Obama Jilts Israel for the Muslim World

Relations between Israel and the United States have reached their worst pass since the Eisenhower years, if not ever. The reason seems to be that President Barack Obama wants it that way. One of the chief goals of his foreign policy has been to improve America’s standing in the eyes of the Muslim world. Toward that end he chose Al Arabiya, the Arabic-language satellite network based in Dubai, for his first presidential television interview. Soon after, he delivered a major address to the Turkish parliament and followed that with a speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last April.

That speech was filled with false analogies. For example, the president mentioned the right to wear the hijab no fewer than three times (an apparent reference to rules in French public schools and Turkish government offices that prohibit it) without mentioning once the far broader and deeper issue of the right of Muslim women not to be forced into hijabs or other extreme and awkward coverings. And he drew a parallel between the treatment of Coptic Christians in Egypt and the fact that IRS regulations do not grant tax deductions for donations to foreign organizations, which he said exemplified the invidious treatment of Muslims under American law.

The absurdity of this comparison was underscored by the very platform from which he spoke. He was co-hosted by Al Azhar University. In addition to being the preeminent seat of Sunni learning, Al Azhar offers degrees in engineering, medicine, even dentistry and pharmacology. But only to Muslims. It is a state-sponsored university, financed by the taxes of all Egyptians, but Egyptian Christians are barred from admission. Obama’s speech was interrupted repeatedly by enthusiastic applause, but despite his rhetorical pandering, the theme of regional commentary was that the Muslim world wanted to see him match action to words, especially for the United States to put distance between itself and Israel. So this year, Obama proceeded to grant their wish, ginning up a confrontation with Israel over construction in East Jerusalem by making demands beyond what previous U.S. administrations or the Palestinian Authority itself had required as a precondition for peace talks.

This same president who had ignored rebuffs and insults in order to keep an open hand extended to the rulers of Iran, Syria and Venezuela now gave the back of his hand to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

To be sure, Netanyahu is difficult to deal with, and his right-of-center coalition is unlikely to approve the concessions that Israel will have to make in any settlement with the Palestinians. But this is not what prevents peace. If the Palestinian body politic was ready for peace with Israel, either Netanyahu and company would change their spots or they would be swept from office, because the Israeli people want nothing more than peace.

The Zionists accepted the UN’s 1947 partition plan. Israel made peace with Egypt and Jordan the moment it was available and tried to forge a peace deal with Lebanon until Syria blocked it by assassinating President-elect Bashir Gemayal. Israel agreed to withdraw fully from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace with Syria, a deal that foundered on Damascus’ insistence on also receiving the eastern bank of the Kinneret. Israel offered terms for the creation of a Palestinian state at Camp David in 2000 and accepted the “Clinton parameters” proposed at Taba later that year. It withdrew unilaterally from Gaza and southern Lebanon and dismantled some settlements in the northern part of the West Bank.

For their part, in contrast, the Palestinians have rejected every deal from 1947 through 2000, as well as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s 2008 offer to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. That offer, like the “Clinton parameters,” set out terms that defined what almost surely will be the outlines of a final settlement—if there ever is one: The Palestinians will forego the “right to return,” while Israel will withdraw from most of the West Bank, retaining consolidated settlement blocs that will be offset by an equal concession of Israeli territory elsewhere, and both nations will have capitals in Jerusalem.

The reason that deal has not already been sealed is that the Palestinians have not yet decided they want it. They are of two minds. Roughly half want a state of their own, in peace with Israel, and the other half want no less than Palestine “from the river to the sea.” President Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and other members of his cabinet, from what I can see—and I’ve met several of them—are genuine men of peace. But whether they can sell it to their constituents remains unclear. To date, they have not tried very hard.

The ostensible reason the Netanyahu government’s construction decision was treated as a grave offense was that it impeded the peace process. But it is hard to see why, and it is even harder to see why it was treated as graver than PA officials’ fomenting riots on the Temple Mount against phantom Israeli threats or renaming a square in the Ramallah suburb of El Bireh in honor of a terrorist responsible for the slaughter of 37 Israelis.

Not even the most dovish Israeli government will withdraw from the West Bank unless it trusts the peaceful intentions of the other side, meaning that these acts constitute a steeper barrier to peace than Netanyahu’s housing approvals. In this thicket, the one party that clearly wants peace is the Israeli public. What the Palestinians want remains uncertain. And even President Obama may be less interested in peace than in currying favor in the Muslim world.

Joshua Muravchik is a Foreign Policy Institute fellow at Johns Hopkins University and the author of The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East.