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> Has Obama "Betrayed" Israel at the UN?</div>
<hr class="m_316400872550942666print-hr"> <a class="m_316400872550942666article-title m_316400872550942666commentary m_316400872550942666print" href="http://nationalinterest.org/feature/has-obama-betrayed-israel-the-un-18872" target="_blank">
<h1 class="m_316400872550942666node-title m_316400872550942666clearfix">Has Obama "Betrayed" Israel at the
UN?</h1>
</a> <span class="m_316400872550942666submitted-info">
<div class="m_316400872550942666authors"> <span class="m_316400872550942666field-author"><span class="m_316400872550942666field-item"><a href="http://nationalinterest.org/profile/harry-siegman" target="_blank">Henry
Siegman</a></span></span> </div>
<span class="m_316400872550942666rdf-meta m_316400872550942666element-hidden" content="Has Obama
"Betrayed" Israel at the UN?"></span></span>
<div class="m_316400872550942666social-share-block-wrapper"> </div>
<p>Has America’s president betrayed Israel, as Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his government bitterly accused
after President Obama failed to veto a UN Security Council
resolution that condemned Israel for its settlements in the West
Bank?</p>
<p>True, President Obama told the international community in his
address to the UN General Assembly in 2011 that an
Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement can only be achieved by the
parties themselves, not by outside imposition.</p>
<p>Obama, a former editor of the <em>Harvard Law Review</em>,
surely knows the notion that international bodies have no role in
the resolution of international conflicts to be entirely spurious,
particularly when applied to a belligerent occupation that has
been in place for half a century. It is an argument he presumably
made to provide Netanyahu more time to advance a two-state
agreement with the Palestinians without outside intervention, in
the expectation, based on Netanyahu’s previous solemn promises,
that he would do so.</p>
<p>Obama’s argument against outside intervention, in generous
support of Netanyahu, should have persuaded Netanyahu to halt
Israel’s settlement expansion and prove to the world that outside
intervention is not necessary to advance the peace process.
Instead he doubled down on the expansion of Israel’s settlements,
proving to the world that a two-state solution will not happen
without such intervention.</p>
<p>Netanyahu’s “<em>j’accuse</em>” against Obama and his
administration is a concoction of the lies and deceptions that
have characterized Israel’s defense of its settlement project from
the outset.</p>
<p>The Security Council resolution did not contain any reference
whatever to terms for a permanent status negotiation (as necessary
as such provisions actually are), and therefore did not violate
President Obama’s strictures against outside imposition of terms
for an agreement. The resolution was limited to a reconfirmation
of the flagrant illegality of the settlements in the Occupied
Territories and of the changes made unilaterally by Israel to the
internationally-recognized pre-1967 border.</p>
<p>Netanyahu lost whatever right he might have thought he had to
President Obama’s and the world’s trust when he shamelessly and
unapologetically reversed himself and declared publicly during the
last Israeli national elections that he would not allow a
Palestinian state to come into existence as long as he is Israel’s
prime minister. For good measure, he added that he would not
remove even a single Jewish settlement, no matter how remote its
location from the pre-1967 border, even though such settlements
were placed there to block the possibility of a Palestinian state.</p>
<p>Netanyahu and his fellow ministers are accusing President Obama
of having violated President George W. Bush’s promise to support
Israel’s retention of certain settlement blocs adjoining the
pre-1967 border. They have claimed for some time now that
President Bush’s commitment allows them to enlarge construction in
these settlement blocs to their heart’s content.</p>
<p>This is a bald-faced lie. Both in his letter to Prime Minister
Sharon and in his subsequent references to that letter,<a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040414-3.html" target="_blank">
<u>President Bush</u></a> said clearly that his support for
Israel’s retention of certain settlement blocs would come into
play only when negotiations of the major permanent status issues
took place. In 2006, <a href="https://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/60746.htm" target="_blank"><u>Condoleezza
Rice told Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni</u></a>, “the
President did say that <em>at the time of final status</em><em> </em>it
will be necessary to take into account new realities on the ground
that have changed since 1967, but under no circumstances… should
anyone try and do that in a pre-emptive or predetermined way,
because these are issues for negotiation at final status.”
