Trump, Israel and the Art of the Giveaway By Thomas L. Friedman,

Trump, Israel and the Art of the Giveaway   By Thomas L. Friedman,  

Dec. 6, 2017

I’m contemplating writing a book on the first year of President Trump’s foreign policy, and I already know the name: “The Art of the Giveaway.”

In nearly 30 years of covering United States foreign policy, I’ve never seen a president give up so much to so many for so little, starting with China and Israel. In both the Middle Kingdom and in the Land of Israel, Christmas came early this year. The Chinese and the Jews are both whispering to their kids: “There really is a Santa Claus.”

And his name is Donald Trump.

Who can blame them? Let’s start with Israel, every Israeli government since its founding has craved United States recognition of Jerusalem as its capital. And every United States government has refrained from doing that, arguing that such a recognition should come only in the wake of an agreed final status peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians — until now.

Today, Trump just gave it away — for free. Such a deal! Why in the world would you just give this away for free and not even use it as a lever to advance the prospect of an Israeli-Palestinian deal?

Trump could have said two things to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. First, he could have said: “Bibi, you keep asking me to declare Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. O.K., I will do that. But I want a deal. Here’s what I want from you in return: You will declare an end to all Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, outside of the existing settlement block that everyone expects to be part of Israel in any two-state solution.”

Such a trade-off is needed. It would produce a real advance for United States interests and for the peace process. As Dennis Ross, the veteran American Middle East peace negotiator and author of “Doomed to Succeed: The U.S.-Israeli Relationship From Truman to Obama,” explained: “When you stop building outside the settlement blocs, you preserve, at a maximum, the possibility of a two-state outcome and, at a minimum, the ability for Israelis to separate from Palestinians. Keep up the building in densely populated Palestinian areas and separation becomes impossible.”

Trump also could have said, as the former United States ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk suggested, that he’d decided “to begin the process of moving the embassy to western Jerusalem, but at the same time was declaring his willingness to make a parallel announcement that he would establish an embassy to the state of Palestine in East Jerusalem” — as part of any final status agreement. That would at least have insulated us from looking like making a one-sided gesture will only complicate peacemaking and kept the door open to Palestinians.

In either case, Trump could then have boasted to Israelis and Palestinians that he got them each something that Barack Obama never did — something that advanced the peace process and United States credibility and did not embarrass our Arab allies. But Trump is a chump. And he is a chump because he is ignorant and thinks the world started the day he was elected, and so he is easily gamed.

Just ask the Chinese. Basically, his first day in office, Trump tore up the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade deal — clearly without having read it or asked China for any trade concession in return. Trump simply threw out the window the single most valuable tool America had for shaping the geoeconomic future of the region our way and for pressuring China to open its markets to more United States goods.

Trump is now trying to negotiate trade openings with China alone — bilaterally — and getting basically nowhere. And yet he could have been negotiating with China as the head of a 12-nation TPP trading bloc that was based on United States values and interests and that controlled 40 percent of the global economy. Think of the leverage we lost.

In a column from Hong Kong last June a senior Hong Kong official told me: “When Trump did away with TPP, all your allies’ confidence in the U.S. collapsed.” After America stopped TPP, “everyone is now looking to China,” added Jonathan Koon-shum Choi, chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong. “But China is very smart — just keeping its mouth shut.”

Just to remind: TPP was a free-trade agreement that the Obama team forged with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. It was not only the largest free-trade agreement in history, it was the best ever for United States workers, closing loopholes Nafta had left open. Some 80 percent of the goods from our 11 TPP partners were coming into the United States duty-free already, while our goods and services were still being hit with thousands of tariffs in their countries — which TPP eliminated.

As I also noted last June, the other people we disappointed by scrapping TPP, explained James McGregor, author of “One Billion Customers: Lessons From the Front Lines of Doing Business in China,” were China’s economic reformers: They were hoping that the emergence of TPP “would force China to reform its trade practices more along American lines and to open its markets. … We failed the reformers in China.”

Trump is susceptible to such giveaways, not only because he is ignorant, but because he does not see himself as the president of the United States. He sees himself as the president of his base. And because that’s the only support he has left, he feels the need to keep feeding his base by fulfilling crude, ill-conceived promises he threw out to them during the campaign. Today, again, he put another one of those promises ahead of United States national interest.

Mr. Obama Goes To Israel - THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Mr. Obama Goes To Israel

March 13, 2013 Wednesday , THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN.

