Take Action: U.S. Favoring Negotiations at UN Instead of Accountability
September 24th, 2009TAKE
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![]() Netanyahu, Obama, Abbas in New York, Sept. 22
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Since the early days of the Obama Administration, many analysts have been surprised by the consistency and forcefulness with which the President and his foreign policy team have demanded that Israel freeze all settlement activities in the |
occupied Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem, describing it as a rare
public breach in the normally tight U.S-Israel relationship.
Although
President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Special Envoy
for Middle East Peace George Mitchell didn't insist that a settlement freeze
was a "precondition" for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian
negotiations, it was clear that they viewed it as an integral step towards
reviving negotiations.
Take,
for example,
After
several months of fruitlessly pressing for an Israeli settlement freeze,
however, the Obama Administration did an abrupt volte face earlier this week on
the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting. Prior to his trilateral
meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime
Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, Obama scrapped his plan for an Israeli
settlement freeze prior to negotiations, declaring that: "Simply put
it is past time to talk about starting negotiations -- it is time to move
forward. It is time to show the flexibility and common sense and sense of
compromise that’s necessary to achieve our goals. Permanent status negotiations
must begin and begin soon. And more importantly, we must give those
negotiations the opportunity to succeed."
It’s true that Obama, in his speech before the UN General Assembly, reiterated
his stance that “we
continue to emphasize that
This reversal in policy begs the question: Does the Obama Adminstration have
a coherent strategy for achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace or is it
muddling along? On the one hand, if a
settlement freeze was necessary to set a "favorable context" for
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, then how can successful negotiations take
place while
Although
certainly a climb-down, it might have been less of one than it first appears
since the Obama Administration never used any of the real pressure points and
policy tools available to it to obtain the settlement freeze in the first place.
If it were serious about achieving a settlement freeze, then the Obama Administration
should have listened to the US Campaign’s advice to end military aid to
However, asked on Tuesday if Israel stood to loose U.S. support for not
agreeing to freeze settlements, a seemingly exasperated Mitchell declined to
consider this as a possible option, going only so far as to state that
"The consequences of decisions made by the Israelis, of course, are
judgments that they will have to make."
Now we face the prospect of the Obama Administration exerting substantial
pressure on the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table while Israeli
settlement construction continues apace. This contradictory combination has already proved itself to be a
losing proposition and was one of the major reasons for the failure of the
As much if not more worrying than the Obama Administration's call for
negotiations prior to a settlement freeze is the fact that Israel's illegal
blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip seems to have slipped off its radar screen
completely. Early in his
Administration, Obama avowed that “As part of a lasting cease-fire,
Even though
To its credit, the Obama Administration seems to shun the idea of photo-op
negotiations. As Mitchell phrased it on
Tuesday, "We do not favor more negotiations for the sake of negotiations.
We do not believe in an endless, unlimited, unfocused process. We believe that
the purpose of negotiations is to get a result, a positive result. We want
more peace and less process. And so we are trying to launch – re-launch
negotiations at the earliest possible time, but under circumstances in which
there is a reasonable basis to believe that they can be successful."
Of course, successful negotiations are the outcome that everyone should hope
for. However, without an Israeli
settlement freeze, an end to the illegal blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip,
and more fundamentally a commitment to negotiate within the framework of UN resolutions,
human rights, and international law, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the
Obama Administration is setting itself up for failure.
The
question remains: Why is the Obama Administration now pushing hard for resumed
negotiations prior to setting the "favorable context" it defined as
necessary for their success? It's hard
to say for certain since the State Department is insisting that there has been
no actual change in policy. However,
looking at the broader international context of
Heading off this movement for accountability now appears to be the top
And the State Department views negotiations as a replacement for, not a
complement to, accountability efforts. Assistant Secretary of State Phillip
Crowley urged that the “[Goldstone] report should not be used as a mechanism to
add impediments to getting back to the peace process,” as if holding human
rights abusers accountable and establishing peace are mutually exclusive
affairs.
This is where we come in. It's our job to tell the Obama
Administration that its push for renewed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations
cannot come at the expense of fundamental human rights, respect for
international law, and accountability for war crimes. Next Tuesday, the