America and Israel: Will The Relationship Change? Yes It Can

[Purveyor]

Feb 12th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

AT FIRST glance, the chances of peace between Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land look dimmer than ever. If Binyamin Netanyahu ends up as prime minister (see article), Israel’s voters will have elected a man who, on paper at least, is unwilling to let the Palestinians have anything more in the way of a state than a hollowed-out Swiss cheese of feebly linked cantons. He says the moderate Palestinians are too weak to control the West Bank and need to be strengthened, under Israeli supervision, before any more territory can be handed over to them.

Moreover, even if the centrist Tzipi Livni wins the day, with her support for talks leading to two states living peacefully side by side, the Palestinians are for the moment so sour and so divided that they have no government or leader strong enough to cut a deal and make it work. In any event, after Israel’s ferocious assault on the Gaza Strip in December and January, there is no certainty that the current ceasefire will hold with the Islamists of Hamas, which still rules that territory despite its pasting.

Yet hope persists, in part because Barack Obama has a chance of making American policy more even-handed and more effective, after eight years mostly wasted by George Bush and, before that, another eight years in which Bill Clinton tried but failed, to bring the two sides together. More even-handed means more sympathetic to Palestinians. But it also means more security, in the long run, for Israel.

True, nothing spectacular is likely to happen for months. For one thing, an Israeli government could take weeks or more to emerge, and could then prove hobbled by religious and other clamps. For another, Mr Obama, who sees the American economy as his priority, has yet to acquire his own Middle East team, let alone policy, under the dual aegis of Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state and George Mitchell as his special envoy. Besides, not just the Palestinians but also the Arabs and the wider region are in diplomatic disarray.

Many of those Americans urging Mr Obama to take a new approach towards Iran, for instance, admit that little of substance is likely to alter until after Iran’s presidential election in June, when the erratic Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may—or may not—be ousted (see article). Iran, by the by, still eggs Hamas on to make negotiations with Israel difficult if not impossible.

MORE...

THE ECONOMIST: http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13110485