Between the Lines Q&A

A weekly column featuring progressive viewpoints
on national and international issues
under-reported in mainstream media
for release APRIL 4, 2010

Home | Broadcast-Quality MP3s | Archives | Search BTL Archives
About | Broadcast Schedule | | Squeaky Wheel Productions


Obama Unwilling to Confront Israel's Refusal
to Halt Illegal Settlement Building

RealAudio MP3

Interview with Phyllis Bennis,
director of the New Internationalism Project
at the Institute for Policy Studies,
conducted by Scott Harris

israel

Rare friction between the U.S. and Israel became public during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joe Biden on March 9th after the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the approval of 1,600 new settler homes to be built in an ultra-orthodox East Jerusalem neighborhood. Reacting to the incident, Biden condemned the announced housing expansion, stating that it undermined the planned launch of proximity talks between Israeli and the Palestinian officials.

Although Israel considers East Jerusalem, annexed in 1967, as part of its territory, building on occupied land is illegal under international law. Almost half a million Jewish settlers now live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Before coming to Washington for talks with President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to address the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, Prime Minister Netanyahu refused to reverse his government's authorization for building new housing in East Jerusalem. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, who examines the recent friction between the U.S. and Israel over settler housing expansion and the prospects for restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

PHYLLIS BENNIS: Settlement expansion has been the constant since the war in 1967. The first settlement was built in 1968, and settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza until 2005 and throughout occupied Arab East Jerusalem, has been a consistent feature. What was a little different over the last year was that we heard from the Obama administration something that was quite rare -- not unheard of entirely, but quite rare for U.S. presidents -- and that was a fairly straightforward series of requests for Israel to freeze settlements. There was no request that it dismantle existing settlements, which are of course, are a violation of international law, but a request to freeze settlement construction -- which, ironically enough, Israel had actually agreed to do when they signed the so-called Road Map back in 2004. But, put aside what Israel had agreed to do, because we know that's never an indication they will do.

This was a little different for the Obama administration to say, "We want you to freeze settlements," very directly. Problem was, Israel came back and said, "No." So, the U.S said "please freeze settlements." "No." "Please freeze a few settlements." "No." "Please freeze just a few settlements, just for a little while, and you can exclude Jerusalem." "Maybe...no." And then the U.S. basically stopped asking." So what they never did do, what the Obama administration never did do, was engage in serious pressure.

There was a lot of talk about how the Obama administration was "pressuring Israel: 'Oh my God, what does that mean?!!'" Well, I don't know exactly what it would have meant because it didn't happen. What pressure would have meant would have been to say to the Israelis "all your settlements are illegal." The first step towards dealing with that illegality is to freeze all settlement construction period full-stop now.

And when Israel came back and said "no," the answer then is "okay, if you choose not to, you know that $30 billion that President George Bush agreed to give you? In military aid - only military aid--over the next ten years, $30 billion in military aid, you can kiss that military aid goodbye. That's what pressure looks like. Or it says, "You know how we've protected Israel at the United Nations, we've prevented discussion of the Goldstone report, we've prevented Israel from being held accountable for its violations of international law for its violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions etc.? You know how we've done that all those years? We're not doing that any more."

s That's what pressure looks like. We didn't have any pressure. All we had were requests that were then abandoned when the country being requested said no.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Phyllis, we have President Obama's Middle East Envoy George Mitchell, who as you've mentioned is going to begin these proximity talks, these indirect talks between Palestinians and Israelis. What is the perspective on the potential success of these talks in the Arab world and in the European capitals?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: I don't think that anybody believes that these talks are going to go anywhere. There's no indication from the Israelis that they have -- I mean, in fact there's quite the contrary view from the Israeli side -- they have agreed to nothing other than to participate in the talks. They have made clear that they are not changing their position, their refusal to even negotiate with Hamas; their refusal to negotiate over Jerusalem -- these remain their continuing positions. They're willing to go through this charade because the U.S. has asked them to and they can do that without any--without any real cost, in the same way that they have gone through, whatever it is now 18, 19 years of the "peace process," which is all about process its all about Israeli diplomats, and the experts of various sorts flying off to various capitals to meet with their counterparts in the Palestinian Authority, and everybody gets to know each other and there's proximity talks and direct talks and head-to-head talks, and there's the Road Map and the Quartet and all these diplomatic fictions to mask the fact that on the ground, the only change is the consolidation of Israeli settlement processes, the expansion of existing settlements, the building of new settlements, and the stealing of more Palestinian land and water.

So that's I think understood widely in the Arab world, harshly in Europe -- in Europe, we see in civil society a much clearer understanding of the potential failures of the U.S.-led process. What we do see among European governments is an eagerness to maintain the fiction that they are somehow playing a role through their involvement in the so-called Quartet. I think that in the Arab world, there is enormous anger at the level of civil society, at the level of the so called Arab Street, governments are becoming unnerved enough so that the traditional willingness of Arab regimes dependent on the United States to go through the motions of various cosmetic normalization with Israel are becoming less willing to do that because they get nothing back, and their own populations are rising in rebellion against that. So the U.S. is becoming more and more isolated.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Phyllis, there's a lot of pressure on Barack Obama to not put pressure on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, by the same token Netanyahu's right wing allies in his Israel government are certainly going to pressure him not to make any concessions. Is there any clear path out of this or is this, continuing, ongoing, many decade-long crisis in the Middle East unsolvable here, I mean is there any hope?

PHYLLIS BENNIS: I don't think that it's unsolvable at all here, Scott, I think it's actually, I think you're right in your assessment of the Netanyahu government; I mean this is a government that has a range from the right to the extreme right to the fascist right. And I use that term quite advisedly. And the pressure on Netanyahu from his right is extraordinary as you say. On the other hand, here in Washington I think the situation is very different. I think that the Obama administration and many in Congress are simply not aware, or are not willing to acknowledge what they do know about how the discourse is changed in this country. It is no longer political suicide to talk about holding Israel accountable, ending the $30 billion subsidy to the Israeli defense forces that we are providing out of tax money; I think that it simply is no longer political suicide.

Visit the Institute for Policy Studies's website at www.ips-dc.org. Phyllis Bennis is the author of "Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer."

Related links: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Harris is an executive producer of Between The Lines, which can be heard on more than 45 radio stations and in RealAudio and MP3 on our website at http://www.btlonline.org. This interview excerpt was featured on the award-winning, syndicated weekly radio newsmagazine, Between The Lines for the week ending April 2, 2010. This Between The Lines Q&A was compiled by Melanie Muller and Anna Manzo.

To donate to Between The Lines, please send your check made payable to "The Global Center" and mail to:
Squeaky Wheel Productions
P.O. Box 110176
Trumbull, CT 06611

To get details on subscribing to the radio program or to publish this column in print or online media, contact us at (203) 268-8446.

Home | Broadcast-Quality MP3s | Archives | Search BTL Archives
About | Broadcast Schedule | | Squeaky Wheel Productions

(c) Copyright 2010 Squeaky Wheel Productions. All rights reserved.