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Trump Goes All
In With the Settlers
By Paul R. Pillar
December 27,
2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "National
Interest"
- Presidents-elect
of the United States generally have hewn to the dictum
that the country has only one president at a time, and
that this is especially important with foreign policy.
The incoming president plans, appoints, announces, and
does anything else he wants to indicate what his course
will be after noon on January 20th, but until then it is
the incumbent president who makes and executes U.S.
policy and who negotiates with and makes demarches to
foreign governments. Donald Trump has been behaving
differently. But even some of his previous moves during
this current transition period, such as breaking with
protocol on relations with Taiwan or telling the Chinese
to keep the marine drone they stole, did not go as far
in interfering with the execution of current policy as
he now has gone regarding a United Nations Security
Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and matters
in the occupied territories.
It is not only
that Trump issued a statement that constituted an
attempt to pressure the current administration into a
course of action that would do the bidding of a foreign
government. His operation met with a delegation
organized by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,
so secretly that Israeli press that learned of the visit
describes it as “clandestine”. Trump also,
following Netanyahu’s lead,
pressed President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt to
withdraw the UN resolution that his country had
introduced.
Even just as a
matter of procedure, this violation of the
one-president-at-a-time principle ought to have provoked
outrage. That it did not provoke much may be due to
Trump’s mastery of the art of diverting attention from a
subject by quickly saying something else that is at
least as likely to grab headlines. In this case the
attention diverter was Trump’s comment about
starting a new nuclear arms race.
As a matter of
substance, Trump’s posture toward the UN resolution
should be occasion for deep dismay. Long forgotten is
his
promise to be a "neutral guy" in addressing the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since he made that pledge
he has come to terms with Sheldon Adelson and, through
other statements and appointments, has made clear that
he will be anything but neutral. In case there was any
remaining doubt about that as of a couple of weeks ago,
all such doubt was erased with his appointment as
ambassador to Israel of bankruptcy lawyer David
Friedman—who, by
his own words, including likening liberal U.S. Jews
to Nazi stooges, and by his personal connections to the
settler movement, is firmly opposed to peace and in
favor of indefinite occupation. It would be less
incredible for Friedman to become Israeli ambassador to
the United States rather than the other way around,
although even then he would be representing only an
extreme right wing rather than the people and interests
of Israel as a whole.
As for the
newest UN resolution, Trump’s statement, echoing a
familiar formulation that the Netanyahu government uses
whenever the possibility of Security Council action
arises, says that “peace between the Israelis and the
Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations
between the parties, and not through the imposition of
terms by the United Nations.” There is absolutely
nothing in the
draft resolution that Egypt had introduced that
precludes or impedes direct negotiations between the
parties or that suggests in any way that such
negotiations will not still be necessary to set the
terms of any final peace agreement. Far from “imposing”
terms, the resolution declares the need to get beyond
the obstacles that are preventing effective direct
negotiations from taking place and being able to achieve
a two-state solution that will be a lasting basis for
peace between Israelis and Arabs.
That the
resolution specifically mentions Israeli settlements in
occupied territory simply reflects how this unilateral
altering of facts on the ground has been steadily
closing the negotiation space and making it ever more
difficult for direct negotiations to set the terms of
peace and arrive at a solution with two viable and
secure states. That the resolution declares the
colonization through settlements to be a “flagrant
violation of international law” simply restates
long-established principles of international law
regarding the responsibilities of an occupying power in
territory conquered through military force.
The draft
resolution was comprehensive in identifying the
obstacles to effective direct negotiations. It’s not
just the settlements, and it’s not just what Israel is
doing. The resolution “calls for immediate steps to
prevent all acts of violence against civilians,
including acts of terror, as well as all acts of
provocation and destruction, calls for accountability in
this regard, and calls for compliance with obligations
under international law for the strengthening of ongoing
efforts to combat terrorism, including through existing
security coordination, and to clearly condemn all acts
of terrorism.” The resolution further “calls upon both
parties … to observe calm and restraint, and to refrain
from provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory
rhetoric”.
In light of all
the above, Trump’s statement that the resolution “is
extremely unfair to all Israelis” is baseless.
Anyone with a
concern for Israel’s security and well-being should be
aware that the continued colonization of the West Bank
through expansion of settlements does not correlate
positively with such security and well-being. To the
contrary, it detracts from Israeli security. It
involves an added burden on the Israel Defense Forces,
and it is the most visible part of an occupation that is
by far the biggest stimulus and support for those
intending to do Israel harm.
Anyone
concerned with U.S. interests should be aware that the
United States has no positive interest in the
settlements or in the religious or local economic
motivations that have stimulated their growth. For the
United States, it is all negative, in terms of
instability, prospects for violence, the stimulation of
extremism, and the United States being resented and
targeted because of its role in permitting the
settlement enterprise.
The combined
pressure from Netanyahu and Trump got al-Sisi to
withdraw the resolution. It is appropriate for Egypt to
play a leadership role in trying to improve the
conditions for negotiation of an Israeli-Palestinian
peace, for historical reasons dating back to the Camp
David Accords of 1978. The peace treaty with Egypt that
Israel sought was only one-half of the bargain struck at
Camp David. The other half was supposed to be progress
toward a peace covering the Palestinian territories.
Anwar Sadat has been revolving in his grave over how,
nearly four decades later, what process there has been
has failed to yield an end to the occupation.
The case for
the current resolution remains strong. Four other
members of the Security Council—New Zealand, Malaysia,
Senegal, and Venezuela—pressed ahead with the resolution
even when a bullied Egypt backed off. The Obama
administration deserves commendation for allowing the
resolution to pass when it finally came to a vote on
Friday. A positive vote in support would have been even
better, rather than the United States once again being
in a lonely position on UN measures involving Israel.
In this case the United States was the only one of the
fifteen Security Council members that did not vote in
favor of the resolution. The Republican members of
Congress who now
are denouncing the administration even for
abstaining should be made to point to words in the
resolution itself and explain exactly what they allege
is wrong with it. Otherwise they are just blindly
following the lead of an Israeli government that will
perpetuate the occupation, and the negative consequences
that flow from it, forever.
Trump did not
have to interfere with the incumbent administration’s
diplomacy. It would give him more options to let the
incumbents take the domestic political heat for breaking
the pattern of repeated occupation-covering U.S. vetoes
at the Security Council. Even if Trump is determined to
stay in bed with the settlers and the Israeli
right-wing, he could still assume such a posture
starting on January 20th, however mistaken such a
posture is.
Perhaps Trump’s
abandonment of his “neutral guy” moment is another
instance of his gravitating to wherever he hears the
loudest applause, with that applause coming in this
instance from the lobby that would scream the loudest if
he were to move in a different direction. Perhaps it is
an instance of his being swayed by whoever in his inner
circle has most had Trump’s ear recently and been
motivated to use that access to press special
interests. That inner circle member can be the lawyer
who helped him through bankruptcies in Atlantic City.
Or it could be Trump's son-in-law, whom Trump has
talked about as a Middle East envoy, who, like the
lawyer,
has personal ties to West Bank settlements, and who
reportedly
wrote, along with Stephen Bannon, the statement
denouncing the resolution. Either way, this is a poor
way to make U.S. foreign policy.
The views
expressed in this article are the author's own and do
not necessarily reflect Information Clearing House
editorial policy. |
