(HOST) Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East this week has not gone smoothly. For commentator and former ABC News diplomatic correspondent Barrie Dunsmore, Biden’s reception in Israel contained many echoes from the past.
(DUNSMORE) It reminded me of trips I had made to the Middle East with numerous secretaries of state. Among other things, Vice President Biden’s visit was to give impetus to the latest last ditch effort to start "indirect" talks between Israel and the Palestinians – negotiations that have been stalled for nearly a year. Biden began with a stirring promise of the Obama Administration’s "absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security." But before the day was out he was greeted with the news that Israel planned to build 1600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem.
President Obama had been openly rebuffed by Israel when in his initial attempts at peace making he called for freezing settlement construction. So this latest announcement was deliberately provocative. Biden responded with some tough words of his own. "I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem" said Biden. "The substance and the timing of the announcement is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now."
That recalled the angry reaction of then Secretary of State James Baker when he faced similar situations some twenty years ago.
"Every time I have gone to Israel in connection with the peace process, I have been met with the announcement of new settlement activity," said Baker. He went on, "I don’t think there is any greater obstacle to peace than settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an advanced pace."
That has been the position taken by every single American administration going back to Lyndon Johnson.
But no administration has been able to get any Israeli government to permanently freeze settlement construction. That’s because for decades there have been two strands of Israeli policy that contain a basic contradiction. Israel maintains it is prepared to swap land it captured in 1967 in exchange for peace with the Arabs. But successive governments have also continued to encourage and subsidize Jewish settlements in the occupied territories – settlements which were openly recognized as a potential hedge against ever having to give the land back.
At one time the problem of settlements may have been theoretical. But by the end of 2009 approximately one half million Israelis were settled in disputed Arab territory – 300 thousand on the West Bank and another 200 thousand in East Jerusalem. That’s why many knowledgeable observers now believe that the two state solution – with independent Israeli and a Palestinian states living side-by-side in peace- is simply no longer feasible.
Meanwhile America’s capacity to resolve this stalemate is also limited by contradictions of its own. While the U.S. has long believed Jewish settlements were a major obstacle to peace, through a very generous foreign aid program – about thirty billion dollars in just the past decade – America was directly or indirectly financing them. Yet foreign aid to Israel is as close to being untouchable as anything can possibly be – regardless of who is in the White House.
(TAG) You can find this commentary by Barrie Dunsmore on-line at VPR-dot-net.