During his Cairo speech earlier this month, President Barack Obama only criticized one state by name, earning him more applause than any other part of his remarks. What was it? A critique of Israel’s settlements policy.
Several weeks before this speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laid out administration policy when she said that that the United States “wants to see a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.” So why has this administration been so fixated on settlements?
Settlements are communities constructed on land that Israel conquered in its defensive war against Arab states in 1967. Since the signing of the 2003 “road map,” Israel has mostly desisted from construction.
The “natural growth” Hillary Clinton referred to, however, applies to construction in communities within the immediate environs of Jerusalem — towns that will undoubtedly become part of Israel via land swaps with the Palestinians.
Construction in these towns serves the purpose of accommodating expanding families, and is not done to make room for new settlers. It also doesn’t require the expropriation of land from Palestinians.
The Obama administration, echoing the United Nations, Arab regimes, and European governments, acts as if statehood is something to which the Palestinians have an immediate “right,” regardless of their own behavior.
They seem to believe that there will be no adverse consequences to bequeathing nationhood upon a people who have yet to recognize the legitimacy of their neighbor. However, since Israel withdrew from settlements in 2005, Hamas has violently seized control of the Gaza Strip, using it as a staging ground to launch rockets into Israel.
The true obstacle to peace in the region remains what it has always been: Arab intransigence. The Palestinians and their enablers have consistently rebuffed compromises that would have led to the creation of a state.
They did so in 1948 with their rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan, again in 2000 during the Camp David talks, and as late as January, when they turned down an even more generous offer from then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Today, the most “hard-line” of Israeli prime ministers, a man demonized by the liberal American press and the radical Arab media alike as a leader almost genetically averse to peace, has assented to the creation of a Palestinian state.
His sensible conditions — that this entity be demilitarized, that Palestinian “refugees” and their descendants be repatriated there and not within Israel proper, and that the Arab world finally recognize Israel as a homeland for the Jewish People — are being met with scorn and derision from Arab leaders.
With its peculiar focus on halting the growth of Jewish communities, the Obama administration has reinforced the erroneous meme that Israel, and not its stubborn neighbors, is blocking the path to peace.
James Kirchick is an assistant editor of The New Republic and a Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow.
