'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Very pleased you mentioned Abbas being forced to give in. Obama couldn't even get a face saver out of Netanyahu and the arab states, and Abbas/Palestinians get made to pay for it. In one report I read, it was said that the US had got the Arab states to pressure him.
That's awesome cynicism even for this cynic to swallow.

Fact is, Obama shouldn't have raised the issue in the first place unless he was certain he could make Israel deliver a freeze on the west bank at least. Ditto Arab states. All of it should have been worked out BEFORE he raised the issues publicly.

In fact, as a rule of thumb Helena you should stop being so ardently optimistic about Obama's pronouncements unless they are NOT ""pronouncements" but "Announcements" of a concluded deal, negotiated away from the public gaze.

I would dearly like to see Abbas find some way of not resuming these negotiations.

And it was good to see Ashrawi being quoted again. Where has she been these days?

Thanks for this essay. I agree that the cause of a just peace in Israel/Palestine is looking weaker than ever. However, I have a slightly different take on it.

A couple of months ago, soon after Obama took his clear stand against the settlements, I spoke with an Israeli friend who has had close connections to previous peace processes. Knowing her passionate opposition to the settlements and her commitment to justice for Palestinians, I was surprised by her sharp disappointment. She said roughly the following:

It is very good that the US is pressuring Netanyahu, but Obama has done it in exactly the wrong way. Obama has just made Netanyahu look very small; Netanyahu has no choice now but to resist in order to show that he won't be ordered around by the Americans.

Moreover, Netanyahu presides over a weak majority in Parliament and his government will dissolve if he doesn't bring the Israeli right with him. This loud public call by Obama has now made it impossible for Bibi to freeze the settlements and stay in power; if he complies, he will be ridiculed as weak.

My friend added that Bibi has sent clear signals for years that he wants to be the author of peace for Israel. This is not because he's a great man, it's because he wants to be remembered by history as the bringer of peace.

So I asked: how then should have Obama approached this? Her reply was: bring intense pressure on Netanyahu, but do it quietly, behind closed doors, or possibly have others pressure him instead of the Americans. "Then give him a bit of space to pull this off internally". She thinks he knows full well that the settlements need to end and is quite capable of accomplishing this. "But the key is: he needs to be seen as the one who is initiating this from a position of strength as a leader, not being pressured into it by the US."

An additional disappointment for my friend was the lack of understanding of how to move Israelis reflected by Obama's step. Her feeling was that it was such an obvious error, so out of touch with the Israeli psyche, that it suggests there's no one on the Obama team who really understands how to work change on the Israeli side. But what about Rahm Emmanuel? She shrugged: "He has spent most of his life in the US. Israeli connections doesn't mean he understands how Israelis think."

An interesting perspective, Ron. But most of my friends in the Israeli peace movement-- many of whom have been involved in previous peace processes-- don't share the analysis of your friend.

It is true, they and I all think, that Obama hasn't done enough to speak clearly and directly to the Israeli people about his vision and goals. But he has said some very nice things to Netanyahu along the way, and hasn't by any means set out to make him look small. (Unlike the way Netanyahu has often treated Obama.)

In the end, though, surely it is actions that speak the most persuasively? So long as Obama takes no actions to back up his verbal "requests" for a settlement freeze, etc., then Netanyahu will be laughing all the way to the bank with the flood of US aid dollars (and other forms of aid) that continues to pour into his government's coffers-- and Obama's credibility with Palestinians and other Arabs as any kind of a "neutral", principled mediator will continue to decline.