The new State Department assault on Israel

By Elliot Abrams, ISRAEL HAYOM

This week the State Department engaged in a remarkable assault on Israel. Both in tone and in content, it marks a new hostility and plenty of sheer ignorance.

The comment, titled “Recent Israeli Settlement Announcements,” ran as follows: “We are deeply concerned by reports today that the Government of Israel has published tenders for 323 units in East Jerusalem settlements. This follows Monday’s announcement of plans for 770 units in the settlement of Gilo.

“We strongly oppose settlement activity, which is corrosive to the cause of peace. These steps by Israeli authorities are the latest examples of what appears to be a steady acceleration of settlement activity that is systematically undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.

“In just the past few weeks, we have seen reports of the advancement of plans for 531 units in Maaleh Adumim, 19 in Har Homa, 120 in Ramot and 30 in Pisgat Ze’ev; the advancement of a plan to retroactively legalize an outpost near Ramallah; and the issuance of tenders for 42 units in Kiryat Arba.

“We are also concerned about recent increased demolitions of Palestinian structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which reportedly have left dozens of Palestinians homeless, including children.? More than 650 Palestinian structures have been demolished this year, with more Palestinian structures demolished in the West Bank and East Jerusalem thus far than in all of 2015.

“As the recent Quartet Report highlighted, this is part of an ongoing process of land seizures, settlement expansion, legalizations of outposts, and denial of Palestinian development that risk entrenching a one-state reality of perpetual occupation and conflict. We remain troubled that Israel continues this pattern of provocative and counterproductive action, which raises serious questions about Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful, negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”

Wow.

This statement not only protests certain recent activities, but actually accuses Israel of no longer being interested in a negotiated settlement. The history of Obama administration efforts gives the lie to that accusation: It’s quite clear that the Palestinians refused to come to table repeatedly and ultimately defeated Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to get something going.

Here is what Obama negotiator Martin Indyk said in 2014: “Netanyahu moved to the zone of possible agreement. I saw him sweating bullets to find a way to reach an agreement,” he was quoted in Haaretz. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, for his part, did not show flexibility, Indyk added.

“We tried to get Abu Mazen [Abbas] to the zone of possible agreement but we were surprised to learn he had shut down. We were ready to go beyond policy positions the U.S. had taken on the core issues to bridge the gaps and resolve it, and therefore there was something in it for him – and he didn’t answer us. Abbas [effectively] checked out of the talks in mid-February,” Indyk said.

So Abbas checks out, Abbas destroys Obama’s and Kerry’s efforts, and two years later the State Department is saying Israel’s commitment is in doubt.

Why? Because this construction is going to make the two-state solution impossible and “risks entrenching a one-state reality.” That conclusion reflects pure ignorance. The position of the United States is, as it has been under Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama, is that Israel and the Palestinians should engage in land swaps as part of a final status agreement. Just as one example, in 2011 Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

Swapping for what? Swapping for major Israeli settlement blocs, such as Maaleh Adumim, population 40,000. The notion that peace is more distant if Israel builds in Maaleh Adumim is ridiculous. Or how about construction in Gilo? Same — this is a Jerusalem neighborhood of 40,000. Construction there is no obstacle to a two-state solution. Same for Har Homa. In 1997, the U.S. vetoed two U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that construction in Har Homa stop. And it might be recalled that the president at that time was a Democrat, and was the husband of the current Democratic nominee. Besides, the State Department’s criticism regarding Har Homa concerns 19 homes! One might wonder if the State Department nothing else to concern itself with these days. Checking the State Department’s website, I find no similar five-paragraph attacks or critiques on any subject. It seems nothing is as dangerous to the world as construction in Israel and in settlements.

The State Department’s criticism also cherry picks numbers to make its argument that there “appears to be a steady acceleration of settlement activity that is systematically undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.” In June, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported that “the number of housing starts in West Bank settlements for the first quarter of 2016 dropped by 53% compared to the same period last year.” On the other hand, “the number of completed homes in Judea and Samaria rose by 14.9% in the first quarter of 2016, for a total of 610 units, compared with 531 such structures in the first three months of 2015.”

Ah, complexity. Housing starts fell; housing completions rose; and then there is the subject of permits for planning and construction, which very often do not result in actual construction. Note that the occasion of the State Department’s outrage was that the Israeli government “has published tenders” for new construction, not that construction had begun, much less completed.

