On Thursday, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden made an appearance at Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. He said:
I just got back from five days in the Middle East. I love to travel, but it’s great to be back to a place where a boom in housing construction is actually a good thing.
What is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trying to do? Is he pursuing clever tactics, trying to settle his coalition partners after question marks regarding the future of the government but then using that to reach agreement with Washington? Or is just stepping deeper into a political swamp?
I’m not a big fan of General David Petraeus’ interference in US foreign policymaking, given his challenge to (and potential undermining) of his President on an issue such as Afghanistan, but Mark Perry in Foreign Policy offered a tale where Petraeus’ manoeuvres may lead to a significant — and, I think, productive — re-alignment in US foreign policy.
To be blunt, if you take a charitable interpretation of Petraeus’ move (he was telling the US diplomats to get out of their dead end of caving to Israeli steps such as settlement expansion) rather than the cynical one (he was again seeking to expand his authority), this may open up a prospect — limited but visible — of the US staking out a position where it can challenge Israel’s unilateral obstacles to the peace process.
On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On Thursday, U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell spoke with Abbas and urged him not to walk away from indirect peace negotiations with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he believes indirect talks with the Palestinian Authority will continue as planned early next week despite the crisis. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley added:
I don’t think that that report that’s been circulating for the last 24 hours is accurate,” Crowley said. “As far as I know, we are still moving forward. We have not heard from the Palestinians that they have pulled out.
Before US Vice President Joe Biden left for Jordan, he said in Tel Aviv University the US was interested in “putting everything back on the rails.” However, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat said that the PA would start the indirect talks “if Mitchell informs us that the Israeli plan has been canceled.
Following Biden’s golden statement in Tel Aviv University, saying that the US has no other friend like Israel, in an interview with Haaretz, Shas chairman and Interior Minister Eli Yishai who authorized 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem emphasized the “unique relationship” with Washington. He said:
Our relationship with the Americans is above all else. It is an alliance that has survived complicated periods, and I had no intention of harming those ties, or to challenge the American administration, or to present obstacles to this important visit by the Vice President.
On Friday, with anticipation of renewed Jerusalem riots in response to a recent government decision to expand settlements in East Jerusalem, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered Israeli Defense Forces to impose a general closure on the West Bank, preventing Palestinians from entering Israel. The West Bank will be sealed off for 48 hours.
Later on Wednesday, Arab League chief Amr Moussa said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas haddeclared he would not enter indirect talks with Israel. The situation was still unclear on Thursday, but statements coming from the region now put the “proximity talks” at the edge of a cliff.
Although US Vice President Joe Biden condemned the announcement of the construction of new 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem and questioned Israel’s “trustability” on Tuesday, he stated two days later that the “proximity talks” could continue.
Speaking at Tel Aviv University, Biden said Palestinians had misunderstood Israel’s announcement of the settlement plan, thinking that building would begin immediately. With no construction scheduled for now, he said, negotiators would have time to “resolve this and other outstanding issues.”
We want to hear from [United States envoy George] Mitchell that Israel has cancelled the decision to build housing units before we start the negotiations.
The subsequent news? Israel is planning to build 50,000 new housing units including the recent announcement of 1,600 units in East Jerusalem neighborhoods in the coming years, planning officials told Haaretz.
Here’s someone new to blame for everything: Eli Yishai. After all, Benjamin Netanyahu wanted it so much, Ehud Barak pressed so hard, Shimon Peres wielded so much influence – and along came the interior minister and ruined everything.
There we were, on the brink of another historic upheaval (almost). Proximity talks with the Palestinians were in the air, peace was knocking on the door, the occupation was nearing its end – and then a Shas rogue, who knows nothing about timing and diplomacy, came and shuffled all the proximity and peace cards.
White House’s spokesman Robert Gibbs, condemned Jerusalem’s announcement from the White House. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said:
I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units. The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.
The European Union’s foreign-policy director, Catherine Ashton, said on Wednesday, “May I join Vice-President Biden in condemning the decision to build 1,600 new houses.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also condemned Israel’s plan. Then, according to the Ma’an news agency, the Palestinian Authority’s leader Mahmoud Abbas warned that the move would derail negotiations before they had even begun and said:
It is apparent that the Israeli government does not want negotiations, nor does it want peace. The American administration must respond to this provocation with effective measures.
Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishai apologized on Wednesday for causing domestic and international distress and stated that he was uninformed of the district committee’s plan, because the matter was simply a routine, technical authorization. Yishai added:
If I’d have known, I would have postponed the authorization by a week or two since we had no intention of provoking anyone. It is definitely unpleasant that this happened during Biden’s visit. If the committee members would have known that the approval would have escalated to such a situation, they would have informed me.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured his guest Biden that the programme, which had been drafted three years ago and only received initial authorization that day, could take several months to be granted final approval.
After a year of grandiose declarations on Mideast peace prospects and a gazillion trips to the region by US envoy George Mitchell, the Obama administration has come up with this?
“Proximity Talks.” Look it up in the Dictionary of Realpolitik and you will find the following: “Negotiations going nowhere fast. Wear seatbelts lest the speed of self-destruction spins you off the earth’s axis.”
Palestinians and Israelis are not even going to be at the table together. Mitchell could not even make that happen. This isn’t phase one of a longstanding conflict. These are adversaries who have sat across many tables and struck many agreements over the past 19 years.
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