In case you haven't heard, President Obama leaves for Israel next week. It is possible, though, that you haven't heard because it is hard for me to recall a less-anticipated trip to Israel by an American president. But there is a message in that empty bottle: Little is expected from this trip -- not only because little is possible, but because, from a narrow U.S. point of view, little is necessary. Quietly, with nobody announcing it, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shifted from a necessity to a hobby for American diplomats. Like any hobby -- building model airplanes or knitting sweaters -- some days you work on it, some days you don't. It depends on your mood, but it doesn't usually matter when that sweater gets finished. Obama worked on this hobby early in his first term. He got stuck as both parties rebuffed him, and, therefore, he adopted, quite rationally in my view, an attitude of benign neglect. It was barely noticed.

The shift in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from necessity to hobby for the U.S. is driven by a number of structural changes, beginning with the end of the cold war. There was a time when it was truly feared that an Arab-Israeli war could trigger a wider superpower conflict. During the October 1973 war, President Nixon raised America's military readiness to Defcon 3 to signal the Soviets to stay away. That is not likely to happen today, given the muted superpower conflict over the Middle East. Moreover, the discovery of massive amounts of oil and gas in the U.S., Canada and Mexico is making North America the new Saudi Arabia. So who needs the old one?

Of course, oil and gas are global commodities, and any disruption of flows from the Middle East would drive up prices. But though America still imports some oil from the Middle East, we will never again be threatened with gas lines by another Arab oil embargo sparked by anger over Palestine. (Btw) For China and India, that is another matter. For them, the Middle East has gone from a hobby to a necessity. They are both hugely dependent on Middle East oil and gas. If anyone should be advancing Arab-Israeli (and Sunni-Shiite) peace diplomacy today it is the foreign ministers of India and China.

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine last week, Robin M. Mills, the head of consulting at Manaar Energy, noted that ''according to preliminary figures reported this week, China has overtaken the United States as the world's largest net oil importer.'' Mills described this as a ''shift as momentous as the U.S. eclipse of Britain's Royal Navy or the American economy's surpassing of the British economy in the late 19th century. ... The United States is set to become the world's biggest oil producer by 2017.''

(in terms of regional stability)

At the same time, while the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict emotionally resonates across the Arab-Muslim world, and solving it is necessary for regional stability, it is clearly not sufficient. The most destabilizing conflict in the region is the civil war between Shiites and Sunnis that is rocking Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain and Yemen. While it would be a good thing to erect a Palestinian state at peace with Israel, the issue today is will there be anymore a Syrian state, a Libyan state and an Egyptian state.

Finally, while America's need to forge Israeli-Palestinian peace has never been lower, the obstacles have never been higher: Israel has now implanted 300,000 settlers in the West Bank, and the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza have seriously eroded the appetite of the Israeli silent majority to withdraw from the West Bank, since one puny rocket alone from there could close Israel's international airport in Lod.

For all these reasons, Obama could be the first sitting American president to visit Israel as a tourist.

(regardless of the shift, Israel has a good reason to take risks to resolve the conflict)

Good news for Israel, right? Wrong. While there may be fewer reasons for the U.S. to take risks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is still a powerful reason for Israel to do so. The status quo today may be tolerable for Israel, but it is not healthy. And more status quo means continued Israeli settlements in, and tacit annexation of, the West Bank. That's why I think the most important thing Obama could do on his trip is to publicly and privately ask every Israeli official he meets these questions:

''Please tell me how your relentless settlement drive in the West Bank does not end up with Israel embedded there -- forever ruling over 2.5 million Palestinians with a colonial-like administration that can only undermine Israel as a Jewish democracy and delegitimize Israel in the world community? I understand why Palestinian dysfunction and the Arab awakening make you wary, but still. Shouldn't you be constantly testing and testing whether there is a Palestinian partner for a secure peace? After all, you have a huge interest in trying to midwife a decent West Bank Palestinian state that is modern, multireligious and pro-Western -- a totally different model from the Muslim Brotherhood variants around you. Everyone is focused on me and what will I do. But, as a friend, I just want to know one thing: What is your long-term strategy? Do you even have one?''

Netanyahu's decision to establish a coalition

http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-05-11/friday-news-roundup-international/transcript  

The Diane Rehm Show , May 11, 2012

MS. DIANE REHM

Thanks for joining us. I'm Diane Rehm. Twin suicide bombings in Syria kill at least 55 and injure hundreds. Voters in France and Greece oust incumbent leaders and Russia clamps down on protests of Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency. Joining me to talk about the week's top international stories on the Friday News Roundup, David Sanger of The New York Times, Susan Glass of Foreign Policy magazine and Matt Frei of the UK's Channel 4 News

REHM

Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to reorganize his government and establish a coalition

SANGER

three days after announcing that they're going to move to early elections, which .. was going to be in September, he announces a deal with the new leader of Kadima, a former general, that gives Netanyahu now a very solid majority , and he is now facing the likelihood that he'll be in office for some considerable period of time, assuming this coalition holds together, and he is freed up to some degree of some of the more right-wing groups that had opposed further talks -- starting up further talks with the Palestinians.

