Mideast peace effort is a charade

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By Ali Abunimah, Special to CNN


(CNN) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Monday speech to America's leading pro-Israel lobby took on added significance in light of the spat between the U.S. and Israel over the expansion of Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.

(snip)

The problem is that the administration's plan to get to its objective of "two states for two peoples living side by side in peace" looks less credible today than ever.

On the Palestinian side, the U.S. refuses to engage with Hamas, without which no credible deal can be struck, and the anemic U.S. vision of a Palestinian mini-state cannot hope to meet the aspirations or restore the rights of millions of Palestinian refugees.

And, after two embarrassing defeats at the Israel lobby's hands, chances that Obama will use America's massive financial aid to Israel as leverage are close to nil, especially as midterm elections approach.

The administration's dependence on the goodwill of the lobby was highlighted by the fact that AIPAC's new president, Lee Rosenberg, was a key member of the national finance committee for Obama's presidential campaign, and another AIPAC national board member, J.B. Pritzker -- who got a shout-out in Clinton's speech -- was national finance chair of Citizens for Hillary.

In the closely watched race for Obama's former Illinois Senate seat, the National Republican Senatorial Committee accused Republican Mark Kirk's Democratic opponent Alexi Giannoulias -- and by extension Obama, who is a close Giannoulias friend -- of being "anti-Israel." This may foreshadow a national GOP strategy to make unconditional support for Israeli policies more than ever a litmus test in American elections.

In this poisonous atmosphere, real progress is unlikely -- the best the Obama administration can hope for is to avoid a serious blowup until it can pass the problem to the next administration.

But the situation on the ground will not wait for the United States to come to its senses; in Jerusalem and the West Bank, popular resistance is growing, in the form of nonviolent protests, to Israel's land confiscations.

Israel's violent response, including the arrests of civil society leaders, may cause some Palestinians to react in kind.

Globally, Israel faces a growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions just like apartheid South Africa did in the 1980s. A leading Israeli think tank, the Reut Institute, warned the government recently that this campaign "possesses strategic significance, and may develop into a comprehensive existential threat within a few years."

It also stated that a "harbinger of such a threat would be the collapse of the two-state solution as an agreed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the coalescence behind a 'one-state solution' as a new alternative framework." With its aggressive settlement expansion plans, Israel has in effect chosen a one-state instead of a two-state solution -- but it is indeed an apartheid state.

While the United States looks on impassively, or continues to tout a charade of a peace process, Palestinians, pro-democracy Israelis and their allies will intensify what is rapidly turning into a struggle for equal rights and citizenship for everyone who inhabits the narrow land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/17/abunimah.settlements.israel/index.html?iref=allsearch

[midnight]

1. I support this effort to work towards giving these two countries a two state

solution. This is long over due. Both sides have wanted peace that continues to be derailed by some misguided souls. I think the mothers of this region are going to end up being the voice of reason for equal rights and citizenship for everyone who lives in this narrow piece of land.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

2. The author's point is that the "peace process" is a guise for a continuation of the status quo.

Israel refuses to even consider the cessation of settlement expansion. What is there to talk about???

[oberliner]

3. Most Palestinians support two-state solution, not one-state solution

It's about a 60/40 split though.

In Israel it's about 70/30.