Underlining US attachment to Israel

Despite American pandering, Tel Aviv has not shown any interest whatsoever to arrive at a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians

The Arab world, especially the Palestinians, ought to start thinking about a new interlocutor if they want a peace treaty with Israel. The United States administration, whether run by President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton — the likely winner of next year’s presidential election — is disappointingly distancing itself from what it takes to facilitate a decent and long overdue PalestinianIsraeli peace settlement.

The price that Palestinians and Israelis have paid for an unfair United Nations Partition Plan in 1948 has proven a failure, highlighting a five-decade bloody conflict for which both sides have paid a high price. Resolving the problem by establishing a one-state solution, favoured by many Palestinians and Israelis, is very unlikely to be fully accepted by Israel, now that the relationship between them is very sour — almost lethal.

The top American leadership is seemingly disqualifying itself — thanks to the corrupting Zionist lobby in the US. To cite but one recent example, the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported earlier this week that more than $220 million (Dh809.16 million) was being pumped by some 50 non-profit American organisations in recent years into the illegal Israeli colonies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. This region, now less than 20 per cent of Palestine, is where the Palestinians are hoping to establish an independent state, along with occupied East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Yet, some 600,000 illegal Israeli colonists are now illegally living in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank

Haaretz explained that the tax-deductible status of the funds means that the US government “is incentivising and indirectly supporting the Israeli [colony] movement”, even though Washington opposes construction of colony homes and views it as an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.

Simultaneously, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin arrived in Washington for a cordial meeting with Obama and a public address the following day at the Brookings Institution. After the two exchanged pleasantries, Obama unexpectedly condemned Palestinian violence and said Palestinian President Mahmoud “Abbas needs to condemn it and end the incitement”. He added that there was a “need to find mechanisms for Israelis and Palestinians to have a dialogue”, but admitted that “although the prospect of peace seems distant, we still need to try”.

This ‘Israel Day’ in Washington was preceded last week by another similar occasion where, adding insult to injury, both Hillary Clinton — the Democratic Party’s frontrunner for the US presidential election next year — and Secretary of State John Kerry went overboard in affirming their attachment to Israel, speaking publicly at the Brookings Institution and its Saban Center — a think tank established by Haim Saban, an Egyptian Jew who is now settled in the US.

Hillary promised that on her first day as president, “I would extend an invitation to the Israeli prime minister to come to the United States, hopefully within the first month ... to work towards strengthening and intensifying our relationship on military matters, on terrorism and on everything else that we can do to cooperate on that [and] will send a strong message to our peoples as well as the rest of the world. So that is on my list for the first day”.

The point is that Israel has not yielded to any pressure, American or otherwise, to arrive at a settlement with the Palestinians. Obviously, the world will have to look for other avenues or else, the final step may be disastrous.