We don't know what this unity government means for the big question of whether Israel moves to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Now, one could easily run to the conclusion that Kadima would be a restraining influence and so forth. Maybe it will be.

But if something changes in the next year, a piece of Intel that indicates the Iranians are moving forward faster than they knew, or the discovery of a new site or something, you know have a unity government that would, Mr. Netanyahu hopes, bridge these obvious divisions within Israeli society about whether or not an attack is a wise idea.

Egypt and Israel : Feeling the heat of isolation

Egypt and Israel : Feeling the heat of isolation

The Economist ,                     Sep 17th, 2011

ISRAEL has diplomatic relations with only three nearby countries. In the space of ten days its ambassadors have been humiliatingly forced out of two of them: Turkey and Egypt. The king of the third, Jordan’s Abdullah, commented without apparent displeasure that Israel was “scared”.

A week after the Turkish démarche, and linked to it in the eyes of many Israeli commentators, a Cairo mob attacked the Israeli embassy, housed on three floors of a high-rise building in the suburb of Giza. Policemen did little as demonstrators with hammers battered down a wall of concrete slabs put in place to protect the building. The embassy had recently been menaced by protesters in the wake of an incident along Egypt’s border with Israel in Sinai, when several Egyptian soldiers were killed, apparently by Israeli troops engaged in a battle with Palestinian fighters.

Even more troubling for Israel, Field-Marshal Muhammad Tantawi, Egypt’s top man for the time being, and others in Egypt’s interim military government were unavailable to take calls from Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, until Barack Obama intervened directly with them. Six Israeli security men stuck in the embassy were eventually rescued by Egyptian commandos who scattered the crowd with gunfire. Some 80 Israeli diplomats and their families were driven to the airport under military escort and ferried home by an Israeli air-force plane.

Mr Netanyahu says his ambassador will soon be back. Egyptian officials have voiced embarrassed regret. But even if Israel can find and fortify an alternative less vulnerable location, it sees the episode, with its display of deep antipathy towards Israel on the Egyptian street and the perhaps deliberately slow reaction of the Egyptian authorities, as ominous. And it looked on grimly as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, flying into Cairo on September 12th, was feted as a champion of the Palestinian and Muslim cause.

Mr Netanyahu speaks almost fatalistically of the ferment in the region. His aides bemoan Mr Erdogan’s ambitions of regional leadership. They seem to have concluded, however, that they should be as reluctant as ever to give any ground to the Palestinians. In particular, Mr Netanyahu and his friends in the pro-Israel lobby in the United States are inveighing vehemently, albeit with an undertone of panic, against the campaign by the Palestinians to win a vote in the UN later this month to grant them statehood, at least on paper. Most wretched, from Israel’s point of view, is the possibility of an emerging consensus among Europeans on the Palestine vote at the UN; they may offer the Palestinians some kind of statehood (“the Vatican option” is a widely touted compromise), albeit without full membership at this stage.

At street level, many Egyptians were delighted by the assault on the embassy. Last month a young man called Ahmed al-Shahat, dubbed “the flagman”, was hailed as a national hero for scaling the Israeli building and replacing the Star of David with a Palestinian banner. But reaction to the burning of the building on September 9th was more nuanced. Most prominent political groups, from the left-liberal April 6th Movement to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and even the more extreme Salafists, condemned the violence, though the Islamists were evasive about the entry into the building. And the interim military government took advantage of the assault to threaten a crackdown against street protesters continuing to call for faster reform.

Yet Egyptian attitudes to Israel are rarely simple. A bit of anti-Israeli theatre goes down well. But when incidents such as the embassy break-in become an international affair and foreign governments question Egypt’s ability to protect diplomats, whoever they may be, people become edgier. Opinion polls suggest Egyptians want peace with Israel but not necessarily under the terms of the 1979 treaty.

All the same, anti-Israeli feeling is growing. Some political parties want to close the Suez Canal to the Israeli navy and to block the sale of natural gas to Israel. The new Freedom and Justice Party, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, says the 1979 treaty should be “revised”.

