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January 22, 2009
Strip mined
This month's fighting in the Gaza Strip has dashed any hopes—never realistic to begin with—that the Israel/Palestine conflict would prove any less vexing for President Obama than it has for previous U.S. presidents. The fighting has earned condemnation all around, for Hamas (for launching rockets into Israel), for Israel (for the number of civilians its attacks have killed), and for the United States (for the failure of the Bush administration to broker anything remotely resembling progress over the past eight years). During his campaign, Barack Obama promised dramatic change in the foreign policy of the Bush administration,. But as the Gaza conflict has demonstrated, a change of U.S. presidents may not be sufficient on its own to change the prospects for peace in Israel/Palestine.
Allocating blame or determining which party is more “justified” in its actions is nearly impossible in the Israel/Palestine conflict. Each provocation by Israel can be justified by an action by Hamas, which in turn can be justified by Israeli behavior, which is then rooted in something that Hamas has perpetuated, and so on, extending back decades (or even millennia) through history. But if arbitrary lines of causality can be drawn, the proximate source of the latest fighting was the collapse of an Israel-Hamas cease-fire in December 2008. Hamas increased its rocket fire into southern Israel, and Israel responded, first with an aerial and naval assault and later with a ground attack. So far, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, one third of whom have been children. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, including three civilians.
Even examining the recent conflict under the arbitrary constraints of the past few months, however, can reveal a deeper and more complex set of motivations. Hamas is a militant and political Palestinian organization that calls explicitly for the destruction of Israel. That it has maintained this stance throughout the Middle East peace process has left it frozen out of most serious negotiations. Hamas' rival party in Palestine, Fatah, was the powerbase for Yasir Arafat for decades. Fatah recognizes Israel's right to exist, and has thus been the main spokesman for the Palestinian cause and is the “preferred” Palestinian political party in Israel and the West. Hamas, however, has a strong following among many Palestinians, if not for its outright resistance to Israel than for the extensive social services it provides in the Palestinian Territories. Fatah, by contrast, is known more for corruption than for effective governance.
In 2006, Hamas won Palestinian parliamentary elections, presenting an unfortunate conundrum for the Bush administration's democracy promotion agenda in the Middle East: is democracy preferable if the “wrong” side wins the election? Meanwhile, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas remained president of the Palestinian Authority. Then, in 2007, Fatah and Hamas forces fought for control of Gaza, with Hamas proving victorious and Fatah (and Israel, the United States, and others in the West) becoming embarrassed yet again. Instead of recognizing Hamas' electoral victory and its military successes, Israel attempted to dislodge Hamas from Gaza by imposing a blockade on the territory. Following Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and presuming its continued unwillingness to negotiate with Hamas, a blockade seemed like the only way to place pressure on the organization. But instead of dislodging Hamas, the blockade reinforced its hold on power. Smuggling through tunnels to Egypt maintained its arsenal, while Gazan civilians suffered from a dire shortage of needed supplies.
Israel, for its part, faces the obvious and understandable desire for security. Hamas rocket fire from Gaza—no matter how sporadic or inaccurate—presents a clear threat that no Israeli government could be expected to tolerate indefinitely. But the current Israeli government under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has other interests that have colored its decision to attack Gaza. In 2006, Olmert presided over an Israeli attack on Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. The parallels to Gaza are striking. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are fiercely anti-Israel and have not participated in the formal peace process. Both organizations use territory immediately adjacent to Israel to launch rockets against Israeli towns—territory that Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from in recent years (Israel ended a decades-long occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000). Both organizations are deeply embedded in the domestic politics of their host territory, and both have wide popular support due to the extensive social services they provide. But in the case of Hezbollah and the Israeli attack in 2006, it was Hezbollah that was deemed the victor. It sustained significant losses, but so did the attacking Israeli forces. More importantly, Olmert and his generals had defined victory as the elimination of Hezbollah as a threat to Israel. That the organization not only survived but more than held its own against the Israeli military served as a great embarrassment for Olmert, and a resounding public relations victory for Hezbollah. In Gaza, Olmert wanted to excise the demons of Lebanon and restore Israel's reputation of military superiority.