Those tenders may or may not result in actual permits for construction, and may or may not produce housing units, and the numbers may change. It is also pretty clear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy has been to depress the amount of construction in outlying areas of the Judea and Samaria, a policy that has made settler groups angry and that might, in a different world, have led the State Department to thank him. But not in this world, where housing construction is a threat to peace.

The State Department’s criticism is politically quite stupid. It continues the Obama administration’s absolute refusal to distinguish between construction in isolated settlements in Judea and Samaria, in areas that must become part of any future Palestinian state; construction in major blocs that Israel will obviously retain in land swaps; and construction in Jerusalem. It treats them all equally as the “steady acceleration of settlement activity that is systematically undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.” Moreover, it refers to construction in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital, as settlement construction, and refers to Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem as “east Jerusalem settlements.” There are no “east Jerusalem settlements”; the term “settlement” loses meaning when applied to Jews building homes in their nation’s capital.

Why is this approach stupid? For two reasons. First, it’s false: Construction in outlying areas of Judea and Samaria may indeed appear to be a problem in creating a Palestinian state, but construction in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem is not, nor is construction in major settlement blocs Israel will keep. Second, this failure to make distinctions means Israelis will disregard U.S. complaints instead of listening to them. If the State Department criticized construction by settler groups in remote areas in Judea and Samaria, it would actually have most Israelis on its side. But when it treats Jerusalem neighborhoods and a place like Maaleh Adumim as indistinguishable from any and every settler activity no matter how remote, Israelis will mostly shrug and wonder why the Americans are so dumb.

And that’s actually a good question. Why are we, or rather why is the State Department? I suppose the State Department is just following orders from the White House, but that only raises the stakes; it does not answer the question. Who is the intended audience for this attack on Israel? If the answer is Israelis and their government, it will fail due to its continuing refusal to make logical distinctions. If the answer is Americans, including members of Congress, then this attack — launched by a lame duck administration during this convention week — will have zero effect.

So here’s a theory: The intended audience is European governments and others around the world. This kind of assault makes their own assaults on Israel easier. They can be encouraged in planning attacks on Israel in the U.N. General Assembly in September. They can offer six-paragraph screeds where they explain how these new housing units threaten peace, security and the two-state solution.

The State Department statement came the same week that the Palestinian Authority announced it would sue the British government over the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which pledged to support the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in then-British Palestine. It is true that this was in many ways a comic announcement, but it displayed a complete lack of serious intent to move forward toward peace or peace negotiations. In that sense it is completely consistent with the way the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization have behaved throughout the Obama years.

With all the misery and bloodshed in the Middle East; with all the terrorist attacks Israel must face; with chaos in Iraq and Syria; with a PLO thinking not about talks but about lawsuits against the U.K., it’s remarkable that housing construction strikes State Department as the critical problem we face. Meanwhile, also this week, a Saudi delegation visited Jerusalem “to encourage discussion of the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative.”

When the Saudis have a more realistic approach to Israel than the State Department, American policy is far out of whack.

From “Pressure Points” by Elliott Abrams. Reprinted with permission from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

July 29, 2016 | 5 Comments »

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  1. Time for Israel to give Librul democrat voting Jews a Get (divorce) We don’t really need them but they need us. American Jewish interest is primarily staying on the good side of Liberal non Jewish WASPS and not other Jews and Not Israel. There can no longer be real unity between American Democrat voting Jews and Israel. Gaps much too wide and growing wider by the day.

  2. Zionist Organization of America | ZOA Condemns Anti-Semitic Obama Demand of No More Jews in Jerusalem or Judea/Samaria
    The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has…
    zoa.org

    Hillary Clinton supports this policy also and what so in her State Department. Yet amazingly people who say they care about Israel will vote for her just like they did Obama.

  3. …yet, 75% of America’s voting Jews will vote for the Obama-Clinton lunacy. They ought to know by now that their Marxist beliefs undermine the USA,Israel and the world.

    But they don’t care.

  4. I am sure Trump will win the presidential election in early November. If so, there will be major changes in the way the US State Department operates. Among these changes will be a presidential administration that will pursue a foreign policy much more favorable to Israel than anything we have seen in recent decades.

    In any case, there never shall be any two state solution. There already are more than 700,000 Jews resident in Area C and in the annexed parts of Jerusalem. Nothing beats facts on the ground, and hostile but primitive Moslems with whom nobody else anywhere in the world can make any kind of permanent peace.

    Arnold Harris, Outspeaker

  5. Maybe the air conditioners were not working at the SD and caused the jackasses there to bray louder.
    On this I would say that ignoring the proclamations out of there is best.