For better or worse, each passing day the Middle East is becoming more unstable.
Regimes that have clung to power for decades are now being overthrown and
threatened. Others are preemptively cracking down on their opponents or seeking
to appease them.
While no one can say with certainty what the future will
bring to the radically altered Middle Eastern landscape, it is becoming
increasingly apparent that US influence over events here will be dramatically
diminished.
This assessment is based on the widespread view that the
Obama administration has failed to articulate a coherent policy for contending
with the rising populist tides.
Last Friday’s UN Security Council vote
was a case in point. On the one hand, the US vetoed a Lebanese-sponsored
resolution that criminalized Israel’s policy of permitting Jews to exercise
their property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. On the other, after
vetoing the resolution, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton condemned their own actions and explained why what they
did was wrong.
As Rice put it in her explanation of the vote: “We reject
in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity.
For more than four decades, Israeli settlement activity in territories occupied
in 1967 has undermined Israel’s security and corroded hopes for peace and
stability in the region. Continued settlement activity violates Israel’s
international commitments, devastates trust between the parties, and threatens
the prospects for peace….
“While we agree with our fellow Council members
– and indeed, with the wider world – about the folly and illegitimacy of
continued Israeli settlement activity, we think it unwise for this Council to
attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians. We
therefore regrettably have opposed this draft resolution.”
It is
important at the outset to point out that Rice’s claims are either wrong or
debatable. Israel has not committed itself to barring Jews from exercising
property rights in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Permitting Jewish construction
in these areas does not violate Israel’s international
commitments.
Moreover, there is no firm international legal basis for
declaring Jewish neighborhoods and villages in these areas illegal.
It is
far from clear that Jewish neighborhoods, cities and villages in these areas
harm prospects for peace or undermine trust between Israelis and Arabs. Jews
built far more homes back when Israel was signing agreements with the
Palestinians.
Finally, it is far easier to form a coherent argument
explaining how these communities strengthen Israel’s security than an argument
that they endanger it.
BUT BEYOND the basic falseness of Rice’s
statement, her condemnation of her own vote to veto the resolution, and
Clinton’s similar statements, serve to send a series of messages to the states
in the region that are devastating to US regional posture.
Friday’s
Security Council vote marked a new peak in the Fatah-controlled, US-sponsored
Palestinian Authority’s political war against Israel. The war’s aim is to
delegitimize the Jewish state in order to foment its collapse on the model of
apartheid South Africa.
To advance this aim, the Palestinians seek to
isolate Israel internationally by criminalizing it in international arenas. The
Palestinians have made intense use of all UN bodies to achieve their goal. With
automatic majorities in nearly every UN body, the most obvious impediment to the
Palestinians’ bid to criminalize Israel and thus bring about its international
isolation is the US’s Security Council veto.
Since the Palestinians first
began using the UN to criminalize Israel in the 1970s, it has been the
consistent policy of all US administrations to use the Security Council veto to
either vote down anti-Israel initiatives or remove them from the agenda by
threatening to veto them.
But then came US President Barack Obama with
his expressed interest in reconciling the US with the anti- American and
anti-Israel majorities in all UN bodies. To this end, Obama has refused to
commit himself to using the veto to prevent the criminalization of
Israel.
Capitalizing on Obama’s position, the Palestinians tried to make
it as hard and politically costly as possible for Obama to support
Israel.
Friday’s vote was months in the making and it was clearly
inspired by the Obama administration’s own policies.
Since entering
office, the president has been outspoken in his view that Jews must be denied
their property rights in Jerusalem neighborhoods outside the 1949 armistice
lines, and in Judea and Samaria. Obama has repeatedly plunged US-Israel
relations into crisis with his unprecedented demand that the Netanyahu
government adopt his discriminatory policies and deny Jews the right to their
property in these areas.
Obama’s obsession with barring Jewish property
rights provided the Palestinians with the opening to undermine US support for
Israel at the Security Council. By putting forward a resolution condemning
Israel for upholding Jewish property rights, the Palestinians forced Obama to
choose between his principles and the US alliance with Israel.
As the
Palestinians rightly saw things, the resolution put them in a win-win situation.
Had he allowed the resolution to pass, Obama would have given the Palestinians a
strategic victory. If he vetoed the resolution, he would be decried as a
hypocrite and thus provide the Palestinians with new justification for refusing
to participate in US-mediated negotiations with Israel. Since their goal is to
delegitimize Israel, the Palestinians have no interest in negotiating a peace
deal with its government.
