I have been among the many criticizing Obama for moving WAYS too slowly on Arab-Israeli and specifically Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking. However, evidence is now emerging that his "slow and steady" approach is bearing some significant fruit:
Item #1: Marc Lynch, just back from a quick trip to Israel and the West Bank, blogged this last night:
without much publicity Obama's pressure has already started generating some important results on the ground -- not just Netanyahu's carefully hedged uttering of an emasculated two state formula, but the significant easing of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank...
That Israel has quietly made significant changes to the checkpoints in the last few weeks -- after ignoring six years worth of Road Map commitments, snubbing Tony Blair and the Quartet's persistent demands, dismissing the recommendations of the World Bank and other international development agencies, and greatly expanding them even while negotiating during the Annapolis process -- suggests that Obama's tough love approach has actually been the only one able to achieve real results.
Item #2: On Tuesday, JTA reported this:
According to the survey of 800 registered [U.S.] voters, which was conducted June 9-11 by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, those who believe Israel is committed to peace has dropped to 46 percent this month from 66 percent last December. The poll found that some 49 percent of American voters call themselves supporters of Israel, down from 69 percent last September, and only about 44 percent of voters believe the United States should support Israel -- down from 71 percent a year ago.
Item #3: Rep. William Delahunt's "Sense of the House" bill that spells out support for a two-state solution and for George Mitchell's peace mission, now has
105 co-sponsors, reflecting the success of the campaign that the White House and several pro-peace organizations have undertaken to slowly and steadily build congressional support for thse positions.
These are all key pieces of evidence that Obama's strategy is working... Though it has until now been, as I said, a painstakingly slow one.
I completely recognize that the removal of, actually, just a handful of the roadblocks with which the Israeli occupation stifles normal life, including normal economic life, in the West Bank is a thin 'achievement' indeed. (The PDF of the UN-OCHA's latest weekly update on the situation is here.) Also, steps like that or, for example, an increase in the number or types of goods Israel allows into Gaza each week, are incredibly easy to reverse.
We can recall, too, what the cocky Likudnik strategic thinker Efraim Inbar told me about what he expected from Obama when I spoke with him back in March:
"The Americans may push us some, so we’ll remove one or two outposts or one or two roadblocks. We’ll play with the Americans.”
And meantime, the occupation as a whole grinds on and on and on... and so does Israel's expropriation of additional amounts of Palestinian land, its construction of additional blocks of settler-only housing, and its continued maintenance of military law over the 2.3 million Palestinians of the West Bank and of a punishingly tight siege against the 1.5 million Palestinians of Gaza...
It is that big problem of the occupation that Obama has set himself to tackle. And so far he's taken only baby steps toward doing so.
But here's the important thing: In taking those baby steps and in presenting the Palestinian-Israeli issue in the way he has to the US public and Congress, Obama has actually succeeded in building up, rather than diminishing, the support his approach in the US public and Congress. That is unprecedented for US Presidents trying to move towards a more even-handed Arab-Israeli peace policy.
One of my friends who works this issue intensely reports that Sen. Mitchell has actually spent just as much time "working" key members of Congress on the issues as he has doing fact-finding in the Middle East.
However, I don't think anyone in or out of the administration judges that "just" getting a few more West Bank roadblocks removed, or a few settlement outposts theatrically "demolished" (only to be re-erected someplace else the very next day, as has often happened in the past), or "just" getting the Israeli military's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) to add beans into the "diet" of the Gazans this week, or potatoes next week, or whatever, is going to solve this problem.
Everyone understands this is above all a political/diplomatic problem; and if Obama and Mitchell don't take some significant steps at the level of authoritative diplomatic engagement pretty soon, then the whole, still perilously fragile balance in the Arab-Israeli region could still, oh so easily, explode.
That, at a time when the US military is working overtime to finetune the modalities of a safe exit from Iraq, the situation in Iran remains extremely murky, and NATO's entire situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan is poised on a logistical knife-edge.
So the actions Obama and Co. have taken until now-- expressing a firm stand on Israeli settlement construction (though not, actually, doing anything yet to hold Israel accountable on that score), and expressing a firm stand on opening up the crossings into Gaza (again, without any actions to implement it)-- are in a sense an overture to the main, that is diplomatic, act that should, and I believe will, follow.
They have also served to both test and prepare public opinion in both the US and Israel for the main act. (And the results of that 'testing' would, I think, encourage them to move ahead even more boldly.)
But when will they make the big diplomatic move? Nobody knows. This team has proven incredibly good at holding its cards close to its chest.
It's also good at using a little tactical deception when it wants to. For example, until today, nobody has a clue whether Dennis Ross's latest move-- over to the National Security Council, from the State Department, is a move up, sideways or into some form of bureaucratic sidelining. As Politico's usually very well-informed Ben Smith writes: "As for how much influence he'll have, we'll have to wait and see."
For my part, I believe Ross will now come more effectively than before under the command of General Jim Jones, who runs a tight ship on the NSC. But as Smith says, we'll have to wait and see.