But most groups dread the prospect of actual war. One of the few good things that many Egyptians have to say of Hosni Mubarak, their deposed and generally reviled president, is that he kept Egypt out of war with Israel. The military government says that policy towards Israel should be left to an elected government. Still, the embassy incident serves as a warning to Israel that a democratically elected Egyptian government may be a lot less friendly.

At the U.N. Palestinian bid for membership ; Israeli hypocrisy ; its patron, the US should be awakened to the New Middle East

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/21/140658250/u-n-membership-could-give-palestinians-a-diplomatic-tool

U.N. Bid Could Give Palestinians A Diplomatic Tool

by MICHELE KELEMEN              September 21, 2011

Palestinians say they are undeterred and plan to seek full U.N. membership as a state on territories Israel occupied in the 1967 war. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to present his application when he speaks to the U.N. on Friday. The issue is dominating high level meetings as countries scramble to try to revive a peace process that has failed for decades.

Palestinians say they aren't interested in the same old peace process. They see their U.N. membership bid as giving them a new diplomatic tool. If they gain membership - or even an upgrade to their status in the U.N. General Assembly, where the U.S. can't block them, they would gain access to U.N. bodies and international courts to challenge Israeli actions in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.  Zomlot calls it a deterrent policy, and he says the arm-twisting by Western diplomats and threats by U.S. congressmen to cut off aid to Palestinians won't change their minds about this.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1061595

Palestinians could pursue war crimes charges without full statehood: ICC prosecutor

Sep 28 2011

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo says if Palestine becomese a non-member observer state at the UN, it could be eligible to pursue claims against Israel even without full statehood

http://opiniojuris.org/2011/09/29/the-tone-deaf-icc-prosecutor/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+opiniojurisfeed+%28Opinio+Juris%29

The Tone-Deaf ICC Prosecutor, by Kevin Jon Heller , Sep 29th, 2011

I cannot imagine why Moreno-Ocampo chose to offer his opinion on that issue now — just as debate over the Palestinian’s request for full membership in the UN is getting underway.  

http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2011/09/defining-palestinian-statehood.html

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2011

Defining Palestinian Statehood

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

As the director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization that promotes the right to freedom of movement in the occupied Palestinian territory, I sat riveted to this weekend's television coverage of the submission of the Palestinian request for UN membership. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts availablehere.)
On my mind was a seemingly trivial question:

Do we need to stop saying and writing the "occupied Palestinian territory" and start saying "occupied Palestine"?

I'll say more about the substance of that decision at the end of this post, but the fact that I – and much more importantly, world leaders – are raising this question highlights a benefit of the statehood bid: pressing the Israeli government (and the rest of the world) to decide what Gaza and the West Bank are and, therefore, who is responsible for safeguarding the rights of the residents of those places.

Here I'll confess to a frustrating aspect of litigating human rights and humanitarian obligations within the Israeli legal system: the pick-and-choose attitude toward international law displayed by the Israeli government.

In the West Bank, Israel claims the authorities of an occupying power, including arrest, detention, confiscation and military courts.   But it also settles hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens there, proclaiming that "in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers."

Just this month, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition brought by Palestinian landowners who challenged confiscation of their land for construction of an express rail between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, citing the provisions of the Hague Regulations that permit confiscation of private property in occupied territory for the good of its residents. The court noted but was not overly troubled by the fact that the planned rail-line will be off-limits to the residents of the occupied territory, as it is to be a commuter rail for Israelis only.

A similar situation exists in Gaza: Israel claims a right to control who and what enters Gaza's borders, yet claims that it is no longer occupying Gaza and therefore owes only minimal obligations to its residents in exercising power over their lives.

Perhaps one outcome of the statehood bid will be to press the Israeli government to make up its mind: There's a claim that the West Bank and Gaza are a state. If you disagree, please explain what you think they are.

Of course, the very act of calling the West Bank and Gaza a state will not make them any less or any more occupied, nor will it change Israel's powers and responsibilities as an occupier. But the recent flurry of statements proclaiming the West Bank as belonging to the Jewish people (check out this Israeli Foreign Ministry animated clip) suggests a renewed interest in legal definitions, perhaps because they are starting to matter more.

If the West Bank is part of Israel, then its 2-million-plus Palestinian residents must be granted Israeli citizenship, including full political, civil and social rights. If it is occupied territory, then its residents must be granted the full range of protections offered by international humanitarian law, including the protection against citizens of the occupying country being transferred into their land. If Gaza is not a state (under blockade) and not occupied territory, then under what legal authority is Israel controlling its borders?

