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Tablet Magazine

America Is the Arsonist of the Middle East

John 碍别谤谤测鈥檚 failed peace negotiations set off the spiral of violence between Israel and the Palestinians

Former Senior Fellow
A Palestinian youth take part in military-inspired exercises organised by the Islamist movement Hamas on June 19, 2014 in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. (SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images)
Caption
A Palestinian youth take part in military-inspired exercises organised by the Islamist movement Hamas on June 19, 2014 in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip. (SAID KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images)

Events are moving so quickly in the Middle East that it seems like whatever you are reading is already outdated. Yesterday, after Hamas ,7340,L-4538785,00.html dozens of rockets into Israel over the weekend, Israeli Air Force planes targeted the Gaza-based group and killed at least seven members. Hamas鈥� actions follow the of a 16-year-old Arab Israeli, who was killed by in an alleged act of retribution for the and murder of three Jewish Israeli teenagers, whose bodies were found last Monday. Netanyahu has repeatedly warned Hamas to cease its attacks. Hamas on Monday that it will continue its attacks until the blockade on Gaza is lifted. Both sides are likely to escalate.

So, how did we get here? Who is to blame? From one perspective, what we鈥檙e watching is the latest round in a nearly century-long cycle of Arab-Israeli violence, so it鈥檚 hardly surprising to see violence erupt once again. However, it鈥檚 also worth noting that it is precisely because peace is so rare in the Holy Land that the status quo needs to be given its space and left alone. Or you need to have a very good reason for disturbing it.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry thought he had one. 鈥淧eople in Israel aren鈥檛 waking up every day and wondering if tomorrow there鈥檒l be peace, because there is a sense of security and a sense of accomplishment and a sense of prosperity,鈥� Kerry last May in Jerusalem. 鈥淏ut I think if you look over the horizon,鈥� he continued, 鈥渙ne can see the challenges.鈥� In other words, what lay over the immediate horizon was more violence and bloodshed, unless Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas got together under American leadership and changed their act.

碍别谤谤测鈥檚 peace process started nearly a year ago now, July 29, with a nine-month deadline for an agreement. Over that period, Kerry met with Abbas at least 34 times and talked a lot more frequently with Netanyahu. His first aim was to convince the two sides that in spite of all the apparent difficulties, the negotiations were not a formal exercise but rather a serious attempt at peacemaking. 鈥淓very journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,鈥� President Barack Obama solemnly negotiators for the two parties about the talks. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 important is seriousness.鈥� To get Abbas to the table, the American team asked Netanyahu for a confidence-building measure鈥攅ither freeze settlement construction or release Palestinian prisoners.

What Netanyahu wanted in return was for Abbas to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The request was a non-starter: Netanyahu understands it鈥檚 virtually impossible for Abbas, or perhaps any Palestinian leader in the foreseeable future, to relinquish claims to all of Palestine. If Netanyahu was hoping to illustrate for the Obama Administration the core problems in Middle East peacemaking, Kerry and his team already understood that there would be no resolution of final claims. Their goal was a framework agreement that would lay out, as a Haaretz article 鈥渁 future point of departure鈥濃攁nd, not inconsequentially, send a message to the rest of the region that America was still a key player even after withdrawing all its troops from Iraq and declining to get involved in Syria鈥檚 bloody civil war. The negotiations produced their share of public squabbles over specific issues, like how long Israeli troops might stay in the Jordan Valley, which gave reporters something to write about.

Yet the most basic problem that Kerry faced was that neither side had any real faith in America鈥檚 own commitment to the negotiations. The Israelis 碍别谤谤测鈥檚 and Abbas felt like the Americans were trying to trick him, to pull a 鈥淒ennis Ross鈥濃攔eferring, explains Haaretz, 鈥渢o the veteran American diplomat who was known for his practice of first striking a deal with the Israelis and then presenting it to the Palestinians as an American proposal.鈥� As one senior U.S. official said about the administration鈥檚 handling of Abbas, 鈥淲e weren鈥檛 sensitive enough toward him, and we didn鈥檛 understand how he felt. In retrospect, we should have behaved differently.鈥�

But it was the big picture that really rattled both Jerusalem and Ramallah. If the Americans had once resembled a big, shiny department store where U.S. regional partners could do all their shopping鈥攚eapons, money, political support, diplomatic cover, etc.鈥攖he current White House clearly seemed intent on rolling down the shutters. For instance, despite the massive American investment, in lives and money, in Iraq, Obama withdrew in 2011 and promised the same with Afghanistan.

