Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Next, Locusts?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/017/187pwixc.asp
Next, Locusts?
The abject failure of the Obama administration's Middle East policy.
by Elliott Abrams
11/16/2009, Volume 015, Issue 09
Can anything else possibly go wrong for the Obama administration's
Middle East policy? In the past ten days, Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton has twice reversed herself publicly on her attitude toward the
Israeli settlements. Palestinians have refused her direct request to
rejoin peace talks with Israel, and Palestinian Authority president
Abbas has said he will not run for reelection. U.S.-Israel relations
are in a state of frozen mistrust. The New York Times and Washington
Post, among others, are calling Obama's policy a complete failure--in
news stories as well as editorials. The only thing missing is a plague
of locusts.
The policy is indeed a complete failure. In ten months the
administration has managed to offend and demoralize Israelis and
Palestinians, lose the support of Arab governments, and reduce
previously excellent relations with the government of Israel to levels
unmatched since the James Baker days. Meanwhile, George Mitchell's
trips to the region are increasingly reminiscent of the Colin Powell
visits in 2002 and 2003--producing little but embarrassment. The
Israeli "100 percent settlement freeze" and the Arab outreach to
Israel, early goals of the Obama team, are now forgotten, as is an
early resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
These disasters are mostly the product of an ignorant and belligerent
attitude toward Israel and especially its prime minister. The
ignorance was most evident in the administration's view that a total
construction freeze could be imposed not only in every settlement but
in Jerusalem itself. But the U.S. policy was worse: We demanded a
freeze that would apply to construction by Jews, but not by Arabs;
could any Israeli leader be expected to support such a position? One
does not need to be a member of the Knesset to understand that such a
freeze was impossible for Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition as it
would have been for any Israeli prime minister--but apparently this
fact was beyond the understanding of Mitchell, Rahm Emanuel, and all
the other "experts" on the Obama team.
The belligerence toward Netanyahu has been evident all along, but is
best shown by the refusal to tell Israel's prime minister whether or
not the president will see him this coming week when Netanyahu (like
the president) addresses the United Jewish Communities annual general
assembly in Washington. The Israelis gave the White House weeks of
notice that Netanyahu had agreed to speak, would be in town, and hoped
to see Obama. The White House reaction has been to keep him twisting
in the wind, with news stories several days before his arrival saying
the president had not decided yet whether to see Netanyahu.
Think of it: Our closest ally in the region, critical issues at stake
(from Iran's nuclear program and the recent Israeli seizure of an
Iranian arms shipment meant for Hezbollah to Abbas's announcement),
yet the Israelis get no answer. Obama and his "experts" may think they
are reminding Netanyahu who is boss, but they are in fact reminding
all of us why Israelis no longer trust Obama--and making closer
cooperation between the two governments that much harder.
The problems Netanyahu has with Obama pale in comparison with those of
the Palestinians, and Abbas's announcement reflects their
frustrations. The best example: Obama and Clinton lured Abbas out on
the settlements-freeze limb and then sawed it off. When they said a
total freeze including Jerusalem was necessary, he of course happily
agreed. But when they abandoned that doomed policy and instead began
talking of "restraint," he could not climb down.
Abbas has threatened to leave many times before, and it's worth -
noting that he did not resign. He said he would not seek reelection
next year, in elections scheduled for January 24 but highly unlikely
to take place then--if ever. So he will be around for months more, in
fact indefinitely if elections keep getting postponed. His statement
must be regarded, then, not as a Shermanesque personal denial but as a
protest against an American policy that has weakened him and left him
high and dry.
Israelis and Palestinians when I visited in October had two main
questions: Who is making this Middle East policy, and do they not
realize by now that it is a disaster? At least in this, one can say
the administration has produced Israeli-Palestinian unity. They are
also united in watching warily as the president seems unable to make a
decision about Afghanistan. For the Palestinians, this suggests he'll
never really take on the Israelis for them, as they thought he might
back in January. For the Israelis, it means he'll never take on Iran,
and that they may in the end face the Iranian nuclear threat on their
own.
