positions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the entire region. For that reason, he and his officials went to some lengths to rein Israel in from launching– or even preparing for– the triggering attack against Iran.
But to what extent is this evaluation of the strategic realities shared by the Obama White House?
As Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett made clear in the excellent op-ed they published in Sunday’s NYT, the present administration has done almost nothing to follow up in practice on the president’s campaign-era promises to reach out in a serious way to Iran.
Secretary of State Clinton has done very little to back away from her campaign-era promises to “obliterate” Iran, and has chosen as her principal Iran-affairs adviser Dennis Ross, a clear hawk on Iranian affairs.
The Mann-Leveretts noted that Obama has meanwhile kept in place a well-funded (and Bush-initiated) program that seeks to overthrow the Iranian regime. As they note, keeping that program in place sends a powerful message to Iran’s rulers that “American intentions toward the Islamic Republic remain, ultimately, hostile.”
It also sends a powerful message to the Israeli government that their launching of a “triggering” military attack against Iran might actually be welcomed by all those in Washington– in the administration as well as in Congress– who continue to seek the overthrow of the Islamic republic by some variety of means.
Obama won the election last November; and before that he won the primary against Hillary Clinton. He won both races in good part because the American people supported his approach of making a sincere effort to de-escalate our country’s tensions with Iran, rather than the much more belligerent stances that both Clinton and McCain advocated towards Iran.
He won in good part because the American people are smart enough to see that a policy of belligerency, of hyping alleged threats, and blocking avenues for diplomatic de-escalation served our country very badly in Iraq– and can reliably be expected to be disastrous for our country if it is applied to Iran.
At this point, he needs to take actions through many different means to make sure that all parts of his administration are on the same page, giving clear backing to the stance of sincere diplomatic engagement with Iran that he outlined so eloquently and so correctly during the election campaign.
He needs to axe that destabilize-Iran program immediately.
And he needs to make absolutely clear to the Israeli government and its many remaining supporters in the US Congress, using a whole variety of both public and private means, that he judges that any Israeli military attack against Iran directly threatens our country’s interests, and that therefore he will do whatever it takes to ensure that Israel launches no such attack.
Americans should be quite clear: It is our forces and our interests, not Israel’s, that are on the front-line against Iran. We cannot continue to give Israel the extremely generous support it has had from Washington for the past 40-plus years if Israel takes a single action, at any level, that puts our country’s people at risk.
The Mann-Leveretts argue that “in all likelihood” it is already too late for Obama to correct his administrations policies toward Iran. I am not so pessimistic. But if he is to correct his stance that means taking action not only to correct Washington’s policies but also, equally importantly, to rein in an Israel that on this matter may have interests that are very different indeed than those of Americans.

More on ‘natural growth’ in settlements

My friend A writes:

    The right figure regarding ‘Natural Growth’ (Israeli) of Judea and Samaria on 2007, according the statistical abstract of Israel Shows: no reason for building becomes:
    Left (11,700) are more than the natural growth (9,200).
    http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton59/st02_18.pdf. (Judea and Samaria is the last row)
    The Migration Balance – 4,900
    Entered – 16,500
    Left – 11,700.

I am not sure where he got the figure for ‘natural growth’ from…
I note that what A is writing about is only the West Bank (‘Judea and Samaria’) outside occupied East Jerusalem. The statistical table here doesn’t break out East Jerusalem from West Jerusalem, but the net out-migration from Jerusalem in 2007 was 6,100.
It is intriguing, though, that at the level of “internal” (intra-Israel) migration, 11,700 people left the settlements in 2007.

Why Israel’s ‘natural growth’ claim is dishonest: Four reasons

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Tuesday, Secretary Clinton unequivocally called on Israel to halt all construction activity connected with its settlement project in the occupied West Bank.
She said,

    First, we want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth – any kind of settlement activity. That is what the President has called for. We also are going to be pushing for a two-state solution…

In reporting this earlier today, Haaretz’s Natasha Mozgovaya also noted that when Israeli President Shimon Peres was in Washington earlier this month he discussed the possibility of getting a waiver from the US regarding “construction to accommodate natural growth in the settlements.”
The actual words she reported from Peres on this issue were, “These children are not going to live on the roofs.”
This whole “natural growth” argument is a dishonest canard, whether used by Peres or anyone else,for the following four reasons:

    1. No settler children are going to be “living on the roofs.”
    The settlements– whether in East Jerusalem or elsewhere in the West Bank– have plenty of spare capacity, as evidenced by the facts that they continue to advertise for home-purchasers and that both the Israeli government and numerous private settlement organizations provide generous subsidies to (Jewish) people who want to go and live in them.
    2. This excuse has been used– and abused– before.
    Past Israeli governments have a track record on this question, having promised on several previous occasions to limit the growth in settlements to so-called “natural” growth and then continuing to build just as before while also giving all the incentives to non-settler Jewish people to move into the settlements. That record of past abuse needs to be taken into account.
    3. Accommodating Jewish Israelis’ alleged “natural” growth claims is inequitable unless the Palestinians’ much more urgent needs for housing are on their way to being met.
    It is simply obscene that, at a time when the Israelis are still refusing to allow into Gaza even the most basic materials required to rebuild the thousands of housing units destroyed during the recent war, they ask the world to pay heed to the almost completely specious claims they have regarding the alleged housing claims of residents of the illegal settlements.
    Wherever Palestinians currently live under Israeli rule, Israeli zoning and home-demolition policies have forced them to live in extremely overcrowded conditions. Any sustainable peace settlement between the two peoples must be based on equal rights and equal access to the basics of a decent life. Shifting towards a sustainable, equality-based outcome will be hard if, right at the start of the process, specious Israeli claims get any precedence over the far more pressing needs of Palestinians.
    4. Why think about “natural growth” at all if the peace agreement is, as we hope, due to be completed in timely fashion?
    In demographic terms, “natural growth” only becomes a real factor over a time period of five or more years. Proponents of the natural growth argument seem to assume the peace negotiations might go on for that long, or even longer. Peres’s use of the term “children” was telling. Was he assuming that settlers who are currently children will grow up, get married and want homes of their own before a final peace agreement is reached? If so, the peace process is doomed before it even starts.

For the above four reasons, the Israeli argument about “natural growth” is nonsense.
Congratulations to Sec. Clinton and Pres. Obama for being quite clear on this issue.