Obama yesterday held a "trilateral" meeting between himself, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, and Prime Minister Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. You can read Obama’s full statement following the meeting here.
This meeting represents a defeat for the Palestinian position that Israel must halt settlement expansion (effectively annexing new land to Israel) in order to have meaningful peace negotiations, since taking the land undermines any hope of progress on negotiations about that land. It also represents a defeat for Obama, who had publicly called for an immediate and comprehensive halt to all Israeli settlement building.
Netanyahu has publicly and repeatedly refused to accept such US demands, and statement his intention to continue expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank while he worked toward a peace deal that would end the Palestinian "Right of Return," require Palestine to declare the "Jewishness" of the Israeli state, annex settlement blocs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel, and limit Palestine from maintaining a military, controlling its airspace, or signing treaties with neighboring states.
How have the various parties responded to this meeting?
Israel Foreign Minister Lieberman has declared total victory:
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday that Netanyahu's summit with the Palestinian and American leaders was a victory because it took place even as Israel rebuffed demands to freeze settlement in the West Bank.
...
According to Lieberman, the meeting showed Israel's firm stand
against a settlement freeze was effective.
"This government has shown that you don't always need to get flustered, to surrender and give in," Lieberman told Israel Radio. "What's important for me is that this government kept its promises to the voter ... and the fact is that this meeting happened."
Obama and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have previously
demanded a full halt to construction in the settlements. The Palestinians, emboldened at least in part by the U.S. stand, said they would not resume negotiations without a freeze.
Lieberman is, of course, correct. This meeting was a strong win for the Israeli government position. Having directly defied the US call to end settlement construction, and having moved forward with construction of 2,500 planned units in the West Bank and 500 additional units recently approved, allowing unlicensed "outposts" to continue to expand, and moving more Israeli settlers into Arab East Jerusalem, Netanyahu found himself rewarded with a photo op and an effective guarantee that the US would not take any action to support its stated position that settlements must halt.
Indeed, Obama himself backed off from calling for a settlement freeze and merely said:
[Israelis] have discussed important steps to restrain settlement activity.
"Steps to restrain activity" is rather softer language than the line Obama, Clinton, and Envoy George Mitchell had been pushing previously; as Clinton said in May, "He wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions."
Obama backed off from this clear statement, and George Mitchell followed suit by downplaying US interest in a settlement freeze:
"Our objective all along has been to relaunch meaningful final status negotiations in a context that offered the prospect for success," Mr. Obama’s special envoy to the region, George J. Mitchell, later told reporters. "We have never identified the steps requested as ends in themselves."
The New York Times article cited above notes that Obama "pivoted," and says:
President Obama, who has met immovable resistance from Israel over his demand for a full freeze on settlements in the West Bank, is largely setting that issue aside as a first step toward restarting Middle East peace talks.
Observers generally see that Obama has been frustrated with the lack of visible progress, but is not willing to take any action to pressure the parties to take steps. Such pressure would mostly fall on the Israelis, since Palestinian PM Abbas largely agrees with the American position that settlements must be frozen.
However, by refusing to take any action, and by knuckling under to Netanyahu’s demands that discussions be held even as Israel continues to move more settlers into the West Bank, Obama has made the US appear dangerously weak.
Aaron David Miller (Woodrow Wilson Institute scholar and author of "The Much Too Promised Land") explained:
The administration broke a lot of crockery with the Israelis and proved they couldn't leverage anything. It makes America looks weak.
Miller expands on this point in a thoughtful article at Politico (yes, I know it’s not a much-loved source here, but Miller’s words are serious:
Trilateral talks head on path to nowhere.
Steve Clemons at The Washington Note has a fairly similar take, noting:
What is clear is well is that Barack Obama did not get the settlement freeze he called for from Netanyahu.
...
[Obama’s statement] shows that despite all their efforts, his team has not moved the game forward, and he really doesn't like putting lipstick on a pig.
Where does all of this lead? Obama has called for immediate negotiations, but he has done nothing to move the two sides closer together. He has made clear, precise, and easily justifiable demands on the Israeli Likud government, but there, when push came to shove, he has backed off those demands. He has shown that he is not willing to take action to back up his words, and he has demonstrated that Israel can simply wait out any US position and the US will eventually accept whatever Israel demands. In doing so, he has given Netanyahu a blueprint for upcoming negotiations: if Netanyahu simply refuses to compromise any points and threatens to let negotiations stall out, Obama will move to support Netanyahu’s position as a way of keeping the negotiations moving forward.
In affect, Obama has required of the parties (and of himself) that they show the appearance of moving forward whether or not they actually accomplish anything. Any party can now leverage Obama simply by threatening to disrupt the appearance of progress.
I tried to raise this point yesterday in a DKos discussion, but Aaron David Miller says it better than I, so I’ll close with his words:
Obama may soon face a tough choice: whether to get out of the serious peacemaking business and manage a process as best he can or get more deeply involved and consider an unprecedented American effort to bridge the gaps in pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.