The US president's endorsement of the 1967 lines was meant to head off recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations, writes Graham Usher Barack Obama has tried to frame a coherent response to an Arab spring in which improvisation had been the only American constant. But his major address on the Middle East at the State Department on 19 May was eclipsed by the issue most in the region see as a sign of his country's waning power: failure to end Israel's occupation of Arab land. He did at least lay down a parameter for negotiations. "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 [armistice] lines with mutually agreed [land] swaps, so that secure and recognised borders are established for both states," he said. This is not a new American policy. The 1967 lines -- and land swaps to accommodate illegal Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land -- have been at the core of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since the 2000 Camp David summit. As Obama told the Israeli lobby AIPAC all he did was "say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately". But no previous American president had specified so concretely the 1967 lines as the bases of a future Palestinian-Israeli border. Obama not only acceded to a key Palestinian demand but brought US policy in line with European, Arab and legal positions that stipulate the 1967 lines as the only basis of negotiations for a two-state solution. Israel was appalled. "Israel appreciates President Obama's commitment to peace", said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu after a two-hour meeting with the president. But Israel "cannot go back to the 1967 lines because these lines are indefensible and because they don't take into account... demographic changes that have taken place over the last 44 years" (i.e. the illegal transplanting of Jewish settlements into occupied Palestinian territory). The Israeli leader was less flustered -- though every bit as rejectionist -- addressing both houses of Congress on 24 May. While Israel was willing to make "painful compromises to achieve this historic peace", he said, the future border could not rest at the "indefensible" 1967 lines. It would be drawn at the negotiating table and "it would be different from the 1967 border", he added to warm applause. Obama has experience of Netanyahu spitting in his face and calling it rain. He knows the "peace process" is moribund, and that a presidential election year is not an auspicious time to revive it. According to aides quoted in the New York Times he also doubts Netanyahu "will ever be willing to make the kind of big concessions that will lead to a peace deal". Obama's reference to the 1967 lines was not meant for Netanyahu or even Israel. According to Israeli journalists briefed by the White House, it was a last ditch effort to prevent the Palestinians asking the United Nations General Assembly in September to recognise a Palestinian state "on the 1967 lines". Publicly Obama has dismissed the Palestinian turn to the UN as pointless. Privately the White House is worried. It knows such a resolution could again expose America as Israel's sole defender in the international body and prompt a major clash with the Arabs: at a time when Obama would like to be seen at least rhetorically on the side of change in the region. By submitting the 1967 lines as a parameter for future negotiations the US hopes to offer enough of an "alternative" policy to persuade countries like Britain, France and Germany to abstain at the UN and/or press the Arab League not to submit the resolution. Having avoided the "train wreck" of September -- and with Obama's pledge of the 1967 lines in hand -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas may be then nudged to return to negotiations, says an Israeli source. Abbas met Obama's speech in silence. Having expected nothing he was surprised by the 1967 endorsement. He has called emergency meetings of the Palestinian leadership and Arab League Foreign Ministers to forge a "united" Arab response. With Netanyahu having already ditched the 1967 lines as a basis for negotiations it would seem there is little need for Arabs to respond. But there may be some among the Arab foreign ministers who will be tempted by Obama's "alternative". This is partly out of an ingrained deference to all things American. It is also out of fear that a thwarted statehood resolution at the UN may translate into violence on the ground, and not only in the occupied territories. There are others, however, who think the current wave of self-determination in the region needs to translate into a more independent Arab foreign policy. Despite the Palestinian plight on the ground, politically and diplomatically they are in their strongest shape in years: buoyed by the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, by the huge international consensus for statehood at the UN and, above all, by the mass activism of the Arab world that finally flowered into a Palestinian spring in the Nakba protests on 15 May. All three could be harnessed for a showdown over recognition in September. It won't bring a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. But by mobilising to return the Palestinian issue to the UN the Arabs could free themselves from the yoke of an American diplomacy that, for 20 years, has succeeded only in shielding the Israeli occupation from legal sanction. It might even begin creating a new paradigm for negotiations that would end the occupation on the basis of international law. Such a turn to the UN and international legitimacy would mean conflict with Obama. But here too there are lessons from the Arab protests. One is that whoever waits on America for change will never see it delivered. The other is the more the US and Europe stand by Netanyahu the more irrelevant to a regional peace they become.
