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.
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.
OK, over to you. Liam Kennedy of the Clinton Institute for American Studies has presented his 10 nominations for Photo of the Decade, from Palestinians fleeing tear gas in 2000 to the death of Neda Agha Soltan in 2009. But his is just one opinion. We invite readers to present their own choice from the 10 photographs or submit their own nominations.
2045 GMT: Sunday Absurdity. A slow day, which leading to a perusing of opinion in the newspapers. Unfortunately, that turns up a piece of anti-Muslim diatribe posing as analysis by Ephraim Karsh in The New York Times: “Muslims Won’t Play Together”. The slurs have to be read to be believed, but here is the policy recommendation: “A military strike must remain a serious option: there is no peaceful way to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, stemming as they do from its imperialist brand of national-Islamism.”
1700 GMT: Where’s Mahmoud? President Ahmadinejad has been at a conference in Tehran attended by Palestinian leaders such as Hamas’ Khaled Meshaal, Islamic Jihad’s Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, and the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General Command), Ahmed Jibril. Ahmadinejad offered this commentary:
Israel Pressures US on Syria: After this week’s meetings in Damascus between Syrian President Bashar Assad, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been pressing U.S. officials not to send Robert Ford, the recently nominated ambassador to Damascus.
Dubai Accuses Israel on Assassination: Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim says he has DNA evidence from one of the assassins and fingerprints from the crime scene. He urged Meir Dagan, the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, to “be a man” and admit that Israel stands behind last month’s killing of Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
UN Repeats Call for Call War Inquiries: On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a new resolution, by 98-7 (including the US and Israel) with 31 abstentions and 50 absent, calling on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to investigate the 2008/9 Gaza War with inquiries that are “independent, credible and in conformity with international standards“.
“Do you know what it’s like living in Gaza?” a friend of mine asked. “It is like walking on broken glass tearing at your feet.”
On January 21, fifty-four House Democrats signed a letter to President Obama asking him to dramatically ease, if not end, the siege of Gaza. They wrote:
The people of Gaza have suffered enormously since the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt following Hamas’s coup, and particularly following Operation Cast Lead…. The unabated suffering of Gazan civilians highlights the urgency of reaching a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we ask you to press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza as an urgent component of your broader Middle East peace efforts…. Despite ad hoc easing of the blockade, there has been no significant improvement in the quantity and scope of goods allowed into Gaza…. The crisis has devastated livelihoods, entrenched a poverty rate of over 70%, increased dependence on erratic international aid, allowed the deterioration of public infrastructure, and led to the marked decline of the accessibility of essential services.
ABDERRAHIM FOUKARA, AL JAZEERA: Madam Secretary, if the criteria for judging U.S.-Muslim relations is the issue of Palestine, as millions of Arabs and Muslims seem to feel, they would say that those relations, taking that criterion into consideration, are not in very good shape right now. What say you to that?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, first, I am delighted to be part of this exciting interview and town hall at Al Jazeera. And thank you for participating.
The first thing I would say is that, obviously, our relations with people around the world is much broader than any one issue, even an issue as important as the future of the Palestinian people and the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. I think it is a mistake to only look at the United States and our role in working with other countries through any single prism. But I accept the fact that this is a critical issue. It’s a critical issue to us.
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. 
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