Washington, November 19: The Obama administration is hardening its tone against Israel, but analysts warned Wednesday the tough talk was mere bluster hiding the lack of a viable plan to revive the Middle East peace process.
“You’ve had three ‘no’s’ to an American president in his first year,” said Aaron David Miller, who has served as advisor on Middle East peacemaking to previous US administrations
President Barack Obama is now “faced with the default position, which is words,” said Miller from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
“And the louder they shout, the more there is a paradox. The tougher the words are, the weaker we look.”
Ten months into office, Obama has hit a brick wall as his high-profile push to restart negotiations falls flat, damaging his broader aim to improve ties with the Arab and Muslim world.
After coming into office vowing to make the push for an elusive peace a top priority, the administration appears weaker than ever in the Middle East.
Israel’s hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly defied US calls to totally halt illegal Jewish settlements.
After Tel Aviv on Tuesday approved the building of hundreds of new homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem, Obama said such moves make it harder for Israel to make peace with its neighbors and ensure its own security.
“I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous,” the president warned on Fox News Wednesday.
Haim Malka, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that “the administration’s change of tone is intended to send a strong message that settlement building hurts efforts to restart negotiations.”
But it is “unclear whether the tougher language and approach will actually help restart substantive negotiations or merely heighten Israeli misgivings about negotiations with a weak and divided Palestinian leadership,” he said.
Shibley Telhami, a Middle East analyst at the University of Maryland, said Obama had no choice but to make a strong statement on the project in Gilo, Palestinian East Jerusalem.
“The administration has been counseling privately against this project, and obviously it is seen as a direct challenge,” Telhami said.
On Tuesday White House and State Department officials both voiced dismay at the construction plans and warn the move could stymie hopes of breathing fresh life into the deadlocked peaace talks.
Amjad Atallah, an analyst with the New America Foundation, said the latest US remarks show “the administration has decided to draw a rhetorical line in the sand” but without making Israel pay the consequences.
“You can expect the Israelis to continue poking their finger in America’s eye — until they are made to stop,” Atallah said.
In a sign of just how far apart the two sides are, Palestinian officials have said they intend to ask the UN Security Council to recognize Palestinian statehood in a unilateral move discouraged by the US.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Around 200,000 illegal Jewish settlers are estimated to have moved into the dozen or so Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
There are about 300,000 more illegal Jewish settlers currently living in settlements the Palestinian West Bank.
The settlers adhere to radical ideologies and are extremely violent to almost-defenceless Palestinians.
Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem in 1967.
Under international law, neither East nor West Jerusalem is considered Israel’s capital. Tel Aviv is recognised as Israel’s capital, pending a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.
East Jerusalem is considered by the international community to be illegally occupied by Israel, in contravention of several binding UN Security Council Resolutions.
In these resolutions, the United Nations Security Council has also called for no measures to be taken to change the status of Jerusalem until a final settlement is reached between the sides.
Declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is an attempt to change this status, and is thus a violation of these Security Council resolutions.
—Agencies