Virtually overnight, the Arab Middle East has been irrevocably transformed. The implications for America’s vital interests in the region and for Israel-Palestine peacemaking will be far-reaching.
Most observers seem to agree that Israeli fears of the growing political influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and of a resurgence of Hamas in the West Bank end what little prospect for an Israeli-Palestinian accord might have survived the latest deadlock in the U.S.-brokered peace talks.
But in reality there was never the slightest possibility of the parties reaching agreement. Binyamin Netanyahu and his government were convinced they had bested Obama in their confrontation over continued settlement construction, and could now continue gobbling up the West Bank with impunity, disregarding not only American interests but international law and all previous agreements committing Israel to halting the construction of settlements and dismantling all its illegal outposts.
Despite repeated promises, not only were the illegal outposts not removed, many were converted into full-blown settlements. The long-planned goal of Israel’s colonial enterprise — establishing irreversible control over Palestine through its settlements — was clearly in sight, if not already an accomplished fact.
The recent upheavals have dramatically increased the cost to American interests of the country’s current policies in the Middle East. No one has suggested the U.S. punish Israel in order to get its way. It need only cease to reward it — with unprecedented military, diplomatic and economic gifts — for its indifference to the damage its sabotaging of a two-state solution has done not just to the Palestinians but to America’s national interests and its own.
At this historic turning point, a president who honestly and fully informs the American people of the likely consequences of U.S. leadership being abandoned in a part of the world so critical to America’s national security will have their support — even if he goes so far as to put forward a framework for a two-state accord that ends the conflict between Israel and Palestine.