IN THE weeks leading up to Friday’s vote, both
houses of the US Congress made it absolutely clear to Obama that abandoning
Israel would be unacceptable. Obama and Clinton received letter after letter
signed by hundreds of congressmen and scores of senators demanding that he stand
with Israel. Recognizing the legislators were simply reflecting the overwhelming
support Israel enjoys from the American public, Obama was forced to veto the
resolution.
Had he been interested in preventing Friday’s vote, he
certainly had ample means to do so. He could have told Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas months ago that the administration would veto any
anti-Israel resolution brought before the Security Council. Even if Abbas had
insisted on pushing forward with the resolution, a strong, consistent message
from the administration would have minimized the significance of the
event.
Obama could also have used the Security Council’s deliberations on
the resolution as a means of advancing US regional influence. The resolution was
sponsored by Lebanon, today controlled by Hezbollah – an illegal terrorist
organization.
Obama could have capitalized on this fact not only to
justify his veto, but to force the subject of Hezbollah control over Lebanon
onto the UN agenda. Such a move would have advanced US interests twice. It would
have insulated Obama from Palestinian rebuke and it would have demonstrated that
the US has not accepted Iranian colonization of Lebanon through its Hezbollah
proxy.
BUT INSTEAD, the administration adopted a policy it openly hated
and then condemned its own behavior. In so doing, it sent four deeply
problematic messages to the region.
First, it signaled that it is deeply
unserious.
Second, it signaled to the Palestinians that, while blocked by
popular US support for Israel from joining them, the administration supports the
PA’s political war against Israel. That is, Obama told the Palestinians to
continue this war against Israel.
Third, the administration told Israel –
and all its other allies – that in the era of Obama, the US is not a credible
ally. Not only does this message weaken America’s allies, it emboldens the likes
of Iran and Syria and the Muslim Brotherhood who are increasingly convinced that
the US will not stand by its allies in a pinch.
Finally, by standing by
as Abbas pushed forward with the resolution despite Obama’s repeatedly stated
opposition, the president showed all actors in the region that there is no price
to be paid for defying the US. Obama did not announce that he is ending US
financial support for Fatah. He did not state that the US is ending its training
of the Fatah forces. Instead, he sent Rice before the cameras to tell the world
that he agrees with the Palestinians, who just slapped him in the
face.
The question is why is the administration behaving this way? The
obvious answer is that it really does side with the Arabs against Israel.
Pushing this view is the fact that since taking office, Obama has been
consistently hostile to Israel and its strategic interests.
There is
another possible explanation, however: That the administration is simply too
incompetent to understand the significance of its actions. This explanation
appears increasingly credible in light of the US’s ham-fisted handling of the
revolutions raging throughout the Arab world.
In Egypt, the
administration did not simply show America’s closest ally in the Arab world the
door. By legitimizing the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama has paved the way for the
next Egyptian crisis.
At the latest, this crisis will occur in September
with the scheduled elections. At that point, three scenarios will
arise.
1. The ruling military junta may cancel the elections and foment
another rebellion.
2. If the military permits free and fair elections,
the Muslim Brotherhood will become the most potent force in Egypt due to its
unmatched organizational capacity.
After the elections the Muslim
Brotherhood may adopt the model of Turkey’s Islamist AKP party and move Egypt
into the Iranian camp while pretending it is still a US ally.
3. After
the elections, the Muslim Brotherhood may adopt the Khomeinist model and foment
an Islamic revolution in Egypt.
IN ALL these scenarios, America’s
strategic interests will be placed in jeopardy. But presently, it is far from
clear that the Obama administration recognizes that these are the consequences
of the policies it adopted.
Then there is Saudi Arabia. By supporting the
anti- Mubarak forces in Egypt and the Iranian-backed demonstrators in Bahrain
and Yemen, the administration has destroyed the US alliance with the
Saudis.
This may or may not be a positive development.
Saudi
Arabia has been one of the most radicalizing forces in the Middle East at the
same time that it has been the steady engine behind the world’s oil
economy.
Nevertheless, it’s unlikely that the current US government
recognizes either that it has taken place, or that it has taken place in large
measure as a consequence of its behavior.
From an Israeli perspective,
whether motivated by an animus towards Israel or extraordinary incompetence, the
Obama administration’s Middle East policies offer one message: We can only rely
on ourselves and so we’d better strengthen ourselves as much as possible as
quickly as possible in every possible way.
caroline@carolineglick.com