Despite all international efforts to stop settlement expansion, the Israelis are going on with their plans, reports Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem The right-wing Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has vowed to keep up settlement expansion throughout the West Bank despite strong calls to the contrary by the Obama administration. Netanyahu, who has refused to endorse the two-state solution concept, said freezing the settlement expansion was "unreasonable", "impossible" and "out of the question". Other Israeli government officials have made more vociferous and rabid reactions to the ostensibly uncompromising American stance on the settlement expansion issue. Eli Yeshai of the ultra-fundamentalist Shas Party, who serves as transportation minister in the government, labelled American demands for freezing settlement expansion as "amounting to expulsion and ethnic cleansing." "I want to make it clear that the current Israeli government will not accept in any way the freezing of legal settlement activity in the West Bank." Several Knesset members allied with the settler movement of Gush Emunim (Bloc of Faithful) went berserk, calling President Obama "a pharaoh". Adopting the line of prevarication and public relations, which had always worked effectively with previous American administrations, Netanyahu has been saying that Israel had a "moral commitment" to meet legitimate housing needs of its citizens, ignoring the fact that these citizens are living on land that belongs to another people. However, most observers in Palestine-Israel, including peace-minded Israeli groups such as Peace Now, which monitors settlement activities in the West Bank, contend that the so-called "natural growth" is merely a mantra used by successive Israeli governments to grab as much as possible of Palestinian land and to transfer as many Israeli Jewish citizens as possible to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in order to preclude any realistic prospects for the creation of a viable Palestinian state. "What Netanyahu and other Israeli officials call 'natural growth' is actually a systematic and well-planned scheme aimed at killing the prospect of a viable Palestinian state," said a spokesman of the group during a television interview last week. This is obviously what the American president has more or less discovered, which explains his ostensible insistence that Israel should terminate all settlement expansion in the West Bank, including "natural growth". Seeking desperately to control the damage, Netanyahu this week dispatched a number of his aides and advisors to Europe and Washington to meet with US officials to "clarify" to them that Israel was not planning to build new settlements but was only building a limited number of settler units inside the settlements. An Israeli delegation comprising National Security Advisor Uzi Arad, Netanyahu's diplomatic envoy Yitzhak Molcho, and Defence Ministry Chief of Staff Mike Herzog as well as Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor met with a number of US officials in London this week. Meridor reportedly spoke of the complexities the Israeli coalition government was facing, saying that the American demands with regard to the settlements would lead to the dissolution of the government. However, all these attempts seemed to have failed to effect a change of mind on the part of the American administration, at least for the time being. One Israeli official privy to the talks accused the Obama administration "of scrapping all the understandings we had reached with the Bush administration." Meanwhile, President Obama has reasserted his stance vis-à-vis the settlements, saying that "it is important to be honest in this regard." Speaking during an interview with the National Public Radio Monday, 1 June, Obama said his administration wouldn't automatically agree to Israel's policies and was taking a stricter definition of a freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank. "I don't think we have to change our strong support to Israel. But we do have to retain a constant belief in the possibilities of negotiations that will lead to peace. And that is going to require from my view, a two-state solution." He added that the US wouldn't treat Israel with kid gloves. "It is important for us to be clear about what we believe to lead to peace. This is unequivocal and there will be compromise on both sides. "Part of being a good friend is being honest. And I think there have been times when we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory, in the region is profoundly negative, not only for Israeli interests but also US interests. And that is part of a new dialogue that I'd like to see encouraged in the region." It is increasingly clear that frustration and disappointment are beginning to haunt not only the Netanyahu government but the entire political establishment in Israel. The Jewish state has been since time immemorial accustomed to seeing and expecting every American administration at Israel's beck and call. And when problems occurred, Israel had always a ready- made cure, namely the strong Jewish lobby in the US, e.g. AIPAC. However, Israel and its American supporters now realise that the situation in Washington is not as ideal as it always was during the previous American administrations, especially the Bush administration, and that an unscrupulous feat by Israel to circumvent the Obama administration, e.g. by going straight to Congress, not to say AIPAC, could have a boomerang effect and further complicate things for Israel. Moreover, AIPAC itself is not the omnipotent ghoul it used to be especially after a series of setbacks and calls by prominent American academics and former president Carter to limit its stranglehold on American foreign policy towards the Middle East. Also, a growing number of American intellectuals are making a linkage between resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict and safeguarding American strategic interests in the Muslim world. President Obama himself has alluded to this dimension on many occasions. Hence, a head-on collusion with the Obama administration could portray Israel and its supporters as working against the national interests of the United States. The same outcome could result from possible Israeli efforts to enlist and mobilise the powerful American evangelical camp, informally known as Christian Zionists, to pressure the Obama administration on Israel's behalf. Such a feat, viewed by some as Israel's ultimate default position, would be perceived by the Obama administration as a direct challenge and even a personal insult, which might eventually further embolden the Obama administration vis-à-vis the Israeli government. Some Israeli officials say privately that Obama won't be able to maintain "this anti-Israeli line" for a long time, given the American political environment where Jewish influence is ubiquitous. These officials argue that Israel should cling to its ideological and political interests and keep the settlement expansion going, even at the expense of upsetting the Obama administration because in the end "it is going to be Obama, not Netanyahu, who will blink first." However, other veteran Israeli officials warn that the American-Israeli relationship is not and has never been a relationship between two equals and that it would be foolhardy for Israel to pretend that it can successfully challenge the US especially on matters the US increasingly considers of paramount American interest. One more point. During the Bush administration, Israel successfully sought to evade carrying out its commitments under the peace process, that is, freezing settlement expansion, by throwing the proverbial ball into the Palestinian court by claiming that the PA was not fighting terror and dismantling the infrastructure of "terrorist organisations". Now, however, Israel seems to have largely lost this pretext or "red herring" as the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas is proving beyond doubt its sincere commitment to fighting Israel's enemies. Indeed, the killing by PA security forces on Sunday, 31 May, of two Hamas guerillas in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya is likely to be proven a strong refutation of Israeli claims, which is likely to give the Obama administration an additional incentive to press Israel to meet its commitments under the "roadmap", especially the freezing of settlement expansion in the West Bank.
