QUARTET RAISES PRESSURE ON ISRAEL: ROBIN SHEPHERD

Posted By on March 20th, 2010

http://www.robinshepherdonline.com/
 
Mid-East Quartet raises the pressure against Israel as US policy confusion deepens over settlements
 
My brain hurts
 
While Russia continues with the de-facto annexation of the South Ossetian and Abkhazian provinces of its southern neighbour Georgia, Ban Ki-Moon, Hilary Clinton and the other members of the Mid-East Quartet met in Moscow this morning to reaffirm the international community’s refusal to recognise the annexation of east Jerusalem by Israel. I believe the word is “chutzpah”, though I could think of a few others — unprintable, unfortunately — that might be even more appropriate in the circumstances.  

Clinton repeated America’s condemnation of the recent settlement announcement in east Jerusalem and sat impassively as Ban spoke on behalf of the US and the rest of the Quartet saying: “The Quartet urges the government of Israel to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth, dismantle outposts erected since March 2001 and to refrain from demolitions and evictions in east Jerusalem.” I’m confused.

Does this mean that the United States has gone back to the line that even natural growth — building bathrooms, adding an extension etc — in settlements is unacceptable? Close observers will remember that that is the line the Obama administration started to push last year but then backtracked when the absurdity of that position became clearer and when Israel (rightly) said it had no intention of complying.

Perhaps the US position has not in fact changed and in Moscow Clinton merely agreed to allow the zero movement option on settlements to be the position of the Quartet as a group. With this administration, who knows?

And I am starting to think that sowing confusion is now the Obama administration’s core agenda here. What I mean by that is that since Obama is desperate to please the Muslim world and since domestic considerations mean that he must also express support for Israel he has effectively decided to adopt a twin-track strategy in which the two tracks are mutually exclusive: to simultaneously back both pro- and anti-Israeli positions.

That is really the only way to make sense of the recent spat over settlements. In reality, all it amounted to was a badly timed announcement on a construction project in a Jewish part of east Jerusalem which in any case would become part of Israel under any imaginable peace agreement.

The administration knew that when it decided to launch its broadsides. But it did so nonetheless to placate anti-Israel hysteria in the Arab and Muslim world. Subsequently, Obama and company had to back off somewhat to smooth over a row back in the United States. What happens tomorrow is anybody’s guess.

I’d be interested to hear readers’ views on all this. But my suggestion is that Obama has adopted the Sir Walter Scott doctrine: “O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
What a way to run your foreign policy…

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