Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Obama Causing America's Stature in the Middle East to Deteriorate
Why did the Palestinians terminate the Arab-Israeli peace talks? The justification cited was the Israeli refusal to extend the moratorium they had put on construction in the settlements. It is a phantom excuse, the product of President Obama's heavy-handed intervention.
It is never a good idea to expect parties in conflict to negotiate in the glare of publicity. Attitudes are struck to appease partisans, and they impact negatively on the "private" talks. Why Palestinian President
Both the Israelis and Palestinians have negotiated for almost 20 years without settlement construction becoming a fundamental impediment. A peace agreement was achieved with
So why should the settlements have become the one issue to kill the talks? The key reason is that from the very beginning of his presidency, Obama put the construction in the settlements at the center of his
This wasn't the only American miscalculation. Having gotten
The effect of all this was to put the Israeli prime minister into a box, limiting his choices to a humiliating capitulation or direct confrontation with
This was especially sensitive since the Palestinians initially asserted the moratorium was not significant. Indeed, it was part of their rationale for not entering direct talks and then wasting nine of the moratorium's 10 months. Now something that was originally deemed insignificant is suddenly indispensable.
In other words, the crisis over the moratorium was Obama's creation. As it is said in the
Even the notion of a two-month extension of the moratorium made little sense. Why not a longer extension? Nothing much could have happened in two months except for the fact that it would have carried over past the U.S. congressional elections. Even worse, extending it by two months would have given the Palestinians the power to blackmail
The net result was to pressure Netanyahu into an unnecessary concession that he is unable to make politically. Furthermore, the American obsession with the settlement freeze also cornered Abbas.
Obama's public focus on the freeze has also frozen his own capacity to be a peacemaker. The Arab leaders view the freeze as a test of the effectiveness of the Obama administration. They now think that if Obama can't enforce the freeze on
What should Obama have done? He should have told the parties it was up to them to work out these differences. The result of meddling is that almost the entire
It is not surprising that America's stature in the
There is still a little time for this administration to bring fresh thinking to its team managing the
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