Independent UK: Obama won't restrain Israel - he can't

[marmar]

Rupert Cornwell: Obama won't restrain Israel - he can't
His error has been not to think through the clout of America's pro-Israel lobby

Thursday, 18 March 2010


All you can say is, we've been here before. "Who the **** does he think he is? Who's the ******* superpower here?" Bill Clinton spluttered in fury to his aides back in 1996. The "he" in question was Benjamin Netanyahu, then as now the Prime Minister of Israel.

Barack Obama, a cooler character than the last Democrat to be president, may not have used quite such salty language about the behaviour of the current Netanyahu government that has so incensed the US. One thing though may safely be predicted. Mr Netanyahu will get away with it.

More than a week on, the in-your-face effrontery of the announcement that a new swathe of Israeli homes will be built in disputed East Jerusalem still amazes. Not only was it another pre-emptive strike on one of the toughest issues to be resolved in the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to which even Mr Netanyahu pays lip service. It came just 24 hours after painstaking diplomatic efforts by Washington had secured agreement on "proximity talks" in which both sides agreed to talk to each other, albeit indirectly. The fate of even these modest contacts are now in the balance.

And it came at the very moment that Vice-President Joe Biden – a true friend of Israel if ever there was one – was in the country promising America's "absolute, total and unvarnished" commitment to Israel's security. Mr Netanhayu maintains he was blindsided by the announcement. But close friends don't treat a superpower protector like that. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-obama-wont-restrain-israel--he-cant-1922958.html

[azul]

1. Israel and the US both know that this will infuriate more people.

What are they trying to do, provoke a terrier attack that could twistedly be traced back to Iran?

[rpannier]

6. Great finish in the piece

President Obama however will be about as far away as possible, on a long-planned visit to Indonesia and Australia. And probably just as well. Grovels, even the most elegant grovels, are not an edifying spectacle.

[Poll_Blind]

2. In the same way that George W(asted) Bush squandered the universal support of the...

...United States by the rest of the world after 9/11, so to do successive conservative Israeli governments piss away the sympathy that (most) of the world still has for a nation whose heritage is scarred so heavily by persecution.

Just like W, they do it for political mileage. Before the right wing and the Ultra-Orthodox decided to shack up under the flag of Eretz Yisrael in the decades after '67 I think they had a hope as a viable nation, especially given the spirit of their founding documents.

But that was a long time ago and things have deteriorated far past the point of return to the equality their founders imagined.

I know the article is mostly about Israel "getting its way" again, but really, they're destroying so much of themselves in the process I don't see much benefit. The Ultra-Orthodox get a messianic wet-dream which is not going to come true, except in calamity. The politicians who league with them get stronger coalitions with powerful voting blocks which do, admittedly, run over a few dozen political parties, but are mostly of the same mind on a few key points.

Who suffers?

The Jews. Not the Jews who are part of that political-religious double-helix of delusion.

All the Jews, everywhere.

Jews in Israel cannot possibly stop (they don't have the numbers now and they certainly won't in the future) it and Diasporic Jews can't either.

It's just going to play itself out. It's just a shame we kick money into the kitty to help the whole thing run.

PB

[Hardrada]

3. All excellent points.

[Martin Eden]

4. "two-state solution"

How?

How is it possible to imnplement a "two-state solution" when the West Bank and Gaza are not contiguous and when the West Bank is riddled with Jewish settlements & roads that are off-limits to Palestinians?

Does anyone think the Israeli government will force their citizens out of those settlements and behind the wall they're building? Do you remember a few years ago the violence and hysteria that erupted when the govt evicted a relative handful of settlers from an "illegal" outpost?

Seriously, I don't see the Israelis abandoning what they've built up in the West Bank and Jerusalem the last few decades. And they continue to build.

What would be the borders of the Palestinian state? Would all the Jews living in the West Bank become residents or citizens of Palestine, subject to Palestinian authority? No? Well then, can you imagine a soverign Palestine in which large parcels of "their" land and the roads connecting them remained under the control of Israel?

Am I missing something here?

It seems to me the leaders who talk about a "two-state solution" should know full well it is essentially impossible. The question is, what do they really see as the long term "solution"??

[northernlights]

8. their long term solution?

Slow genocide of the Palestinian people.

[Martin Eden]

9. The "FINAL" Solution.

Ironic, isn't it? :nuke:

Sadly, I think you're right. Control of "Greater Israel" is a war of attrition, and Israel -- enabled by the United States -- is slowly but surely increasing their stranglehold.

What is to become of the Palestinians living within Greater Israel? No way they'll be granted full citizenship -- not while there is the remotest possibility they could become the majority in the Jewish State.

What we're left with is the Apartheid State Jimmy Carter describes, and/or eventual genocide -- not by gas chamber, but by oppression and diaspora.

[Rage Inc.]

5. Well, he could cut financial aid to Israel

But we all know he's not going to!

[rpannier]

7. Last President to do that

George Bush I
It lasted about one week
The pressure he received from Congress and the press was nauseating