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January 22, 2009
When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza and announced all of Israel’s goals had been met, there was one very important aim that he didn’t mention: ending the fighting and bringing the troops home before the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama.
A top Israeli priority was finishing the job in Gaza before it wound up in the lap of the new administration. Olmert was confident the Bush administration would back him up, but he didn’t know how Obama would react and he didn’t want to find out.
President Obama cited the Gaza war as another reason why he wants to “start on Day One” to halt the violence and revive the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, but he warned against expecting quick results or any American attempt to “dictate the terms of an agreement.”
After eight years of high American rhetoric and low performance, all sides will be watching for signs of “change we can believe in,” starting with this essential ingredient: a president who will get personally involved and stick with it.
Obama’s Middle East team looks like he’s recycling the Clinton administration team — notably Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, former Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross, and possibly former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who led President Clinton’s special Middle East peace commission in 2000.
Ross is expected to be an ambassador-at-large, overseeing the region with emphasis on Iran, and Mitchell would reportedly focus on the Arab-Israeli peace process. In the Senate Mitchell had a solid pro-Israel record and even spoke at fund-raisers (with me) for the pro-Israel lobby.
The new president has said the Bush administration’s “road map” and the Clinton plan will form “the general outlines” of his approach. But insiders warn not to expect Obama simply to pick up where others left off.
He envisions “an integrated approach,” with the Israeli-Arab conflict no longer a “discrete” issue but part of an interrelated strategy that encompasses the entire region between the eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.
An early sign will be an effort to engage adversaries like Syria and Iran, Clinton said in her confirmation hearings. She is reportedly planning a foreign tour to tell world leaders the Obama approach will be more pragmatic and multilateral and less ideological and confrontational. A Middle East visit may be put off until after the Feb. 10 Israeli elections.
Repairing U.S. relations with the Muslim world will be a high priority, but it will not come at Israel’s expense, Obama has said. He reportedly plans to go in his first 100 days to a “major Islamic forum” to “redefine our struggle” and set forth his administration’s foreign policy. Aides say it will be a detailed, realistic action plan, not just a rehash of stump speeches.
Obama enters office looking more like a centrist — in both domestic and foreign policy — than the liberal some partisans were hoping for and opponents feared.
That will extend to Middle East peacemaking as well. He and Clinton have stressed continuity in strong U.S. support for the Jewish state, their commitment to a negotiated two-state solution, an active role in the peace process, and a conviction that a nuclear Iran is “unacceptable.”
Ask Israelis what they liked most about George W. Bush and they’ll tell you, “He left us alone.” That is about to change.
One of the administration’s first actions may be to let Israel know it is expected to keep its commitments to freeze settlement construction and remove the illegal outposts, something Bush spoke about but failed to act on. This is widely considered an important sign of Israel’s good faith, and it was a top recommendation in the 2001 Mitchell commission report.
That could spark the first crisis between Washington and Jerusalem if, as polls suggest, the Likud Party and Benjamin Netanyahu lead the next Israeli government. He wants to continue settlement construction, shelve the peace talks begun at Annapolis in late 2007, and focus on Palestinian economic development instead of statehood.
Netanyahu will look to allies among Jewish hard-liners and Evangelicals to run interference for him in Washington and for the mainstream Jewish organizations, which have become increasingly out of synch with their own rank and file, to mumble quietly on the sidelines, afraid of offending either government and risking losing access to top officials in Washington and Jerusalem.
But with nearly 80 percent of Jewish voters backing him in November — and majorities consistently supporting reinvigorating the peace process built around the two-state solution and removal of settlements — Obama can go over their heads to the Jewish community grassroots to mobilize support for his peace policies.
Who knows? Maybe it will even motivate the nascent Jewish peace camp to unite on a realistic strategy to back a progressive American approach to Middle East peace. That would be a change worth believing in.
Douglas M. Bloomfield is the president of Bloomfield Associates Inc., a Washington lobbying and consulting firm.
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