by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright March 18, 2015
All Rights Reserved.

                Beating back a White House bid to unseat 65-year-old Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Barack Obama has made former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s life more complicated.  As she wades through her email problems, Hillary’s going to have a difficult time distinguishing her position on Israel from Obama, unless she repudiates his pre-Sept. 11 policy.  Before Sept. 11, U.S. officials took a more even-handed view of the Arab-Israeli conflict, pressuring Israel into making more concessions or, since 1968 U.N. Resolution 242, trading land for peace.  Apart from Arab objections to Israel’s 1948 existence, U.S. presidents—including Ms. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, pushed Israel to make concessions to Palestinians.  While PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat was still around, the U.S. pretended to be an impartial broker until Sept. 11.

             When former President George W. Bush watched Palestinians dance-in-the-streets after Sept. 11, Bush broke off ties to Arafat’s PLO, refusing to deal with any group tied to terrorism.  Past generations bought the Arab rhetoric that terrorism was a form of resistance against Israeli occupation.  Arabs rolled the dice and lost in the 1967 Six-Day-War of annihilation, losing Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights.  When Arabs talk of “occupation,” they’re referring to Israeli spoils of the 1967 War.  On the eve of recent Israeli election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his backers there would be no two-state solution under his watch.  His resounding victory over Labor Party’s Yizhak Herzog and Hautnah Party’s Tzipi Livi proved that when push-comes-to-shove, Israel views Netanyahu as a national hero.

             Obama’s opposition to Netanyahu stems from pre-Sept. 11 thinking about the Arab-Israeli conflict.  Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry haven’t come to grips with real changes in the PLO and Palestinian Authority led by 79-year-old Mahmoud Abbas.  When Abbas joined Hamas April 23, 2014, he made a Mideast peace impossible.  Obama and Kerry know that an Egyptian court Feb. 28 branded Hamas, like the U.S. State Department, a terror organization.  No U.S. administration after Sept. 11 can expect Israel to negotiate a peace deal with a group that calls for its destruction.  Palestinians continue to do a masterful job of trashing Israel in world public opinion.  Ramallah-based PLO knows that Egypt branded Hamas as a terror group, continuing to back its unity government.  Obama has forced Hillary to repudiate the Obama Mideast policy or face problems in the 2016 campaign.

             Hillary can’t go back to the former Carter administration, her husband’s or Obama’s obsolete view of Mideast peacemaking.  When Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress March 3 at House Speaker John Boehner’s invite, he received resounding support from the GOP-dominated Congress.  Any foreign body, especially the U.N., can’t claim that Netanyahu has a bad relationship with both houses of Congress.  As Obama fades from office, it’s clear that Netanyahu has the overwhelming backing of GOP candidates.  Hillary must repudiate Obama’s pre-Sept.11 Mideast policy or face a backlash at the polls.  She’ll face the GOP’s overwhelming support for Israel, not qualified by unilateral concessions that compromise U.S. and Israel’s national security.  Whatever paradigm worked before Sept. 11, it no longer works now.  Palestinian complaints don’t hold water.

             Applying a pre-Sept. 11 mindset, the Obama administration continues to pressure Israel into giving up more land and ending settlement construction in so-called “occupied” territories.  Netanyahu states clearly that Israel can’t allow Islamists to flood or takeover the Palestinian state, something guaranteed by the unity deal with Hamas.  Hamas’s Gaza leader 54-year-old Ismail Haniyeh and its 56-year-old leader-in-exile living in Turkey Khalid Meshaal both seek Israel’s destruction.  Because the PLO now submits to Hamas, the White House—and Israel—no longer has a peace partner to negotiate a Mideast peace.  Hillary will have to come up to speed in her thinking or face the same dilemma as Obama.  “Rhetoric that seeks to marginalize one segment of their population is deeply concerning and it is divisive,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, ignoring the Hamas takeover.

             Netanyahu—and the GOP-dominated Congress—has no problem revisiting a two-state solution, as long as Hamas officially recognizes Israel’s right to exist, swears off terrorism or is split from the PLO.   Since none are feasible, the White House should stop blaming Netanyahu for defending Israel’s national security and making Hillary’s Mideast policy untenable.  Obama’s pre-Sept. 11 Mideast policy has painted Hillary into a corner, forcing her to repudiate the White House policy.  U.S. anti-terrorism policies can’t pick-and-chose which terrorists to accept or reject.  As long as Hamas remains a U.S. and Egyptian terror group, it makes no sense to force Israel into making concessions that compromise Israeli and U.S. national security.  Since Israel is the only seamless U.S. ally in the Middle East, the current White House policy is bad for both U.S. and Israeli national security.

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