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Obama's Counterproductive Settlements Ultimatum

(Foreign Policy) Steven J. Rosen - If, 17 years ago, U.S. President Bill Clinton or Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat had insisted that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin freeze all settlement construction, including in Jerusalem, before Arafat would sit down with Rabin, there would have been no Oslo agreements. Rabin said, "I explained to the president of the United States that I wouldn't forbid Jews from building privately in the area of Judea and Samaria....I am sorry that within united Jerusalem construction is not more massive." The same year as the famous handshake on the White House lawn, 1993, the Rabin government completed the construction of more than 6,000 units in the Pisgat Zeev neighborhood of east Jerusalem. On Sept. 13, 1993, the Oslo peace accord was signed - by the same Mahmoud Abbas who refuses to sit down today. The U.S. has never liked Israeli construction in east Jerusalem, but until Obama, no U.S. president had made its cancelation a precondition for negotiations, and until Obama, Palestinian leaders including Abbas did not make it a precondition either. This is the same Abbas who negotiated with seven previous Israeli prime ministers - Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu (in his first term), Barak, Sharon, and Olmert - without the precondition that he now demands of Netanyahu. Netanyahu is doing something that every past Israeli prime minister has done, but Obama is doing something that past American leaders considered unwise. The writer served for 23 years as foreign-policy director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
2010-04-02 08:17:56
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