Confirmed: US dropping pressure for 'settlement freeze' extension
Tuesday night's report that the United States is dropping its effort to convince Israel to agree to a 'settlement freeze' extension has now been confirmed by the New York Times (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). Israel Radio reported in its 9:00 am news on Wednesday that Secretary of State Clinton will make an official announcement regarding the US decision on Thursday in an address to the Saban Center of the Brookings Institute. This is from the Times. The administration decided to pull the plug, officials said, because it concluded that even if Mr. Netanyahu persuaded his cabinet to accept a freeze — which he had not yet been able to do — the 90-day negotiating period would not have produced the progress on core issues that the United States originally had sought.The most incredible thing about this story is that it took them this long to figure that out when everyone and his kid brother understood it immediately. Did they really think that there were any circumstances under which they could make a deal on borders within three months? For that matter, does anyone really believe that a final status deal could be negotiated within a year? It could be if everyone shared the same goals, but in this case the parties do not share the same goals and placing a deadline on negotiations is simply a guarantee that the negotiations will fail.
“We made a strong effort, and everyone tried in good faith to resume direct negotiations in a way that would be meaningful and sustainable,” said a senior American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal deliberations, which are continuing. “But the extension wasn’t actually going to do that.”
A preview of the administration’s next move could come in an address on Middle East policy that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to deliver on Friday at the Brookings Institution. But the administration’s strategy appeared to be unsettled.And if Rob Malley - who is not known as a friend of Israel - is saying that they had to bow to reality, they really had to bow to reality.
“Wisely, in my view, the administration is bending to reality,” said Robert Malley, a peace negotiator in the Clinton administration. “The most likely scenario is that this moratorium was going to buy them a short reprieve, and was then going to plunge them into the same crisis they were in before.”
Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians issued a response to the news. But administration officials said the United States made the decision after consultations between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Netanyahu. The two had hammered out the agreement on a 90-day freeze, which Mr. Netanyahu later said he could not sell to his cabinet without written security assurances from the Americans.After the way that this administration callously dumped the 2004 Bush letter of assurances, did they really think that any Israeli government wasn't going to at least insist on getting these kinds of promises in writing? Do they really think we're that foolish?
Those assurances, which included 20 F-35 stealth airplanes and an American pledge to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations, were never delivered to the Israelis. While that package is now off the table, an official said, he reiterated that the United States would continue to protect Israel’s security and fight efforts to challenge its legitimacy in international organizations.
In the short run, analysts said the failure raised questions about Mr. Netanyahu’s capacity to negotiate a final deal.Actually, it doesn't indicate a weakness in the coalition. It indicates the strength of Israelis who are not going to sell out their homeland, their state and their security for a bowl of porridge. That's not weakness - it's strength. We have acknowledged the reality that there is no 'fierce moral urgency' to make 'peace' and that - as Mrs. Clinton herself admitted a few months ago - we can live with the status quo for quite some time to come.
“It revealed a degree of weakness in his coalition,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former American ambassador to Israel. “This was such an attractive deal for him, but he still couldn’t get his cabinet to buy into it without attaching conditions to it that were unacceptable to Washington.”
But the Palestinians also shifted their position, insisting that a settlement freeze must include East Jerusalem as well as the West Bank. Israel’s initial 10-month moratorium included only the West Bank. The United States never asked Mr. Netanyahu to expand it to Jerusalem, and analysts said Mr. Netanyahu would never have been able to persuade his right-wing cabinet to go along with it.That's the only intelligent move this administration has made up to the decision on Tuesday night to drop the 'settlement freeze' extension altogether.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Barack Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, direct talks, Hillary Clinton, Robert Malley, settlement freeze extension
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:00 AM
2 Comments:
Asking President Obama to put his promises in writing is not merely a Shas-Bibi folie a deux. Whatever Bibi's responsibility for this dangerous diplomatic distraction leaks indicate that the Obamii were all over the roadmap as to their goals, their expectations, what the freeze would apply to, and whether the 90 days was the estimated time of arrival or a teaser downpayment to Abbas on Israel's account.
Yup. Now they face the daunting task of coaxing Abu Bluff down from the tree up with they foolishly chased him. He's not going to do it out of fear of an American reversal in the future and also because his life is more important than making peace with Israel.
There's never been a more incompetent Administration than this one. What could go wrong indeed
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