Presidential Pandering on Palestine

Bayann Hamid

Asheville Citizen-Times (7/4/08)
Minuteman Media

At the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) earlier this month, presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama competed over who would become the “candidate for Israel.” The match came to a draw when both candidates pledged undying and unconditional support for Israel. While their support for “Israel right or wrong” was unquestionable, at the end of all the commotion, the most pertinent question for Americans and the world remained unasked and unanswered: Who is the candidate for peace?

If their AIPAC speeches are any indication of how they would fare in brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, the prospects for peace in the near future are dim. Both candidates will have to revise their positions if peace is to be attainable in the next five years.

Both McCain and Obama assert that American and Israeli security are intertwined, yet their statements hardly show appreciation for what that means since they fail to acknowledge — and even deny — that a key factor in building a secure America is a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The plight of the Palestinians is a source of outrage throughout the Arab and Muslim world and America's unconditional support for Israel in the face of Israeli violations of human rights and international law, has damaged America's standing in the Middle East and beyond.

Both candidates are adamant that as president they would isolate Hamas and continue the current administration's failed policy of propping up Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. This strategy has failed because it is impossible to achieve a tenable final status agreement that excludes Gaza. No leadership in the West Bank could afford to sign a peace deal with Israel while Gazans live under siege. Moreover, a peace agreement signed by a leadership that is not representative of its people will never be viable. Only by engaging all the key players, including Hamas (as Israel has done recently through the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire), can peace be achieved. The hope that isolating Gaza would bring Hamas to its knees has proved false. In fact, Hamas has strengthened its hold on Gaza and attacks on Israel from the Strip have increased.

Perhaps the most disappointing position taken at the AIPAC conference was when Obama, true to his campaign slogan of “change,” declared that Jerusalem must remain the “undivided” capital of Israel. While in line with AIPAC talking points, the comment put him at odds with the position of every U.S. administration on the status of Jerusalem to date, and to the right of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and some hawkish Israeli parliamentarians. In doing so, Obama also sowed the mistrust of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, not to mention Arabs and Christians. This is neither progressive change nor clever foreign policy.

A U.S.-brokered resolution to this century-old conflict can be achieved only if the United States is willing to take a truly even-handed approach. If the next administration is serious about peace, it must be willing to use its considerable leverage to persuade Israel to comply with international law. It should take punitive measures when Israel continues settlement expansion in the West Bank, since the settlements present the greatest obstacle to the two-state solution advocated by the State Department. As of 2005, there were some 450,000 settlers in the occupied territories. Comprising 4 percent of the West Bank population (excluding occupied East Jerusalem), these settlers control 40 percent of the land and divide the West Bank into numerous enclaves detached from one another. If settlement expansion continues, it will spell the death of the two-state solution. (To his credit, Obama did call on Israel to “refrain” from settlement expansion in his speech before AIPAC.)

If there is to be peace, the United States should respect the will of the Palestinian people to elect their own leaders. It should not cast aside key players like Hamas, which holds the support of 40 percent of the population in the occupied territories. If the next U.S. president, whoever he may be, wants peace, he will have to come to terms with the fact that peace is not made between friends but between adversaries.

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Bayann Hamid is media coordinator at the Middle East Research and Information Project.