As revelations emerge regarding the Obama administration's behavior during recent Quartet proceedings, one thing has become clear: President Obama has abandoned the Palestinians.
As Foreign Policy's Daniel Levy reports, the United States, during talks with Quartet members on crafting a unified statement on the framework for peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, tried to "pull a fast one" by slipping language championed by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and AIPAC into a previously-agreed-upon statement.
It was language that made the Quartet – a group composed of Russia, the U.N. and the E.U. that had intended to base its statement almost exclusively on Obama's May 19 speech – so angry that it could do nothing but walk away.
And it was language that showed the Obama administration has, if not in principle, then surely in practice, abandoned the Palestinians in their bid for statehood.
Here is what happened: the Quartet convened intending to release a statement based upon President Obama's May 19 speech, which it had previously endorsed, a speech which, among other things, presented the following central principals:
1) Peace negotiations would be based upon 1967 borders, with mutually-agreed upon land swaps between both the Israelis and Palestinians.
2) The Palestinians should not go to the U.N. in September to seek recognition as a state, but should instead focus exclusively on resolving the conflict through a negotiated settlement.
These were principals that already placed the Palestinians in a bind, asking them to forgo their bid for statehood through the United Nations, but which at least gave them an acceptable place from which to start negotiations with Israel (in the event such negotiations were actually to materialize).
However, according to Levy, at the Quartet meeting with Russia, the U.N. and the E.U., the United States, instead of crafting a statement based upon Obama's May 19 speech, tried to craft a statement that included language from his May 22 speech at the AIPAC conference.
Here are some choice examples from Levy, with my commentary:
The U.S. draft proposal presented to the Quartet did include the President's language from the May 19 speech, but it also included a whole lot more, all of it skewing, extremely uni-directionally, in Israel's favor. To the simple May 19 border language of "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps," the U.S. added the following from the May 22 speech:
The parties themselves will negotiate a border between Israel and Palestine that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967, to take account of changes that have taken place over the last 44 years, including the new demographic realities on the ground and the needs of both sides.
This is essentially America asking the Quartet to endorse illegal Israeli settlement activity that has taken place since 1967 (and in phrasing this as "the parties themselves will negotiate a border..." the U.S. is deviating from its own previous policy of not dictating to the parties). Compare that to the official position of the European Union: "The European Union will not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties."
This change in language by the Obama administration, which comes from Obama's AIPAC speech, was rejected by the Quartet, for as Levy rightly notes, the language asked the members to officially recognize the legitimacy of illegal settlements as "changes that have taken place."
It's a principal the Palestinians would have rejected as well as a starting point – and President Obama knows this.
Here is another change the Obama administration tried to make, again from Levy:
The U.S. text also included language about Israel that was spoken on both May 19 and May 22 but was not part of the principles or foundations for negotiations set out on May 19 (and it is these principles that the Quartet endorsed). As follows:
A lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland of the Jewish people.
Again, this is terminology that neither the EU nor the Quartet has endorsed in the past. While it may be derived from previous U.N. resolutions (UNGA 181) it is problematic in several respects. It comes at a time when the nationalist chauvinism of the Netanyahu-Lieberman government is creating in practice an ever less democratic rendition of Jewish statehood. And America's text actually fails to even mention the need for Israel to be a democracy or to respect the equal rights of all citizens.
This language of Israel being recognized as a "Jewish" state and the homeland of the Jewish people was terminology that had never been considered by the Quartet, and was introduced by Obama at the behest of the Israeli government, which has recently been pushing for such inclusion.
As Levy rightly notes, the language is particularly difficult given the recent spate of anti-democratic laws that have been passed in Israel, for the language does not make mention of recognizing Israel as a democracy, but as having a particular nationalist/cultural identity.
The language so angered Time.com senior editor Tony Karon that he tweeted today the following (admittedly difficult) statement:
Memo to Obama: I don't tell you Kenya is your "homeland", how dare you tell me that as a Jew, Israel is my "homeland"?
While I don't champion his rhetoric, it does get at the heart of why both the Palestinians and the Quartet reject such language, for it goes beyond language necessary or productive in the framing of a political settlement between two independent, seemingly-democratic governments.
And finally (though there were several more statements the Americans added that were objectionable), I'll present this, again from Levy:
The U.S. wanted the Quartet to agree that:
[N]or can the two-state solution be achieved through action in the United Nations.
Again, this was not in the principles of negotiations May 19 language and is closer to the May 22 text and is an Israeli position...and a bit of a stretch to ask everyone else, including the UN Secretary General, to join America in de-legitimizing the idea of acting through the United Nations.
One of the most difficult elements in all of this is that, as everyone likely knows, Israel was formed precisely in this way, as its own Declaration of Independence states:
On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.
By both demanding language to a framework for negotiations that neither the Quartet nor the Palestinians can accept, and by cutting off the United Nations Security Council as a path through which the Palestinians can achieve statehood, President Obama has, finally and officially, shown that the U.S. has abandoned the Palestinian Authority.
Voices are continuing to call upon Obama to back away from this, and to support the Palestinian bid at the U.N., given Israel's unwillingness to negotiate at a time when it has been revealed that it plans to appropriate more West Bank.
But, as Levy states, the Palestinians shouldn't hold their breath.
It appears the U.S., barring a dramatic shift, has officially abandoned both its framework for negotiations that the Palestinians had agreed upon as well as its U.N. bid.
In other words, we've walked out on them.