“A Harris Victory Means a Fourth Obama Term,” proclaimed an editorial in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), and “her foreign policy aides are on board for appeasing Iran and putting restraints on Israel.”
This is far from surprising, yet it is instructive to examine how Obama viewed the Middle East and Iran.
When Barack Obama became president, he promised to take a different approach in dealing with the Israeli and the Palestinian Arab conflict. He began, what he hoped to be, an historic transformation of America foreign policy by traveling to Cairo to ask for a “new beginning” between America and the Islamic world to correct the misconception of the alleged favoritism toward Israel at the expense of the Muslim nations.
In his first interview, six weeks after assuming office, Obama told Hisham Melhem of the Arab satellite station Al Arabiya that as president his “job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.”
In explaining his Middle East policy, Obama acknowledged there would be some Israelis who would not share his position. “Now, Israel is a strong ally of the United States. They will not stop being a strong ally of the United States. And I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount. But I also believe that there are Israelis who recognize that it is important to achieve peace. They will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side.”
This strategy led Obama to focus on “linkage” (see below) settlements, which he viewed as illegitimate. As he stated in his Cairo speech, “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”
His expression of sympathy for the Palestinian Arabs who suffered “daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation,” signaled that the administration held Israel responsible for the conflict, not Palestinian Arab conduct asserted Dennis Ross, a former special assistant to Obama.
Using the term “occupation” conveyed a strong message Ross said: “America will align our policies with those who pursue peace, and we will say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs.” By publicly distancing America from Israel, Obama wanted to demonstrate that the U.S. could be a reliable mediator.
The peace process for Obama, according to Mark Landler, the White House correspondent for The New York Times, is about terminating Israel’s “occupation” of Judea and Samaria, which would be “a kind of silver bullet.” Once the Israeli’s vacated the area, Muslim hatred toward Israel and America would decrease, enabling the president to extricate the U.S. from this war-torn region.
“The president has concluded that the Middle East is no longer vital to American interests,” said Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. And even if an American president wanted to intercede in this quagmire, there is very little he could do to neutralize the situation. Intervention would inevitably lead to war, to the deaths of U.S. combatants, and the diminution of American credibility and power, which the country cannot afford.
Obama believes the problem in the Middle East is tribalism, which no American president can neutralize. The failing Arab states have prompted their despondent citizens to return to sect, creed, clan, and village, which is the root cause of a great deal of the problems a Muslim faces today in the area, and it is an additional source of his resignation and fatalism.
The Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria
In an interview with journalist Barak Ravid, Ben Rhodes, a White House Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser, who played a dominant role in shaping Obama’s foreign policy, said he believed the settlements were a major cause of the stalemate.
“For Israel, the more there is settlement construction, the more it undermines the ability to achieve that peace, and the more Israel will only have to be defending its settlement policies in the years to come” Rhodes observed. “That’s a reality. It is not something the U.S. or the international community has chosen to make an issue. It’s an issue because there are settlements being built in the West Bank. That’s not going to go away — that’s going be an issue of international concern. There is no alternative that people can just forget this issue and say, ‘You know what it is just going to work itself out.’ It is only going to get more difficult over time,” he claimed.
The Islamist Tantrum
Bret Stephens, then deputy editorial page editor for The Wall Street Journal, summed up Rhode’s misguided understanding of the conflict and his specious moral equivalence: “How sweet it would be if all Israel had to do to make peace was dismantle its settlements. How much sweeter if the American president would find less to fault with an Israeli government’s housing policies than a Palestinian [Arab] political culture still so intent on killing Jews. If Mr. Obama wants to know why he’s so disliked by Israelis, there’s the reason.”
The Myth of Linkage
Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian Arab onflict were solved, all the other Middle East conflicts would melt away,” assert Dennis Ross and David Makovsky. In other words, “ending the Arab-Israeli conflict is prerequisite to addressing the maladies of the Middle East. Solve it, and in doing so conclude all other conflicts. Fail, and instability – even war – will engulf the entire region.”
As unfortunate as the dispute has become, Ross and Makovsky conclude, it has not “destabilize[d] the Middle East. There have been two Palestinian Intifadas, or uprisings, including one that lasted from 2000 to 2005 and claimed the lives of 4,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis – but not a single Arab leader had been toppled or a single regime destabilized as a result. It has remained a local conflict, contained in a small geographical area. Yet the argument of linkage endures to this day, and with powerful promoters.”
Obama Blamed Netanyahu
In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama blamed Netanyahu for failing to implement a two-state solution because the prime minister, he said “is too fearful and politically paralyzed to do so.” The New Times echoed this view in an editorial criticizing Netanyahu for not advancing the peace process. “Mr. Netanyahu has never shown a serious willingness on that front,” the paper claimed, “as is made clear by his expansion of Israeli settlements, which reduce the land available for a Palestinian state.”
Why blame Netanyahu? Jonathan Tobin notes that “during the Obama administration, in which most of the Biden-Harris foreign policy team also served, differences are often described as a form of impertinence on the part of Netanyahu and the Israelis. Their willingness to talk back to the Americans and even ignore their advice is viewed as a sign of disrespect.…President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and the rest of the Obama alumni at the National Security Council and State Department seem to have an insatiable need for gestures of deference if not acknowledgments of weakness, from the leader of the tiny Jewish state.”
“They also refuse to recognize that Israel’s leaders might have a better grasp of the situation than they do. They also think it wrong that they would prioritize their nation’s security over reinforcing the administration’s efforts to pretend that Biden is a strong leader.”
In light of Palestinian Arab intransigence and hostility, Tobin asks “Why won’t Obama and The New York Times accept these facts? Is it because doing so would require acknowledging they have misjudged Netanyahu and the Palestinian Arabs, and were wrong about the settlements as an impediment to peace? When given a choice between their fantasies and dealing with the reality of the conflict, the administration and its fans always choose the fantasy. Seen from that perspective, it’s clear it doesn’t really matter what Netanyahu does. Nothing he or the Palestinians can do is capable of forcing the president to give up his myths about the Middle East. So long as that is true, why should Israel’s enemies give up theirs?”
Iran: “The Number One Provocateur of Terror”
In an address at the American University in 2015, Obama said, “The agreement now reached between the international community and the Islamic Republic of Iran builds on this tradition of strong, principled diplomacy….We have achieved a detailed arrangement that permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon….it does not resolve all problems; it certainly doesn’t resolve all our problems with Iran…. But it achieves one of our most critical security objectives. As such, it is a very good deal.”
Michael Doran, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at Hudson Institute explained the cause for Obama’s optimism. “Obama based his policy… on two key assumptions of the grand-bargain myth: that Tehran and Washington were natural allies, and that Washington itself was the primary cause of the enmity between the two. If only the United States were to adopt a less belligerent posture… Iran would reciprocate….Obama announced his desire to talk to the Iranians, to see “where there are potential avenues for progress.” Echoing his inaugural address, he said, “[I]f countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.”
As we know this gesture of American friendship has not been reciprocated. Perhaps it is time for us to clench our fists in response.
