Israel-Palestine: Is Peace Possible On Obama’s Watch?
If and when it does become clear that Kerry can’t raise the corpse of the peace process from the dead, President Obama will have two options.
One will be to wash his hands of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel and seek to deflect attention away from his own failure of leadership by repeating what he has said in the past – “I can’t want peace more than Israel and the Palestinians.” (In that event I hope he would have the grace to hand back his Nobel Peace Prize with a note apologizing for the fact that he had not earned it).
The other option will be to summon up the courage to put America’s own best interests first and use the leverage he has to require Israel, in exchange for peace with the Palestinians, to end its occupation by withdrawing to its pre-1967 boundaries with mutually agreed and minor border modifications. Yes, that would require him to go for a head-on confrontation with Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby and its mad Christian fundamentalist allies, but I think he would have a good chance of winning it by taking to the bully pulpit – going over the heads of Congress in a peak time tv and radio address to the people of America. (That’s what President Eisenhower did to overcome Zionist lobby and other blocking opposition to his demand that Israel should withdraw from the Sinai without conditions after it had colluded with Britain and France to invade Egypt and topple Nasser).
In such an address Obama could spell out why, really, it is in America’s own best interests and also those of Jews everywhere for Israel to end its occupation in exchange for peace with the Palestinians and, actually, the whole Arab and wider Muslim world. He could say that he was, of course, aware that there were violent Islamic fundamentalists who would continue to resort to terrorism, but an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict would greatly assist the efforts of governments and their agencies everywhere to contain, isolate and defeat them.
He could also indicate that the days of America casting its veto in the Security Council to prevent Israel being called and held to account for its crimes are over.
One particular reason why I think Obama could free himself from the stranglehold of the Zionist lobby by taking to the bully pulpit and going over the heads of Congress is the insight provided in a recent and most revealing article by the Jewish American M.J. Rosenberg, a former AIPAC staffer. His opening sentence was, “Nobody I know is interested in talking about Israel anymore.”
After noting that virtually all of his friends were essentially pro-Israel and had supported it all their lives, he went on:
“Now their attitude is ‘what’s there to say?’ as if Israel was a friend with an alcohol problem who, despite everyone’s best efforts, simply chooses drinking to excess over being sober. You know the alcohol is killing him but you also know that it’s his considered choice of drink. He’s weighed the risks and chosen alcohol. There isn’t anything you can do, so you stop talking about him, other than the occasional sigh at the mention of his name. It’s wrong but essentially you stop actively caring. So we ignore them, even though we know Israel is committing suicide. In fact, our indifference helps create the conditions for suicide. After all, if Jews don’t much care about Israel anymore, then who does? The only Americans Israel can count on are Jews and they are losing interest. Big time.”
And what about AIPAC, the engine of the Zionist lobby? Rosenberg wrote:
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