Israel's False Friends - U.S. presidential candidates ...

From the Los Angeles Times

Israel's false friends

U.S. presidential candidates aren't doing the Jewish state any favors by

offering unconditional support.

By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt

January 6, 2008

Once again, as the presidential campaign season gets underway, the leading

candidates are going to enormous lengths to demonstrate their devotion to the

state of Israel and their steadfast commitment to its "special relationship"

with the United States.

Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary

material and diplomatic support -- continuing the more than $3 billion in

foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in the

world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally. None

of them criticizes Israel's conduct, even when its actions threaten U.S.

interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are harmful to

Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the U.S. should support

Israel no matter what it does.

Such pandering is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office

routinely court special interest groups, and Israel's staunchest supporters --

the Israel lobby, as we have termed it -- expect it. Politicians do not want

to offend Jewish Americans or "Christian Zionists," two groups that are deeply

engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some justification,

that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel's policies may lead these

groups to turn against them and back their opponents instead.

If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel's friends in the

media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from

pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere.

Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes, which

increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in 2000?), and a

candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would lose some of their

support. And no Republican would want to alienate the pro-Israel subset of the

Christian evangelical movement, which is a significant part of the GOP base.

Indeed, even suggesting that the U.S. adopt a more impartial stance toward the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict can get a candidate into serious trouble. When

Howard Dean proposed during the 2004 campaign that the United States take a

more "evenhanded" role in the peace process, he was severely criticized by

prominent Democrats, and a rival for the nomination, Sen. Joe Lieberman,

accused him of "selling Israel down the river" and said Dean's comments were

"irresponsible."

Word quickly spread in the American Jewish community that Dean was hostile to

Israel, even though his campaign co-chair was a former president of the

American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Dean had been strongly pro-Israel

throughout his career. The candidates in the 2008 election surely want to

avoid Dean's fate, so they are all trying to prove that they are Israel's best

friend.

These candidates, however, are no friends of Israel. They are facilitating its

pursuit of self-destructive policies that no true friend would favor.

The key issue here is the future of Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel

conquered in 1967 and still controls. Israel faces a stark choice regarding

these territories, which are home to roughly 3.8 million Palestinians. It can

opt for a two-state solution, turning over almost all of the West Bank and

Gaza to the Palestinians and allowing them to create a viable state on those

lands in return for a comprehensive peace agreement designed to allow Israel

to live securely within its pre-1967 borders (with some minor modifications).

Or it can retain control of the territories it occupies or surrounds, building

more settlements and bypass roads and confining the Palestinians to a handful

of impoverished enclaves in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel would control the

borders around those enclaves and the air above them, thus severely

restricting the Palestinians' freedom of movement.

But if Israel chooses this second option, it will lead to an apartheid state.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said as much when he recently proclaimed that if

"the two-state solution collapses," Israel will "face a South African-style

struggle." He went so far as to argue that "as soon as that happens, the state

of Israel is finished." Similarly, Israel's deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon,

said earlier this month that "the occupation is a threat to the existence of

the state of Israel." Other Israelis, as well as Jimmy Carter and Anglican

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have warned that continuing the occupation will turn

Israel into an apartheid state. Nevertheless, Israel continues to expand its

settlements on the West Bank while the plight of the Palestinians worsens.

Given this grim situation, one would expect the presidential candidates, who

claim to care deeply about Israel, to be sounding the alarm and energetically

championing a two-state solution. One would expect them to have encouraged

President Bush to put significant pressure on both the Israelis and the

Palestinians at the recent Annapolis conference and to keep the pressure on

when he visits the region this week. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

recently observed, settling this conflict is also in America's interest, not

to mention the Palestinians'.

One would certainly expect Hillary Clinton to be leading the charge here.

After all, she wisely and bravely called for establishing a Palestinian state

"that is on the same footing as other states" in 1998, when it was still

politically incorrect to use the words "Palestinian state" openly. Moreover,

her husband not only championed a two-state solution as president but he laid

out the famous "Clinton parameters" in December 2000, which outline the only

realistic deal for ending the conflict.

But what is Clinton saying now that she is a candidate? She said hardly

anything about pushing the peace process forward at Annapolis, and remained

silent when Rice criticized Israel's subsequent announcement that it planned

to build more than 300 new housing units in East Jerusalem. More important,

both she and GOP aspirant Rudy Giuliani recently proclaimed that Jerusalem

must remain undivided, a position that is at odds with the Clinton parameters

and virtually guarantees that there will be no Palestinian state.

Sen. Clinton's behavior is hardly unusual among the candidates for president.

Barack Obama, who expressed some sympathy for the Palestinians before he set

his sights on the White House, now has little to say about their plight, and

he too said little about what should have been done at Annapolis to facilitate

peace. The other major contenders are ardent in their declarations of support

for Israel, and none of them apparently sees a two-state solution as so urgent

that they should press both sides to reach an agreement. As Zbigniew

Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security advisor and now a senior advisor

to Obama, noted, "The presidential candidates don't see any payoff in

addressing the Israel-Palestinian issue." But they do see a significant

political payoff in backing Israel to the hilt, even when it is pursuing a

policy -- colonizing the West Bank -- that is morally and strategically

bankrupt.

In short, the presidential candidates are no friends of Israel. They are like

most U.S. politicians, who reflexively mouth pro-Israel platitudes while

continuing to endorse and subsidize policies that are in fact harmful to the

Jewish state. A genuine friend would tell Israel that it was acting foolishly,

and would do whatever he or she could to get Israel to change its misguided

behavior. And that will require challenging the special interest groups whose

hard-line views have been obstacles to peace for many years.

As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued in 2006, the American

presidents who have made the greatest contribution to peace -- Carter and

George H.W. Bush -- succeeded because they were "ready to confront Israel

head-on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in America." If the

Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends of Israel, they would

be warning it about the danger of becoming an apartheid state, just as Carter

did.

Moreover, they would be calling for an end to the occupation and the creation

of a viable Palestinian state. And they would be calling for the United States

to act as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians so that

Washington could pressure both sides to accept a solution based on the Clinton

parameters. Implementing a final-status agreement will be difficult and take a

number of years, but it is imperative that the two sides formally agree on the

solution and then implement it in ways that protect each side.

But Israel's false friends cannot say any of these things, or even discuss the

issue honestly. Why? Because they fear that speaking the truth would incur the

wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main organizations in the Israel

lobby. So Israel will end up controlling Gaza and the West Bank for the

foreseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid state in the process. And

all of this will be done with the backing of its so-called friends, including

the current presidential candidates. With friends like them, who needs

enemies?

John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of

Chicago. Stephen M. Walt is a professor of international affairs at Harvard's

Kennedy School of Government. They are the authors of "The Israel Lobby and

U.S. Foreign Policy," published last year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-mearsheimer6jan06,1,6831048.story