Vice President Joe Biden is in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories to try to encourage support for (unfortunately only indirect) peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. "Hours after Mr. Biden vowed unyielding American support for Israel’s security," as Ethan Bronner notes, he "denounced Israel's plans to build 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem [announced by Eli Yishai's Interior Ministry] during Biden's visit] as a threat to the search for peace, calling it 'precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now'."
Update, from The Economist, I learn Biden actually "condemn[ed] the decision."
That Biden was right in both his statements provides cold comfort to those of us who seek an end to the occupation based on a peace settlement between Israel and Palestine.
"Why," asks Haaretz's Bradley Burston, "would Israeli officials degrade Israel by humiliating the vice-president of the United States?" The answer, of course, has to do with the politics of Israel's current coalition government. It is the same reason, Burston believes, that explains the outrageous statement of Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon, from Netanyahu's Likud Party, to the Washington Post: "'While we welcome Vice President Biden, a longtime friend and supporter of Israel, we see it as nothing short of an insult that President Obama himself is not coming.'"
Burston writes:
The profit, for the hard right, is political. It mines an emotional vein along a relatively small but potent segment of the Israeli electorate, which holds that to insult Israel's indispensible ally is to assert the Jewish state's independence. In their drive to expunge any trace of hitrapsut - groveling to the colonial master - there are those among the ostensible super-patriots of the right who revel in shots across the bow of the American ship of state. On the whole, the farther right one goes in Israel, the more pronounced the sentiment. Avowedly pro-Kahane extremists, now strong enough to have placed their own representative in the Knesset, have gained shock cred by lining highway underpasses with posters of the "Jew-hater Obama" photoshopped into wearing a Palestinian kaffieh.
More fundamentally, the Israeli government's conduct demonstrates Avi Isssacharoff contention, in Haaretz's Middle East Strategic Survey, that the government is engaged in "as if" politics:
So what is Israel actually trying to achieve? Basically, nothing. There is a superficial peace process which is going nowhere but eases international pressure on Israel to reach a deal with the Palestinians.
Issacharoff explains the "as if" nature of the government's policies:
In general, the decision-making body in Israel regarding building over the Green Line has become deliberately destructive, and adopted a policy of "ya'ani" (Arabic slang for something which only gives an appearance of reality, a kind of "as if"). Former minister and current Kadima MK Avi Dichter likes to say that the Palestinian culture is a "ya'ani" culture, and tells tales of his time as head of the Shin Bet security service, when it was "as if" the PA was working to fight terror, and "as if" it were arresting suspects in terror attacks. Sadly, however, the Israeli government has "ya'ani" decided to freeze settlement construction, and "ya'ani" is seeking a permanent status agreement. The government has separately approved construction over the Green Line for schools, public buildings, 3,600 housing units, 110 housing units, 1,600 housing units, a synagogue and more.
In everything connected to the settlers and settlements, the government has a "ya'ani" policy. Enforcement of the law in the territories is "ya'ani," except when it comes to transforming the West Bank into a Garden of Eden for settler law-breakers. The hilltop youth can set fire to mosques, fields, homes and cars, beat up Palestinian farmers and damage property and people, all thanks to the "ya'ani" policy of the Israeli government.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad correctly told Biden that "Israel's action was 'damaging for sure' and 'definitely undermines confidence in the prospects for peace.'"
Some may conclude that there's no point to pursuing peace negotiations. That indeed would hand a victory to Israeli rejectionists (and to Palestinian rejectionists, as well). Instead, I suggest, we should encourage and support those genuinely working for a two state peace settlement, and bring whatever influence we may have to bear against those who work to frustrate that aim. We need to keep in mind the millions of real-live Palestinians in the OPT who need a peace settlement and an end to the Occupation. We also need to keep in mind the millions of Israelis who need the same thing.
Perhaps, one always can hope, this news may come as a wake up call for us to trade in traditional I-P sniping for cooperative efforts for a two states peace settlement.
Update:: Those who prefer the usual I-P hate-fest to constructive discussion, will find it in this subsequently posted diary. I guess there's a greater audience for verbal fisticuffs than peace talk.
Update to Update: The author of the other diary has kindly agreed to delete it. Unfortunately, Paleo cannot be trusted toi keep his/her word.