I still believe that international law can play a role in protecting civilians subject to control by a foreign power. I think that renewed international attention to defining Israel's relationship to the territory where 4 million Palestinians are living under its control could lead to increased protections for those residents. After all, international law is enforced primarily through diplomacy.

By the way, it is not only Israel who adopts a pick-and-choose attitude toward international law – Gisha has repeatedly tried to remind those who claim that Israel, as an occupying power in Gaza, has no right to stop ships from reaching its shores of a basic principle of the law of occupation: it allows the occupying power to determine travel arrangements for the occupied territory, including a ban on maritime travel.  International law also requires the occupying power to allow people and goods to enter and leave by other means.  Israel is not meeting this obligation, but failure to do so does not negate the authority to stop ships.

Now back to my own struggle to define Gaza and the West Bank, where we offer legal services to residents seeking to overcome Israeli-imposed travel restrictions in order to access schools, jobs, and family members.

I have scheduled consultations with colleagues, read some interesting background material, and talked to other international lawyers about whether Gaza and the West Bank constitute a state.
I have questions about the Montevideo Convention criterion requiring a state to have an effective government. Even if we can get beyond the Gaza-West Bank split, there is the reality that the Palestinian Authority was created by agreement with the occupying power, and its competences are delegated to it by Israel and exercised under Israeli supervision and approval.

I am also sympathetic to arguments that whether Palestine should be viewed as a state is a political question whose resolution depends largely on the ramifications of the UN bid, still in its infancy.
I'll let you know what I discover, but one thing is sure – whatever the Palestinian territory is or isn't, its people have rights that must be protected. I hope the renewed debate over their status will lead to greater protection of those rights.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/19/140601804/op-ed-time-for-us-to-recognize-a-new-middle-east

Time For U.S. To Recognize A New Middle East   , September 19, 2011

(Read Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi's New York Times Op-Ed, "The Middle East Has Changed.")

NEAL CONAN, host: And now the opinion page. On Friday, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, said he would take the issue of Palestinian statehood to the United Nations Security Council this week. The Obama administration says the U.S. will veto the application but will have little support, even among its European allies. Last week, as part of The New York Times Room for Debate, Rashid Khalidi wrote: As long as the United States supports Israel in standing in the way of an immediate rollback of illegal settlements and end its illegal occupation,  a Palestinian state will not see the light of day, and any discussion of it is futile.

What will change after a vote in the Security Council on Palestine?

Rashid Khalidi is the professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and he joins us now on the phone from his office there in New York. Nice to have you with us again.

CONAN: When you say futile, do you think nothing will change as a result of this vote?

things are not going to change in terms of Palestinian statehood as long as the U.S. does not take a firm stand on illegal settlement and illegal occupation, and monopolizes negotiation

KHALIDI: No. Things will change, but I don't think things are going to change in the direction of a sovereign, independent, contiguous Palestinian state. They'll change in the sense that the United States and Israel are likely - at least the U.S. Congress and Israel - are likely to impose sanctions on the Palestinian people and on the Palestinian Authority. They'll change in the sense that the status of Palestine and of the Palestinian representation at the United Nations might be different at the end of this. But in terms of the Palestinians achieving statehood, self-determination, freedom from occupation, unfortunately, I don't think this will change as a consequence of what happens in New York.

KHALIDI: Some (of Palestinians) will be thrilled. I think many Palestinians are more cynical than that and understand that realities on the ground are not going to change. ..  as long as the United States will (i) not take a firm stand in terms of occupation and settlement .. (ii) insists on monopolizing negotiations, won't allow a different framework or venue for negotiations, and given (iii)  the current Israeli government, which is, by far, the most pro-settler, the most extreme in Israel's history - I'm not sure why there should be any grounds for optimism about actual changes on the ground.

CONAN: And some fear that there could be, indeed, grave disappointment when, as you suggest, things don't really change for the Palestinian people.

easy to be biased toward Palestinians

KHALIDI: Well, I think the people stirring up those fears are perhaps secretly hoping there will be violence because some of those people feel much more comfortable when the Palestinians are not following nonviolent or diplomatic means. They - it's very easy to put the Palestinians in a box if they can be portrayed as violent or terrorists or whatever. And, frankly, you have to assume a great deal of naivete on the part of the Palestinians to assume there's going to be a huge disappointment. I think most Palestinians are fully aware of the realities, and that those are not going to change as the result of what happens in New York in the next few weeks or month or two.

both factions in Palestinians—Fatah and Hamas—stuck in a narrow political consideration

CONAN: We speak of Palestinians as a - well, there are many strains of thought. It's interesting, Hamas has not embraced this idea.