All of the administration鈥檚 Middle East policies pointed to the same thing: America wants out of the Middle East. From the perspective of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the administration has unaccountably weakened its own negotiating position with Iran over the clerical regime鈥檚 nuclear weapons program. Why would you play nice with an adversary and relieve sanctions when the point is to crush your enemy and then show mercy? If the Iranians get the bomb, it鈥檚 a problem not only for Israel, but also Abbas, whose Iranian-backed rivals will be strengthened. For three years, the administration had no policy to address the Syrian conflict, which Obama someone else鈥檚 civil war鈥攊.e., not America鈥檚 problem. If the administration鈥檚 press surrogates, Washington insiders, and the Europeans think the American commander-in-chief pulled off a diplomatic masterstroke when he signed on to the Russian initiative to get Bashar al-Assad to relinquish his chemical weapons arsenal, this is simply not how it looks in the Middle East. From that perspective, Obama is a bluffer. And a guy who won鈥檛 back up his own words with actions is not likely to back up his allies with actions when the going gets tough鈥攁nd even the most cockeyed optimist in the region knows that actually solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be tough.

At a time of relative peace and quiet, the White House put the Israelis and Palestinians under the spotlight with a buzzer set to go off at the end of April. What both soon realized was that whatever they decided, the Americans weren鈥檛 going to be around to give them cover. Both Jerusalem and Ramallah started looking for ways to protect their flank and mapped a route separate from that of the White House. If the administration had issues with Egypt鈥檚 new military strongman, Israel praised Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to the skies. Netanyahu鈥檚 very public pronouncement last week in of the Kurds should also be understood as a Bronx cheer directed at the White House, which strongly opposes Kurdish independence.

Abbas had fewer options. He could apply to various U.N. agencies to recognize Palestinian statehood, which he did. When the Saudis and Egyptians wanted to his intra-Fatah rival Mohamed Dahlan, he turned to Saudi Arabia鈥檚 Gulf Cooperation Council rival Qatar and Doha鈥檚 Palestinian partner, Hamas, with whom he a unity government last month. Hamas, which was not a party to the U.S.-led negotiations, was put in a similar pickle. Squeezed by Egypt on one side and Israel on another, and with reduced funding from Iran, they had little choice but to do a face-saving deal with Abbas, in order to be able fight another day. By that point, even the public fiction that the Israelis and the Palestinians were still talking to each other was over.

Kerry and Obama had put both sides on a very public clock, and now time was up鈥攚ith neither side having anything to show for talking to the other. Peace negotiations had failed, which naturally meant that a different logic would now take over. For the Palestinians, there were their own internal conflicts, which were not alleviated by the unity deal but rather accentuated.

It鈥檚 not clear whether the two Hamas members who kidnapped and killed Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrach were acting on orders from a Hamas official based in Turkey鈥擲aleh al-Aruri, who is in charge of the Hamas portfolio in the West Bank鈥攐r if the orders came directly from the Hamas leadership in Gaza. Regardless, Hamas can hardly avoid taking credit for an operation that comports with its fundamental principle of unending war against the Jewish state. Israelis were outraged. While the murder of the three Jewish teenagers violates the terms Abbas laid out for the unity deal prohibiting acts of terror, the so-called 鈥減rice-tag鈥� of 16-year-old Mohamed Abu Khdier came just in time to unite every Palestinian faction, and set off large-scale Arab riots inside Israel proper.

It is hard to see how Hamas, Abbas, and Israel can avoid doing what they must do now, according to the familiar logic that now governs their actions. Hamas can鈥檛 shrink from a fight with a nation that has burned an Arab teenager to death. Abbas has no way of stopping Hamas from firing rockets, even if he wanted to. Indeed, the militia Al Aqsa Martyrs鈥� Brigades is also for rocket attacks. For his part, Netanyahu can鈥檛 allow a terrorist organization to keep firing rockets on the people he is sworn to protect.

So, if there is a major Israeli military operation against Hamas in Gaza, like Cast Lead in 2009, and Pillar of Defense in 2012, or if there is a third intifada as Kerry in November, the front-page stories will show Jews and Arabs doing what they鈥檝e been doing for decades鈥攆ighting, dying, and mourning. News reports will portray the events as part of a seemingly endless cycle of violence that Kerry and Obama tried and failed to stop, just like Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush before them. But this time, America isn鈥檛 putting out the fires of an age-old conflict. It started them.