Last time I said that the best way to pressure Israel into serious negotiations for peace with the Palestinians is to use America’s financial support as a bargaining chip. But I also question whether President Obama is willing and able to transform America’s angry demands into actions.
Although I’d prefer quick and decisive action, I also know this is highly unlikely with the 2010 mid-term elections looming less than seven months away.
Unfortunately for the Palestinian peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also counting on this fact to forestall any unpleasant consequences for the time being (and maybe longer, should Republicans make big gains in the polls).
However, this doesn’t mean Netanyahu is off the hook. President Obama may not be as popular in Israel as he is in the rest of the world, but the Israeli government also knows that hr will be President for quite a while yet. Therefore, some improvement in relations remains a priority.
The last time there was a dust-up over Israeli settlement building in the early 1990s, the US withheld loan guarantees for a time, thereby putting a considerable strain on Israel’s economy. Netanyahu knows that if America did this once before, it could just as easily do so again..
However, the Obama administration simply doesn’t trust Netanyahu to negotiate seriously with the Palestinians. And for their part, the Palestinians don’t trust him or his government either. In a recent interview, the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: “We have a trust level below zero between the two sides.”
Erekat wants the United States to take a direct role because he believes any attempt at direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians is doomed from the start.
Political realities show he may be right. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party won a very narrow victory over its centrist Kadima opposition in the last elections, so he was only able to form a government with the support of Israel’s most extreme right wing parties.
Those extremists have no interest in negotiating a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and are at the forefront of pushing for even more settlements.
But Netanyahu also faces resistance from within his own party. Likud’s deputy speaker Danny Danon also supports more settlement building, and says Hillary Clinton’s “meddling in internal Israeli decisions” is “uninvited and unhelpful”.
So according to Israel’s right-wingers, even though America keeps Israel afloat financially, American meddling is the problem, not Israeli intransigence? Yeah, right!
What Danon and other right-wing politicians in Israel have yet to realise is that American public opinion has slowly started to come around to the view that settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essential if the US wants to dry up support for anti-American terrorism throughout the world.
When – not if – the majority of Americans come to the conclusion that our unstinting support for Israel is putting our nation at risk, then American politicians, regardless of their political party affiliation, will call for more pressure on Israel to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians.
I could be wrong, but I have a very real sense that this will happen much sooner than Netanyahu and his right wing supporters expect. While America has a huge financial and emotional investment in the state of Israel, it has a much bigger investment in its own security.
Charles Laffiteau is a US Republican from Dallas, Texas who is pursuing a PhD in International Relations and lectures on Contemporary US Business & Society at DCU