[Emphasis added]</p>
<p>Another lie is Netanyahu’s and his fellow ministers’ criticism of
Obama for his acceptance of a resolution that refers to Israel’s
settlements as “illegal,” instead of “illegitimate”—the euphemism
Obama’s administration has used until now.</p>
<p>Israel’s government knows there is no real difference between
these two terms—if settlements were legal, they would also be
legitimate. They also know that it was Israel’s legal advisor to
its ministry of foreign affairs Theodor Meron who ruled in a <a href="https://www.soas.ac.uk/lawpeacemideast/resources/file48485.pdf" target="_blank"><u>formal
communication</u></a> dated September 18, 1967, immediately
following the 1967 war, that “civilian settlement in the
administered territories contravene explicit provisions of the
Fourth Geneva Convention,” and that the prohibition against such
settlements is “categorical and not conditional upon the motives
of the transfer or its objectives.”</p>
<p>The biggest lie of all has been Netanyahu’s claim to support a
two-state solution. His scam should have been obvious to our
diplomats from the get go. Why? Because he never presented the
two-state idea for formal approval to any of the four governments
he has headed. Because the official platform of the Likud opposes
Palestinian statehood anywhere in Palestine. And because most
ministers who form Netanyahu’s government are members of a
parliamentary caucus—the largest in Israel’s Knesset—whose
official mandate is the prevention of Palestinian statehood
anywhere in Palestine.</p>
<p>Is it not high time for Israel’s public to wake up to Netanyahu’s
deceptions? The countries that voted for this Security Council
resolution are not anti-Semitic outliers. They included every
major democratic country that belongs to the Security Council. Not
one of them voted for the Zionism is Racism resolution, to which
Netanyahu so demagogically compared this resolution. Are UK Prime
Minister Theresa May or German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose
foreign minister warmly welcomed the Security Council’s action,
anti-Semites? It was only yesterday that Netanyahu boasted of his
friendship with Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, who voted
for the resolution. Are they now Israel’s enemies?</p>
<p>If there has been a betrayal in this latest chapter of America’s
relations with Israel, it is Netanyahu who has betrayed President
Obama. The Obama administration has done more than any of its
predecessors to assure Israel’s security. The tragedy is that
everything that President Obama and his predecessors have done to
protect Israel’s security will have been for naught as Netanyahu’s
mad drive with the settlements towards an apartheid regime
threatens to end Israel’s existence as a democratic and Jewish
state, something its enemies could not have achieved on their own.</p>
<p>With President-elect Trump and his newly appointed far-right,
settlement-promoting ambassador-designate to the Jewish state
cheering Netanyahu on, that apartheid outcome is now clearly in
sight.</p>
<p><em>Henry Siegman is President Emeritus of the U.S./Middle East
Project. He is a former senior fellow on the Middle East at the
Council on Foreign Relations and formerly headed the American
Jewish Congress and the Synagogue Council of America.</em></p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<br>
<pre class="m_316400872550942666moz-signature" cols="72">--
S.(Ghazi) Ghazanfar, Ph.D., Economics Prof. [(1968-02), Emeritus, 2002;
Dept.Chair-79-81/93-02; Director, In'l Studies-89-93; Adj.Prof.03-08;
Univ. of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho 83843-USA]
Acworth, GA 30101 (Ph.770-575-2994)
Homepage: <a class="m_316400872550942666moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~ghazi" target="_blank">www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~ghazi</a>
Albert Einstein: "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind"
Aldous Huxley: "By selective information, or lack of information, we create a new paradigm."
Voltaire: "Identify the real rulers of a country? Ask: who it is that one can't criticize?"</pre>
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</div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="height:auto;width:auto"> <div> <div><div><br></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt"><div><span style="font-size:13.3333330154419px">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. </span><br style="font-size:13.3333330154419px"><br style="font-size:13.3333330154419px"><span style="font-size:13.3333330154419px">-Greek proverb</span></div><div><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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