The cost of confrontation

Yesterday I blogged about the consequences of President Obama’s pressure on Israel. Daniel Pipes sees it as a sign that the administration is prepared to precipitate a diplomatic crisis with Israel. However Barry Rubin was less concerned. He observed that despite the American pressure, there has been no consequence to Israel’s defiance of the United States and sees the pressure mostly as posturing.

There are, however, consequences to the administration’s stance. There are those who will use it to further their own agendas. For example Democratic activist, Debra Delee sees the President’s efforts as a validation of her organization’s, Americans for Peace Now, efforts.

Obama is leading. He is doing so boldly and transparently, with the kind of credibility and charisma–both domestically and internationally–that many of his predecessors lacked. I believe that if regional and international leaders rise to the challenge and the promise of President Obama, they may find in him the one who will finally broker lasting peace between Jews and Arabs.

If Netanyahu and his team seriously consider the president’s agenda, they may realize–as well they should–that it constitutes a rare opportunity for ending, once and for all, the Arab-Israel conflict, including Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. President Obama clearly stated why a freeze on settlements is imperative. He is seeking meaningful negotiations toward a final resolution of the conflict. For such negotiations to be held in earnest, Israel cannot take measures that prejudge their outcome and should not engage in actions that Palestinians and their Arab brethren throughout the Middle East view as provocative and aggressive.

And Tony Karon, the Jewish anti-Zionist who “reports” for Time Magazine has his own spin, Jerusalem Standoff Threatens Middle East Peace Plans:

Although the U.S. has routinely opposed Israeli construction in East Jerusalem – President

Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called it “unhelpful” – Netanyahu appears to be betting that by very publicly challenging Obama on Jerusalem, he can rally support from those Jewish leaders in the U.S. who have lately expressed disquiet over the President’s Middle East policies, and also from Christian conservative supporters of Israel. And the Israelis are plainly looking to make a campaign of it, with the mayor of Jerusalem being dispatched to the U.S. to rally opposition to the Administration’s position on the city. (Read “Despite Jewish Concerns, Obama Keeps Up Pressure on Israel.”)

But finding a formula for sharing Jerusalem, the eastern part of which the Palestinians claim as their future capital, is fundamental to the peace process that Obama has sought to revive; there will be no Palestinian or Arab takers for any deal that leaves all of Jerusalem under Israeli control. So by picking the Holy City as the battleground for a test of wills with Obama, Netanyahu is mounting a broader challenge to the President’s peace agenda.

Israel seized control of the eastern portion of the Holy City during the war of 1967, but its claim to sovereignty over the occupied portion of Jerusalem has never been internationally recognized. Under the Oslo peace process launched in 1993, Jerusalem was defined as one of the “final status” issues to be negotiated in a peace agreement, but finding a solution for sharing the city has been one of the thorniest matters.

There is nothing outright false in the above three paragraphs as it is mostly spin or Karon’s opinion. First of all, like Delee he assumes that the President’s vision will lead to peace. That’s hardly assured. As even Karon notes later, as Prime Minister, Ehud Barak offered to divide Jerusalem. But Karon leaves out a key piece of information: his offer was rejected by Arafat.

And it’s true that Israel’s claim to “East” Jerusalem has not been recognized, he won’t provide the rest of the story. However Jeff Jacoby does:

There was a time not so long ago when Jerusalem was anything but an open city. During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, the Jordanian Arab Legion invaded eastern Jerusalem, occupied the Old City, and expelled all its Jews – many from families that had lived in the city for centuries. “As they left,” the historian Sir Martin Gilbert later wrote, “they could see columns of smoke rising from the quarter behind them. The Hadassah welfare station had been set on fire and . . . the looting and burning of Jewish property was in full swing.”

For the next 19 years, eastern Jerusalem was barred to Jews, brutally divided from the western part of the city with barbed-wire and military fortifications. Dozens of Jewish holy places, including synagogues hundreds of years old, were desecrated or destroyed. Jerusalem’s most sacred Jewish shrine, the Western Wall, became a slum. It wasn’t until 1967, after Jordan was routed in the Six-Day War, that Jerusalem was reunited under Israeli sovereignty and religious freedom restored to all. Israelis have vowed ever since that Jerusalem would never again be divided.

And not only Israelis. US policy, laid out in the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, recognizes Jerusalem as “a united city administered by Israel” and formally declares that “Jerusalem must remain an undivided city.”

But the point of Karon’s articles wasn’t to present the history of the Middle East as a reporter; it was to cast Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace.

But as Jeff Jacoby concludes (h/t Rubicon3) the real obstacle to peace is:

The great obstacle to Middle East peace is not that Jews insist on living among Arabs. It is that Arabs insist that Jews not live among them. If Obama doesn’t grasp that, he has a lot to learn.

The problem with President Obama’s approach of singling out Israel for pressure is that he emboldens those who wish to blame Israel for the Arab refusal to accept it. They will use his approach as an excuse to further discredit Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.