As Mitt Romney was in Jerusalem on Sunday affirming his strong commitment to Israel, House Democratic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was attempting to defend President Obama’s diplomatic record. In an interview with Bloomberg TV, Pelosi suggested that “many of the Republicans are using Israel as an excuse, what they really want are tax cuts for the wealthy.” Jewish Republicans, she said, were “being exploited” on the Israel issue. She said of Jews, “[T]hey’re smart people. They follow these issues. But they have to know the facts.”
The facts, however, do not bolster Pelosi’s case that Obama has been a “staunch supporter of Israel.” When Obama began his presidency in 2009, he behaved as if Jews building homes represented a greater threat to Middle East peace than the prospect of a nuclear Iran. While offering to engage in direct negotiations with the Islamist nation that calls for “death to America” – effectively buying Iran’s leaders more time to develop nuclear weapons – he called for Israel to freeze all settlement activity. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” he declared in a June 2009 speech in Cairo, on a Middle East trip in which he did not visit Israel. The title of his speech was “A New Beginning.”
This was part of a calculated strategy. When Obama entered office, he believed that the United States would be in better position to broker a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians if he could show there was distance between America and Israel. “Look at the past eight years,” Obama lectured Jewish leaders in July 2009, according to the Washington Post. Of President George W. Bush’s close ties to Israel, he said, “During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.”
Obama’s scolding of Israel over settlements was part of this effort to create “daylight,” but it had the opposite effect of what he anticipated. He failed to distinguish between remote settlements, deep in the West Bank, and Jerusalem suburbs that already had large Jewish populations. This gave Palestinians an excuse to sit on the sidelines on the grounds that Israel was not agreeing to Obama’s demands. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could not comply with such politically unrealistic demands, which thus ended up undermining U.S. credibility with the Arab states anyway.
In May 2011, Obama announced that pre-1967 borders should be the starting point for a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. For Israelis, this would have unacceptable consequences. It would leave Israel an indefensible country as narrow as eight miles wide in some places, the loss of control of Jerusalem and its holy sites, and 300,000 Jews drawn into a new Palestinian state.
Three and a half years into his presidency, U.S.-Israeli relations are at a low point, the peace process is in tatters and Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon. Despite Pelosi’s suggestion, complaints about Obama’s treatment of Israel are based on his record. They are not just some kind of election-year gambit by Republicans.
