Clinton’s Middle East message seems to misfire
by Laura Rozen
11/01/10
…another Washington Middle East hand said the Obama administration had no choice but to start backing itself out of its own corner in the form of a drawn-out fight with the Netanyahu government on a full settlement freeze to try to get to the main event. “It was the policy of the early months of the Obama administration that boxed in Abu Mazen,” said the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s David Makovsky, co-author with the National Security Council’s Dennis Ross of a new book, “Myths, Illusions, and Peace.”
“Once the U.S. said ‘freeze,’ it raised Arab expectations to such a point that Abu Mazen could not agree to less. He cannot be more of a Zionist than the U.S. There have been consequences for the early approach. If the Obama administration would have said no geographic expansion of settlements from the outset instead of saying freeze, we would not have lost eight months of time and wasted the political capital of the president. President Obama would not have been at single digits in Israeli polls, and Abu Mazen would not have been out on the limb. Critically, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations would have most likely already commenced.
“Now the dynamic will be driven by whether there is a Palestinian election or not,” Makovsky continued. “A law of Mideast peacemaking is that compromises do not occur during a Palestinian or Israeli election campaign. If Abu Mazen heads for elections, he will find it convenient not to budge so he can flex his nationalist muscles. If this is his intention, Obama administration peacemaking will be on hold until the Palestinian elections end in early 2010.”
