:: Nihal Singh

Will Obama risk annoying his friends in Israel?

S. Nihal Singh

April.18 : Israel’s swing to the right is greatly to be welcomed after a succession of governments that have successfully fudged the issue of war and peace by paying lip-service to peace with Palestinians and a two-state solution. The new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pays no obeisance to the two-state formula, and his ultra-nationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, opened his account by repudiating the Annapolis process begun by the previous US President more than a year ago.

The right in Israel never truly accepted the concept of a Palestinian state or the underlying philosophy of land for peace of the Oslo accords that brought a false dawn in West Asia. It was no other than the reputed dove Shimon Peres, the present President, who suggested at a Doha regional conference I had attended in the ’90s that land was a tangible thing whereas peace was not, implying an unequal bargain.

For years now, both Israel and the Palestinian authority have been pretending to make peace, initially under the malign neglect of President George W. Bush in his first seven years in office. Hamas, the victor in Gaza, was ostracised by Israel and Washington, culminating in the Israeli onslaught on a hemmed in population of 1.5 million in response to crude rocket attacks, in the end giving the Palestinians and the Arab world their badge of martyrdom alongside such horrific historical events as the massacre of Palestinians at Sabra and Shatila.

That the Israelis have been ruling over Palestinians as the occupying colonial power, daily encroaching upon more and more Palestinian land, is not in doubt. Nor in doubt is the apartheid nature of their rule, tellingly documented in a book by none other than former US President Jimmy Carter, the maker of peace between Israel and Egypt at Camp David. The Oslo accords raised hopes for a time that the most crucial issue of West Asia was on the path of a solution. Palestinians are not blameless on several counts — resort to terror and their internal quarrels — but facts show how Israel has had no intention of giving Palestinians a viable state and banked on its privileged status in American domestic politics to do petty much as it pleased.

Mercifully, we now have some clarity on Israel’s aims. Mr Lieberman has openly expressed racist views in suggesting that Israeli Arabs — some 20 per cent of Israel’s population — should take loyalty oath or be thrown out and has declared on assuming office that the new government was "an expression of a change in Israel’s policy regarding the peace process". This policy envisages an indefinite occupation of the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights and the degradation of Iran’s nuclear and industrial potential.

Few in the Arab or outside world have been taken in by Mr Netanyahu’s soporific statement that he would "work for peace with the Palestinians and peace in the region". The new Israeli Cabinet is the largest ever of 30 ministers and seven deputy ministers. The reaction of the Israeli media is revealing. One commentator described President Barack Obama as being "still a rookie" while a section of the press has fallen back on the all too familiar pose of victimhood. Others made fun of the new US President bowing deeply to the Saudi King before shaking his hand at the Group of Twenty (G-20) meeting in London.

There is a sense of anticipation and some foreboding in Israel over the new US administration’s policies. Thus far, President Obama has revealed little of his hand except to reiterate the two-state formula in his address to the Turkish Parliament. His envoy to the region, George Mitchell, is to resume his peregrinations shortly although he will not interact with Hamas, still beyond the pale of American policy. The Israeli establishment is no doubt perturbed by the friendly noises the Obama administration is making towards Iran but is biding its time.

Israelis are, of course, secure in the knowledge that whoever be the occupant of the White House, the levers of power American Jews and their lobbies possess in the US are sufficient to make life difficult, if not impossible, for a President who pursues policies deemed to be unfriendly to the state of Israel. And Israelis are also banking on the fact hat President Obama has simply too much on his hands, what with the economic meltdown and fighting two wars, to want to tangle with a new formidable enemy.

The United States will try to coast along the familiar terrain of more talks and more admonitions while Israel continues to expand settlements, evict more Palestinians from homes in the occupied Arab East Jerusalem and keep Palestinians in Gaza bottled up and homeless. This pattern will not be disturbed by such occurrences as police investigation of Lieberman on his previous murky conduct; after all the former Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, had to resign because of his alleged complicity in corrupt deals. Personalities are no longer important in Israel’s lurch to the right and expressing more bluntly Israel’s desire to usurp Palestinian land forever to make the state of Greater Israel.

It is clear to any unbiased observer that there cannot be any solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without including the Hamas movement, which won fair elections in Gaza. As it is, Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian authority are becoming more and more irrelevant. As he and his ministers furiously travel around the region and further afield in chasing the chimera of peace, their exertions are assuming comic proportions. All Mr Abbas can do is to appeal to the US for help while trying to scare it by threatening to dissolve the Palestinian authority.

Thanks to the new Israeli government, the region and the world are better placed to face the future. For one thing, Israel’s desire to live as a garrison state in a sea of hostile neighbours far into the future will create a new dynamic. Second, it will test the mettle of the Obama administration because the route to peace in Iraq and, ultimately, Afghanistan lies through Jerusalem. President Bush learnt to his cost that it did not lie through Baghdad. The new US administration’s dilemma is that any reordering of relations in West Asia through offering Iran the olive branch or otherwise cannot prove effective without dismantling Israel’s colonial and racist venture and liberating the Palestinians. The crucial question is: Will Mr Obama risk being a one-term President by incurring the ire of the state of Israel?