by Dr. Alex Joffe
The application of sovereignty would not simply represent an Israeli desire to change the status quo before the US elections in November. To some degree, it would also constitute a response by PM Benjamin Netanyahu to his treatment at the hands of the Obama administration.
Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama, July 6, 2010,
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,641, July 13, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s
enthusiasm for the idea of applying Israeli sovereignty to parts of the
West Bank can be explained by the desire to seize the historic
opportunity created by President Trump’s uniquely favorable attitude to
Israel. There is another element, however, that warrants close
attention: Netanyahu’s reaction to the Obama administration’s relentless
hostility.
With regard to the possible application of Israeli
sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, certain long-term aspects are
clear. It would be a partial culmination of both longstanding Zionist
aspirations to control the ancient heartland of the Jewish people and
the strategic necessity of creating defensible borders for Israel. The
early Zionists made do with areas that could be purchased and settled
and were diffident about pushing to control areas such as Shechem,
Hebron, and the central highlands, despite their ancient Jewish
significance. But while practical-minded and often areligious, they
acknowledged the importance of those regions for the Jewish people and
the long-term Zionist project.
So it is as well with the question of defensible
borders. The Allon Plan, which emerged immediately after the 1967 War,
envisioned Israeli control of the Jordan Valley. The construction of
communities around Jerusalem was designed with the goals of creating a
permanent Jewish majority within a defensible configuration of the city.
The creation of Ariel and other settlement blocs was intended to create
strategic depth and defend existing population centers.
The matter of applying sovereignty to some areas
has long vexed Israeli leaders, who have to contend with the settlement
movement and the right as well as with the Palestinians and the
international community. The wisdom of successive Labor and Likud
governments allowing or sponsoring Jewish neighborhoods in areas both
close to Jewish communities and right in the midst of Arab populations
can be questioned from the standpoint of domestic and international
politics. Minorities created strategic realities with which governments
then had to contend. As a voting and demographic bloc, the settlement
movement exerts significant pressure, and it is doing so on behalf of
the application of sovereignty.
These long-term pressures aside, the short-term
reality is that the Trump administration has shown itself to be uniquely
favorable to Israel. No American administration has ever been willing
to support Israel diplomatically with the same determination and
affection. The US under Trump has consistently fallen in with pro-Israel
positions, from moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem to defunding UNRWA
to the “Deal of the Century” plan to adopting the Israeli position that
Palestinian intransigence has not only been the key obstacle to peace
but one that should no longer be rewarded.
Through signals from US Ambassador David Friedman
and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the US has made plain that in its
view, sovereignty is an Israeli domestic decision. This position
contrasts sharply with statements from Western European governments to
whom the move is anathema. Joining in condemnation are US Democrats,
including members of the former Obama administration like former NSA Susan Rice.
These warnings also forecast the likely policies of a possible Biden
administration, which would essentially be a third Obama administration
augmented by the far left and Muslim wings of the newly progressive
Democratic Party.
These objections suggest a hitherto overlooked
aspect of Israeli decision-making. The application of sovereignty would
not simply represent an Israeli desire to change the status quo before
the US elections in November. To some degree, it would also constitute a
response by PM Benjamin Netanyahu to his treatment at the hands of the
Obama administration. Obama may thus turn out to be an unintended
godfather of the application of Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West
Bank.
The Obama administration’s treatment of Israel is
well documented, from repeated condemnations of “settlement building” no
matter how minor or theoretical, to constant derision of Israeli
leaders as liars and “chickenshits,” to the covert last-ditch effort to
orchestrate the UN into condemning all Israeli activities across the
Green Line as “settlements” in Resolution 2334, and above all, to the
JCPOA agreement with Iran.
Israeli concerns and concessions were dismissed
and derided by Obama at every turn. Supporters of Israel, including
members of the US Congress, were illegally spied upon, and the
Washington echo chamber was arrayed against them. The US Jewish
community was deliberately split by organizations constructed by allies
of the administration precisely for the purpose of neutering American
Jewish unity on Israel. Even the much vaunted massive military aid
packages to Israel were in part efforts to subvert Israeli military
industries and exports.
These were only some of the activities of the
Obama administration, which included illegally spying on journalists and
conspiring with the Clinton campaign to launch an investigation of the
Trump administration on fraudulent premises, with the object of
depriving it of legitimacy and the ability to conduct foreign and
domestic policy unimpeded.
But a unique antipathy toward Israel as the
impediment to a massive realignment of US relations with the Arab and
Muslim worlds, above all Iran, made it a target for the Obama
administration. For Obama, at a policy and apparently personal level,
peace could be achieved throughout the Middle East only if the
Arab-Israeli conflict were resolved, which meant ending the “occupation”
and the “settlements.” These parameters were made explicit in Obama’s
May 2011 speech: peace would be based explicitly on the 1967 “borders.”
A status quo that was beneficial to Israel and tolerable to the
Palestinians was the Obama administration’s target, but pressure on the
settlement issue served only to push the Palestinians away from
negotiations and toward internationalizing the conflict.
It can be argued that the relentlessness of
Obama’s scorn for Israel was traumatic for Netanyahu and his officials.
Trauma is a relative term, but the Obama administration’s antipathy was
glaringly obvious even to casual observers. How much more obvious was it
to Israeli officials? This may well have raised the sovereignty issue
to a higher priority in the minds of decision makers wishing to
consolidate strategic advantages and make future concessions demanded by
the US less possible.
Netanyahu’s reactions to Obama’s efforts against
him and against Israel can be inferred by taking his many statements and
supplementing them with information on his specific policy decisions.
This was a clash between two oversized egos, each suffused with a sense of historic mission that placed them in direct opposition in critical respects. There was no love lost between them.
Like so many of the Obama administration’s
efforts, its policies backfired. Believing they were smarter than
everyone else, certain that they were forever on the “right side of
history,” and convinced that their opponents were not merely wrong but
stupid and immoral, Obama and the members of his former administration
have had to watch his policies collapse or be undone by Trump.
The wisdom of Trump’s policies, and certainly the
style with which they have been created and executed, deserves ample
criticism, including in the Middle East. But the fact of the matter is
that nothing remains of Obama’s efforts to bolster the Muslim
Brotherhood, reach out to Iran, mollify Turkey, stay out of Syria, or
depend on international institutions. Sovereignty may be another
unintended Obama legacy, along with the wreckage of Libya.
Ever since Obama left office, Netanyahu has been
hemmed in by ongoing corruption accusations, the inability to form a
government despite three elections, the coronavirus pandemic, and
contradictory signals from the Trump administration, which for its own
reasons was slow to reveal its peace plan. With the US elections
looming, Netanyahu may have played the sovereignty card clumsily and at
almost the last possible minute. But in an irony of history, the Obama
administration may have helped speed a slow-moving train toward its
station.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israel-sovereignty-benefactors/
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