Today is the big day, and it comes with the even bigger question: Will Benjamin Netanyahu endorse a Palestinian state when he sits down for talks with President Barack Obama in the White House?
So far, Netanyahu has preferred to remain vague on the issue, calling instead for strengthening Palestinian security services and the Palestinian economy. But it is questionable whether that will be good enough for Obama.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak suggests Netanyahu might sign on to the two-state solution that the US and the Arab world are seeking but he has also calculated that such an agreement could be reached within three years, and would take another five years to implement. So Israel has bought for itself, and sold to the Palestinians, eight more years of nothingness.
Any deal must include handing back occupied territories to the Palestinians, dismantling settlements and honoring the right of return of Palestinians refugees. But Netanyahu has an answer to all the above: Successive Israeli governments have rejected the return of all land occupied in the 1967 war. Furthermore, allowing Palestinian refugees since 1948 the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel would undermine Israel’s Jewish majority. As for settlements, even if Netanyahu claims that Israel is no longer building new outposts, it is expanding existing ones as far as the eye can see.
Obama and Netanyahu might not see eye-to-eye on the issue but how far is Obama really willing to push Israel? An ugly clash is unlikely between these two famous friends. However, Netanyahu has a track record of difficult relations with his country’s closest ally, dating back to his previous term as Israel’s premier back in the late 1990s. When it comes to the Palestinians, Israeli leaders, Netanyahu et all, are well known for saying one thing but doing something entirely different. Or not doing anything at all. What’s to stop Netanyahu from calling for a state but doing everything in his power not to help create one? It is called procrastination which Netanyahu and all his predecessors have honed to a fine art.
Even if Netanyahu expresses support for a Palestinian state, it won’t be easy for his hawkish government to make the sweeping concessions needed such as freezing Jewish settlements in the West Bank and sharing the holy city of Jerusalem. Netanyahu might even find himself at odds with his own Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who is fond of saying that 15 years of peace talks with Palestinians had “brought neither results nor solutions” though the correct interpretation is nothing has been achieved after 15 years of peace talks with the Israelis.
The most likely scenario is that Netanyahu and Obama will do their best to find common ground during their talks in Washington. But that, too, might not be good enough. Obama might not present a specific plan for the Middle East at his meeting with Netanyahu but the prime minister must present one of his own, at least for Obama’s sake. Obama is scheduled to give a highly anticipated address to the Muslim world at the start of next month from Egypt. He must come to the Middle East with a positive message on ways of ending the conflict but that message can only be sent if there is a positive outcome from today’s pivotal encounter with Netanyahu.
Photographs and kangaroo courts
Excerpts from an editorial in New York Times yesterday:
Last week, Obama faced protests from some of his top generals, and more attacks from Republicans in Congress, as the government got ready to release photographs of soldiers abusing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. Members of both parties decided there was political gold to be mined in complicating the president’s efforts to shut down the Guantánamo Bay prison.
We do not object to convening military tribunals to judge and punish crimes committed in war. That is a well-established part of American and international military justice. The problem is that these tribunals, unlike traditional ones, did not just cover prisoners captured on the battlefield. They covered anyone whom Bush declared beyond the reach of law with the preposterous claim that the whole world is now a field of battle. These prisoners should be tried in civilian criminal courts under federal anti-terrorism statutes. Just as Obama was wrong to reverse field on the military tribunals, he was wrong to do so on the release of photographs showing American soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in ways reminiscent of the crimes of Abu Ghraib. Federal district and appellate judges have ordered the government to release the pictures, and Obama initially said he would. But last week, he changed his mind, offering a jumbled set of explanations including his fear of inflaming anti-American sentiment and jeopardizing American soldiers. We share that concern, but these pictures will come out — through the courts or through the press. It is better for those same soldiers for Obama to release them, while declaring how he plans to change policy to ensure that these abuses are never repeated.