KHALIDI: Not at all, and probably on narrow party political lines. Anything that reinforces their rival, they're afraid, is not good. And so, unfortunately, like - both factions, I think, of Palestinian politics, Fatah and Hamas, are thinking of narrow political considerations rather than the Palestinian national interests all too often, and this is, I think, a case of that.

failed “peace process”

KHALIDI: Well, I mean, they are committed to negotiations. Negotiations have failed. We've been - since the process I myself was involved in back in '91 to '93, we've been engaged in 20 years of negotiation. The situation has gotten measurably worse for the Palestinians in those 20 years.

We've gone from 200,000 illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied territories to 600,000 by Prime Minister Netanyahu's count.

We've gone from a situation where Palestinians could move completely freely in 1991 - anywhere inside Israel to Gaza, from Gaza to the West Bank to Jerusalem - to a situation where all of those areas are closed to most Palestinians.

So the situation has gotten measurably worse for the Palestinians in 20 years of what is, in my view, laughably labeled a peace process, whatever it was. It was a process. It made some great careers in the American diplomatic service, but it certainly was not a process that brought about peace. It made things, in my view, much worse and took us very far away from real, just, lasting, sustainable peace.

the US should be awakened to the changes in the New Middle East

CONAN: Some - given the events that we've seen these last seven, eight months or so in Egypt and Tunisia and, well, now in Syria, of course, and again in Yemen and, of course, in Libya, some people wondered how that was going to affect the situation in Israel, between Israel and the Palestinians. And you say it really should be the United States who needs to be awakened to the changes in the Arab world.

KHALIDI: I think the United States and Israel and the Europeans and everybody else has to be awakened to the fact that  this is not your grandfather's Middle East. This is not a Middle East where colonial powers or external powers could push people around and pliable, pliant governments would do as they were told, whether by Moscow or Washington or, in an earlier era, by London or Paris. This is an era of growing demand for popular sovereignty. Even if there are not successful or fully successful democratic transitions, people will have a bigger voice.

And the people's voice has been kept out of this. Most people in the Arab world are deeply sympathetic to the Palestinians. Most governments have done what Washington wanted for the past several decades. That's the reality. Israel was very comfortable with that, because its patron, the United States, made sure that the Arabs were essentially kept out of the equation, except those people who are wheeled in to fund with the Americans had decided they wanted to have happen and Israel was willing to have happen. So, we're in a different Middle East. I'm not sure that it's entirely changed.

KHALIDI: Well, I mean, those (Turkey and Egypt) were the two motors of change in the Middle East in the 19th century. There's no reason.  There's no reason why that by far biggest and in some ways most important countries in the region shouldn't play that kind of role in the 21st century. It would require the Egyptians solving some very deep, profound, internal problems for them to be anything like the economic dynamo that Turkey now is. Turkey is an enormously vibrant and successful economy, and that's the basis of its current power.

Turkey and Egypt

Much of that power is soft power. It's not Turkish fleets or Turkish generals or whatever that are the extension of Turkish power. It's Turkish exports, Turkish investment, Turkish know-how, Turkish television series, Turkish retail products that are just everywhere in the Arab world, and in many other areas. I mean, the Arab world isn't even their major trading partner. Europe is. And they're in the Balkans and many other places, too. That - Egypt would have to really solve some very grave, internal socioeconomic problems to be anything like the economic power that Turkey is.

CONAN: Is Turkey seeing some of the limits of its soft power in Syria?

KHALIDI: Well, and its dealings with Israel and its dealing with the United States, unfortunately. Yeah. I think perhaps, it could be argued that Turkish foreign policy may be a little bit over-ambitious. But there is no question that if you compare the reach that Turkish diplomacy has today with where it was 10 or 15 years ago, Turkey has - much more attention is paid to Turkey today.

SERGE: Yeah, hi. Thanks for being able to have me comment. I guess that the real issue is the ability - the U.S.'s ability to be both able and willing to influence a Palestinian state. And while they have a lot of leverage with Israel with $3 billion a year of support, given the hard-line government in Israel, it's questionable to what extent they're really able to affect change. But I think what's more important with the vote coming up this week is exposing the U.S.'s willingness to affect change.

the U.S. in dilemma

KHALIDI: Well, United States is between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the domestic realities where Israel is concerned, where, basically, the Israeli position is the bottom line. Whatever position an Israeli government takes is the bottom line for whatever administration is in office. And the hard place is that the Middle East is a much less-forgiving zone of American hypocrisy - you know, rhetoric in favor of self-determination, but voting against a Palestinian state at the United Nations.