They all wonder whether to blame Mitchell or Clinton or Dennis Ross or
National Security Adviser Jim Jones or the State Department's Near
East bureau, and each individual Israeli and Palestinian has a
favorite target. But the answers to their questions seem obvious: It
is the president's policy, and no, he does not seem to be aware that
it has already failed. While he has backed off from the early targets,
he has not changed his attitude toward -Israel's government, nor
altered his basic approach: to push for negotiations over "core
issues" as soon as possible.
And this is the fundamental problem with Obama's policy: Like too many
of his predecessors he believes that a solution is at hand if only he
can force the parties to the table. There, presumably under American
tutelage, they will reach American-style compromises (pragmatic,
sensible, realistic) and resolve the dispute, with Nobel Peace Prizes
for all. The only question is where the table is: Camp David, Taba,
Annapolis, Oslo, perhaps this time Chicago.
This approach undermines the one real hope in the region, which is the
practical advances being made in the West Bank. There, the economy is
improving, law and order are maintained, the Palestinian Authority is
fighting Hamas, Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation is growing,
and mobility for the population is increasing. In recent months Israel
removed more checkpoints and expanded the hours of the Allenby Bridge
to Jordan. It isn't paradise, but it isn't Gaza either, and life is
better each year. It could be far better if the Obama administration
would abandon its doomed efforts to force an Israeli construction
freeze in Jerusalem and an Arab embrace of Israel, and instead ask
them all to think of real-world ways to keep improving life in the
West Bank. There are many ways this could be done, from further steps
to remove Israeli barriers to movement, to reliable and generous Arab
financial support.
The way forward does not lie through fancy international conferences,
and one idea still mentioned as an Obama option--proposing a final
status plan--would be disastrous and unsuccessful. The way for the
Palestinians to get a state is to go ahead and build it. If and when
the institutions are there and functioning, from police and courts to
a parliament, negotiations will reflect that fact. But the argument
that settling the borders and removing the Israeli troops must come
first is a path to failure. For one thing, Israel will not and should
not leave until it is clear that the West Bank can be policed by
Palestinians and that the region will not be a source of terrorism
against Israel, as Gaza and South Lebanon became when Israel left
there. No conference and no treaty can provide such a guarantee; only
functioning Palestinian police forces that are already fighting and
defeating terror can do so.
Such a practical approach would bring other benefits. It would enhance
the status and power of Palestinian moderates who are working to
improve life in the West Bank, rather than enhancing the status and
power of old PLO officials who thrive on endless, useless negotiating
sessions. It would put a premium on practical Israeli-Palestinian
cooperation, rather than elevating precisely the final status
questions (like Jerusalem or Palestinian refugees) that most bitterly
divide them. It would increase the gap between the West Bank and Gaza,
thereby showing Palestinians that Hamas rule brings only despair and
poverty. It would press the Arab states to help real live Palestinians
in the West Bank, rather than the imaginary Palestinians--all either
bold jihadists or desperate widows and orphans--whom they see on Al
Jazeera. In fact, except for occasional visits by Jordanians and
Egyptians (who have peace treaties with Israel already), top Arab
officials haven't a clue what's going on in the West Bank, for they've
never been there. Not one head of state or government or foreign
minister, not once. If George Mitchell wants to do something useful,
he could organize a tour; take a few princes and foreign ministers to
Ramallah and Jericho and Jenin, where they would find that they are
neither in Somalia nor some heroic battle scene against Zionist
oppressors.
But thus far, the anniversary of Obama's election appears to have
passed with no rethinking of policy. Instead the administration slogs
forward, judging itself by its elevated intentions rather than its
performance. Clinton's pronouncements--demand a total construction
freeze one day, accept Netanyahu's more modest offer the next, then
back to the wider demands two days later in Morocco--are increasingly
reminiscent of World War I trench warfare: gain a few yards, lose a
few more, while the casualties pile up. There will be no progress this
way, and the practical efforts that should be at the heart of U.S.
policy will instead be undermined as we poison Israeli-Palestinian
relations and degrade the trust both parties have in us.
<ι>Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations.

 The abject failure of the Obama administration's Middle East policy.
direi che quest'odio patologico contro Obama in Israele è figlio dello
stesso razzismo che rende gli immigrati etiopi (che almeno sono ebrei,
non parliamo degli immigrati tout court) l'ultima ruota del carro
della società israeliana.