It is not unusual for a US secretary of state to pay his third visit to the Middle East in just five weeks, but given the low expectations from a second-term Obama administration and the drastic turmoil engulfing the region, John Kerry’s visit has assumed some significance. It came on the heels of US President Barack Obama’s first trip to Israel and the West Bank since assuming office in 2009.
However, given the long history of broken promises and burned fingers, hardly any observer expects Kerry to put forward a peace plan. US secretary of state would probably resort to Kissinger’s step-by-step approach to diplomacy, where the two parties will be encouraged to take some concrete measures and engage into a serious peace talk. After all the Obama administration is early in its second term and free from re-election strings. More importantly, it wants to build on the coup pulled off by Obama, who managed successfully to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to swallow his pride and apologize to Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the death of nine of Turkish citizens at the hands of Israeli forces.
The only noticeable step taken by Obama during his visit to Israel last month was his address to the students at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, a move seen as a way to talk directly to the younger generation, bypassing the political leadership. In that speech, refraining from his usual rhetoric of the unwavering US support to Israel, Obama went ahead to raise the issue of the Palestinians, challenging his audience to get into their shoes and try to figure out what their aspirations and future will be. He even went a step further and wondered as how can Israel continue to be both Jewish and democratic when it occupies Palestinians and allows settlers to undermine the possibility of a two-state solution? By all accounts it was the first, frank speech on this point, appealing directly to the Israeli youths who have to pay the price of fighting for Israel security.
This almost unusual step of appealing directly to the Israeli people underscores the fact that the left and peace groups that used to carry this message have been fragmented and getting weaker and weaker by the rise of the right and ultra-right groups. These right-wing groups have been dominating the Israeli political landscape and are dictating the terms of how the country should be run. Recently, the Israeli government submitted to settlers’ demands of running separate bus lines for them in the West Bank. This move was quickly denounced by human right groups like B’Tselem as racist. The left-of-the center newspaper Haaretz captured the mood it its editorial, “On the bus to Israeli apartheid.” These phenomena are present and intertwined as an integral part of the system known as occupation.
After the Israeli victory in Six-Day War in 1967, leading to the capture of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights, Gen. Matti Peled felt that the victory gave Israel, for the first time, a chance to make peace with the Arabs by offering them land for peace. His words went unheeded.
Peled, the soldier turned peace activist, was the first to call for the recognition of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and even went on to meet in person its chairman Yasser Arafat at a time when it was a taboo to say that something called Palestine actually exists.
Such drift was made possible by successive US administrations, pushed by domestic political calculations, to take the side of Israel without questioning its rationale. The issue of the bus separation is just the beginning of a slew of more apartheid measures.
Netanyahu, his Likud party and their allies in the far right seek to have both security and land without giving something in return to the Palestinians. This approach does not look to be sustainable in the long run. That may be the reason behind Kerry’s visit, but it remains to be seen what political capital Obama in his second term is willing to spend to get both the parties back on the negotiating table.
n This article is exclusive to Arab News