EU and the Middle East – energy and emigration

It's not an enviable place that this administration is in, and it's the political realities, and this kind of - the domestic the political realities in this country and our inability to understand that this is really a foreign policy problem, that this is not - and that there are very important interests to the United States. The Europeans understand it better, I think, because their energy dependence on them, at least, is much greater. And they're much more concerned about emigration from the Middle East to Europe, though the Europeans have not yet gotten their act together and put together a coherent unified European policy.

the far too right Israeli incumbent government

And here's an email from Blake in San Antonio: The only thing that will truly change things regarding the relationship between the Palestinians and the Israelis is an overhaul of the structure of the government in Israel. Because of proportional representation the far-right, ultra-religious parties have way too much power in relationship to their numbers. That's informing every coalition, even the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, as to attract much smaller parties who then are further to the right than they are.

Palestinians without a strategic vision for where they would go

KHALIDI: Well, I would add to that that there's a problem on the Palestinian side, which is you haven't had elections recently. You have two factions, both of which - Fatah and Hamas, both of which, I think, have pretty much failed to put forward any kind of strategic vision for where the Palestinians would go,  any kind of idea of how they achieve and end the occupation and other Palestinian national goals, and where you need to have a Palestinian leadership that can appeal to the rest of the world, including to Israelis, and at the same time can put pressure on the United States, on Israel, on - to change the status quo.

I don't think Hamas and I don't think Fatah has the slightest notion of how to go about it, very frankly. This U.N. initiative has moved things off - out of a situation of stagnation. But at the end of the day, as I said, and as I think many people would agree, this is not going to lead to an end of occupation. This is not going to lead to Palestinian statehood. It's not going to lead to the rollback of settlements. And Palestinians have to think about how to achieve that, and that requires some very hard thinking.

It does - I agree with the questioner. It will require Israelis understanding that the situation they're in, which they seem to think it can be maintained indefinitely, vis-a-vis the occupation of four million people and controlling their lives. We're now going on 45 years. We're in the 45th year of an occupation. And most Israelis don't seem to think that this is a critical problem. That has to change. And I agree. The system in Israel, like many good systems in democratic countries, unfortunately, doesn't enable dissatisfaction with that to break through.

’67 borders

KHALIDI: .. he asked multiple interesting questions. The one that I would focus on is if the '67 borders aren't a basis, then what should be the basis?  (anybody who puts it that way is going to have to answer that question, as well. And why should the Palestinians accept that?)  

if we're going to throw out the U.N. charter and everything that has emerged since World War II in the way of international law and say that conquest is a basis to throw out U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, the acquisition of territory by force is perfectly okay.

.. but where are the borders of this Israel state, and what precisely are the Palestinians supposed to accept? What scraps are, in fact, supposedly sufficient for them? And anybody who puts it that way is going to have to answer that question, as well. And why should the Palestinians accept that?

Hamas designated by the US as terrorist

CONAN:  Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department.

KHALIDI: That is absolutely correct. And, of course, we have a very skewed definition of what's terrorist. We had a war between - war in which Israel waged on Gaza in 2008, 2009. There were 1,400 people killed in Gaza. There were 13 Israelis killed, and we castigate Hamas as a terrorist organization. I think that that's an American political determination of what is terrorist, unfortunately.

I agree any attacks on unarmed civilians should be correctly be defined as terrorist. But, in that case, everybody who attacks unarmed civilians - and that includes, in this case, the death of most those civilian - most of those people were civilians, in my view.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/18/140573234/israel-braces-for-palestinian-statehood-bid

Israel Braces For Palestinian Statehood Bid ,

September 18, 2011

Host Audie Cornish talks about the possible repercussions of the Palestinians' statehood bid with Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States

AUDIE CORNISH, host: Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, says .. Palestinians .. statehood bid at the U.N., .. will jeopardize the existing agreements between the Palestinian Authority, Israel and the United States.

Ambassador MICHAEL OREN: The United States and Israel have numerous agreements with the Palestinian Authority, established under the 1993 Oslo Accords. The United States is a co-signatory to those accords between Israel and the Palestinians. Great number of agreements that cover a wide range of issues; trade issues, water rights, security. We have all these agreements with the Palestinian Authority.

We have no agreements with a government of Palestine, and neither does the United States. So the emergence of a government of Palestine in place of the Palestinian Authority would place all of these pre-existing agreements in jeopardy.

