Like Bibi, Obama May Just Want to Manage Middle East Conflict. By Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary, March 8, 2013.
Tobin:
The
consensus about the meeting is that, as one person who quoted the president to
JTA said, there would be no “grandiose” plans for peace presented to the
Israelis when he arrives for his long-awaited visit. Though the president will
be holding out hope that the current “bleak” prospects for peace will improve,
the notion that Obama would risk any of his scarce political capital by trying
to impose terms of a peace plan on Israel that the Palestinians are not
interested in is absurd. Though Obama will put himself on record as opposing
Israeli settlements as well as Palestinian attempts to avoid negotiations via
the United Nations, he appears to be only interested in keeping the situation
calm. After four years of antagonism with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu,
the president seems to have arrived at a similar conclusion as his Israeli
counterpart. At least for now, he’s done trying to solve the conflict and only
wants to manage it as well as possible.
That
probably comes as a surprise as well as a shock to many of Obama’s most ardent
Jewish supporters who would like him to ratchet up the pressure on Netanyahu,
as well as to his greatest critics who harbor the suspicion that his goal is
bring the Jewish state to its knees. It may be that were circumstances
different, the president might well come closer to making those hopes and fears
come true. But right now, Obama has higher priorities than pursuing his feud
with Netanyahu.
That
won’t preclude the president from trying to arrange a grand gesture, such as a
summit at which Jordan’s King Abdullah and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud
Abbas will join Obama and Netanyahu for a photo op. But even those observers,
like myself, who don’t trust Obama, need to give him credit for having paid
some attention to what the Palestinians have failed to do over the last four
years. The Palestinians have made it clear that they have no intention of
signing a peace agreement that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state
no matter where its borders would be drawn. That means a solution to the
conflict is impossible in the foreseeable future and that the only logical
approach to it is one that seeks to manage it while preventing conflagrations.