Israel also faced domestic political considerations of its own. It will hold elections for the Knesset in February. Olmert, beset with corruption charges, will not be in the running to continue as prime minister. But two of the main candidates to succeed him are members of Olmert's own cabinet, each from different parties of his coalition government. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, of the Labor Party, was Prime Minister when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000 and when the Camp David talks with Bill Clinton and Yasir Arafat fell apart. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, of Olmert's own Kadima Party, is known for her hawkish instincts and also hopes to become prime minister. Many observers detect subtle (or not-so-subtle) efforts by Barak and Livni to use the Gaza conflict as a way to demonstrate their pre-election resolve and to use their positions in Olmert's cabinet to jockey to become his successor.
The timing of the attack also seemed to take U.S. politics into account. Given Hamas' firm control of Gaza and its reliable track record of launching rockets into Israel, Olmert did not need to wait until the collapse of the cease-fire to launch his attack. The operation was clearly planned in advance and did not need require any specific provocation (aside from the existing geopolitical reality) to launch it. Beyond that, Olmert was well aware of the potential backlash in global public opinion that any attack into Gaza would likely provoke. But the only global public opinion that truly matters to Israel is U.S. public opinion. By launching the attack in December, after the U.S. presidential election, Israel avoided the charged political atmosphere of a U.S. campaign season. But by declaring a unilateral cease-fire only days before Barack Obama's inauguration, Israel contained its most controversial actions to the waning days of President' Bush's administration. President Bush is a known quantity in Israel; he would not do anything to limit Israel's freedom of action, much as he did little to shorten Israel's 2006 attacks in Lebanon. And as a lame duck president, there was little Bush could do to stop Israel even if he wanted to. Obama, on the other hand, does not have a long track record with Israel, and given his domestic constituency, he potentially could be less forgiving of aggressive Israeli actions.
More than most U.S. presidents, Barack Obama will find the Israel/Palestine conflict a vexing one. In a domestic political sense, he faced a great deal of skepticism from pro-Israel groups in the United States during his campaign. Part of this was due simply to the fact that he was a Democrat who had opposed the invasion of Iraq during a period of Republican dominance. But it was also partly due to racial reasons, and to the persistent rumor mongering that Obama was Muslim. In a more strictly policy sense, Obama has promised to change the “mindset that led” to war in Iraq, and this change presumably carries over to the Israel/Palestine conflict. It is likely that he is inclined to re-engage in the peace process more aggressively than President Bush, and certainly more deliberately and earlier in his term than his predecessor, who had been critical of Bill Clinton's very “hands-on” role late in his presidency. Prior to his inauguration, Obama remained cagey about how he would address the conflict in Gaza. He stressed the notion that the country only has “one president at a time” and that as president-elect, it was not his place to make foreign policy. To a certain degree, this reply helped to shirk his responsibility.
The ferocity of Israel's strikes in Gaza, however, may force Obama's hand sooner than he might otherwise have liked, and in a direction he may not have intended to go. The U.S.-Israel relationship will always remain exceptionally strong. But many analysts are suggesting that in the wake of Israel's Gaza attacks, the United States must take a much more balanced approach towards Israel. Instead of approaching the peace process as a stalwart and unambiguous ally of Israel, Obama may instead orient the United States as a more neutral broker. In order to be taken seriously in such a position, Obama would have to force concessions from Israel, especially over settlement construction in the West Bank and over the relative “proportionality” of its response to provocations by militant groups such as Hamas. Some might argue that such an approach would backfire, that only with complete and unquestioning U.S. support can Israel feel secure enough to engage in peace talks with its Palestinian neighbors. This, however, has been U.S. policy for the past several decades. It may be time to subtly but significantly reorient this policy, and President Obama may feel compelled to do so earlier than he would have otherwise preferred.
Foreign Policy Association, 22 January 2009
Posted by Daniel Widome at 11:04 PM to Middle East,
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