CORNISH: What are the other repercussions that Israel is considering? I know, in the United States, Congress is talking about what to do with the aid to the Palestinian Authority, which is about five hundred million dollars annually.

OREN: Well, Congress is indeed talking about that. They're talking about cutting off that aid because the Palestinians have violated their agreements, also by going to the U.N. And also by making a reconciliation pact with Hamas, which is listed by the United States as a terrorist organization.

Beyond that we are preparing a number of possible reactions - a toolbox, if you will. We fear that there will be large-scale demonstrations in the West Bank orchestrated by the Palestinian Authority, and we don't want these to be confused with the Arab Spring. This is not about jobs or opportunity. This is about attacking Israel, and we're preparing our security forces and some of our citizens to deal with those demonstrations through nonlethal means.

And that's a fear.

CORNISH: Are you saying this is about attacking Israel. But, of course, the argument from the Palestinian Authority is that this is a move for recognition that would bring some kind of parity or equitable role for them within peace talks.

OREN: Well, they haven't been at peace talks. We've been waiting for them to come to the negotiating table for about two and a half years now, and they haven't come to the negotiating table.

Our position was and remains: We are ready to negotiate with the Palestinians at any time, any place - whether in Ramallah or in Jerusalem - without preconditions on all the core issues to reach a two-state solution, a Palestinian state, an Israeli-Jewish state, living side by side in mutual recognition, security and peace, if only the Palestinians will come back to the negotiating table.

CORNISH: But negotiations have essentially been stalled for various reasons. And in effect, isn't what they're doing actually in some ways succeeding in goosing this conversation forward?

OREN: Well, I think it's actually stopping the conversation dead, Audie. You know, when you go to negotiations you have to be able to give up a few things. Palestinian leaders are going to come to their people and say, we're going to have to give up a lot, but we're going to be getting something from it. We're going to be getting a Palestinian state. The Palestinian people will come back to leaders and say, but wait a minute, we already have a Palestinian state. Why are you making all these sacrifices?

So essentially, by getting a Palestinian state unilaterally recognized without paying any price for it in the U.N., the Palestinians will hamstring their ability to make negotiations and make concessions, maybe for generations to come. It'll be very tragic.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/18/140558127/jimmy-carter-no-downside-to-palestine-statehood

Jimmy Carter: 'No Downside' to Palestine Statehood

September 18, 2011

Former President Jimmy Carter urges the United States to not veto the Security Council vote for Palestinian statehood anticipated to take place next week.

Carter admits that for President Obama, failure to veto "would have some adverse effects perhaps on his political future."

But he thinks it's a price worth paying. His predecessor Harry Truman backed the creation of Israel for moral reasons, against the advice of his inner circle.

Harry Truman backed the creation of Israel for moral reasons, against the advice of his inner circle. Carter says that today, Palestinian statehood is "a basic moral commitment" for the U.S.

In 1977, Carter became the first American president to call for the creation of a Palestinian "homeland." He signed the Camp David Accords, which established diplomatic relations between Egypt and Israel, and called for self-governance of the Palestinian people.

The statehood vote is largely symbolic, making Palestine akin to the Vatican. Its greatest value, according to Carter, is to break the impasse in negotiations for a two-state solution. Without a vote, Carter says, "the only alternative is a maintenance of the status quo."

American Presidents On Palestine

by AARTI SHAHANI

September 18, 2011

In 1948, President Truman endorsed the creation of an Israeli state. Nearly three decades later, before finalizing the Camp David accords, Jimmy Carter became the first U.S. president to call for the creation of a Palestinian "homeland." Presidents have put their own spins on that effort ever since. Here's a sampling:

March 16, 1977 — Carter, at a town hall meeting in Massachusetts, said that after Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist, "There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years."

Sept. 1, 1982 — Ronald Reagan: "The United States will not support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and we will not support annexation or permanent control by Israel. ... Self-government by the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza in association with Jordan offers the best chance for a durable, just, and lasting peace."

Oct. 30, 1991 — George H.W. Bush: "Throughout the Middle East, we seek a stable and enduring settlement. We've not defined what this means; indeed, I make these points with no map showing where the final borders are to be drawn. Nevertheless, we believe territorial compromise is essential for peace."

Jan. 7, 2001 — Bill Clinton: "There can be no genuine resolution to the conflict without a sovereign, viable Palestinian state that accommodates Israelis' security requirements and the demographic realities."

June 24, 2002 — George W. Bush, outlining a new Middle East peace plan: "It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. ... My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security."

June 4, 2009 — Barack Obama, in Cairo: "The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security. ... Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

May 19, 2011 — Obama: "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state."