LONDON: Back in early 2008, when President Barack Obama decided to run for the presidency, he was an unknown quantity. Research into Obama’s friends and advisors who were (and still are) close to him revealed a disturbing thread that made many cautious about his ideological makeup. His 20-year relationship with his pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who officiated at the Obama’s wedding as well as baptising their two daughters, raised plenty of eyebrows due to Wright’s long-standing anti-Semitism, his praise of the anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, his hatred of Israel, and the blame for the 9/11 attack that he placed at America’s door. Obama’s weak defence that he was unaware of Wright’s views was not convincing.
It should have come as no surprise that a significant majority of advisors Obama picked to advise on foreign policy shared one common theme—their disdain and, in some cases, their hatred of Israel: the Brzezinskis, father and son, Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, Robert Malley, Samantha Power, Rashid Khalidi, Valerie Jarrett, to name but a few.
Thus, Obama used his 2009 speech in Cairo, before an audience packed with members of the Muslim Brotherhood, to ignore the Jews’ 3,500 years of history in the Land of Israel and to further his pro-Muslim sympathies by re-writing history. He attempted to embed a Muslim narrative into American history by praising Islam as “a part of America” and that Muslims “have always been a part of the American story” who “have enriched the US and have won Nobel prizes”. He spoke of the “nearly 7 million American Muslims in our country today” (a figure which he gleaned from the Islamic Information Center). The more reliable CIA Facebook estimated approximately 1.8 million. His speech was riddled with so many errors and falsehoods that, inevitably, it raised red flags and many, both in Israel and the US, expressed concern over Obama’s longer-term ambitions to downgrade the strategic relationship with Israel.
Since then he has forbidden members of his administration to describe terrorists, or acts of terror, as “Islamic” or “Muslim”, which even drew praise in an op-ed from the deputy editor-in-chief of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (owned by a Saudi Arabian company), in May 2010. This policy has remained in force ever since, much to the astonishment of many senior figures in the intel and counter-terrorism worlds. (“You can’t defeat the enemy unless you identify it…”)
In August 2012, a few months before the US election, I was sufficiently concerned to write: “If Obama is re-elected in November, I foresee a very difficult relationship with Israel.” Little did I realise just how disastrous that relationship would turn out to be.
Some 12 months after his re-election in 2012, Obama must have been considering what sort of legacy he was going to leave. He had been drifting noticeably away from America’s traditional allies, particularly Israel, and those in the Sunni Arab world, while at the same time, making some encouraging noises (noticeably in his 2009 Cairo speech) to Iran, the world’s main source of international terrorism. So, in 2014, began the process of engagement over Iran’s nuclear programme led by Obama’s chief Iran negotiator, Wendy Sherman, who, readers might recall, was the chief architect of the nuclear negotiations with North Korea in 1999 under President Clinton. Former Secretary of State James Baker called that failed deal “appeasement”.
Res. 2334 harms Israel as it effectively abrogates Res. 242 (1967), which had been the cornerstone of peace negotiations. It stipulated that in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist in secure borders, Israel would cede some, not all, of the territories it took control over during the war.
So keen was Obama to establish some sort of legacy before the end of his term that by mid-2015, Secretary of State John Kerry began a retreat from some of the “non-negotiable” lines laid down in 2014, such as the cancellation of the embargoes on conventional arms and ballistic missiles to Iran. The other major retreat was over the US insistence on “anytime, anywhere” inspections. Under the final agreement, Iran has the right to deny international inspectors access to any undeclared nuclear site. The denial is then adjudicated by a committee—on which Iran sits. It then goes through several other bodies, on all of which Iran sits. Even if the inspectors’ request prevails, the approval process can take 24 days. What would be left to inspect after 24 days? On top of all this, the Obama Administration agreed to release $120-140 billion of frozen assets, which even Secretary Kerry agreed would most probably benefit Iran’s terrorist allies, Hezbollah in particular.Little wonder that, within days, Obama took that agreement first to the UN Security Council for approval (in July 2015), because all previous UN resolutions outlawing Iran’s nuclear activities would then be cancelled. The subsequent vote in Congress became largely irrelevant, because the legal underpinning for the entire international sanctions regime against Iran will have been already dismantled at the Security Council. Ten years of painstakingly constructed international sanctions were eliminated overnight.
In August 2016, Reuters reported that the US and its P5+1 partners had agreed “in secret” to allow Iran to evade some restrictions in last year’s landmark nuclear agreement in order to meet the deadline for it to start getting relief from economic sanctions. These are some of the side agreements that President-elect Donald Trump, now President, has said he wants to see.
While many saw this entire negotiation as an act of dangerous appeasement, not just to Israel but also to the US and Sunni Arab countries, Obama surely understood the advantage of advancing his Middle East agenda through the United Nations, rather than relying on the US Congress.In October 2016, possibly as a co-ordinated strike ahead of December’s infamous UNSC Resolution 2334, UNESCO passed a disgraceful resolution on “Occupied Palestine”, orchestrated by Arab and Muslim member states (which form the largest single voting bloc in the UN with its 57 members) which amounted to a rewriting of the history of Jerusalem. The resolution pointedly ignored the Biblical Jewish connection to two of the faith’s holiest sites in Jerusalem: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, which both pre-date Islam by hundreds of years. Furthermore, the resolution ordered all references to these sites to use Islamic terms, rather than the Hebrew.
As with the Iran deal, Obama knew there would have been overwhelming Congressional opposition to this resolution, so he waited until Congress was not in session, giving Israel virtually no notice of his intent not to veto. UNSC Resolution 2334, adopted on 23 December 2016, politically reinforces UNESCO’s resolution. Obama’s failure to veto the resolution is at odds with long-standing American foreign policy that has insisted on peace through negotiations, and not through the UN. It is nothing other than a betrayal of America’s closest ally and only democracy in the Middle East. US ambassador Samantha Power’s telling handshake with Palestinian representative Riyadh Mansour said it all.
Res. 2334 harms Israel—and the prospects for peace—in two ways. Firstly, it effectively abrogates Res. 242 (1967), which had been the cornerstone of peace negotiations. It stipulated that in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist in secure and defensible borders, Israel would cede some, not all, of the terr
itories it took control over during the war. Everyone understands that at the heart of negotiations, there will have to be territorial compromises, however difficult. This is the one card Israel can play. But Res. 2334 says that the entire West Bank (i.e. Judaea and Samaria, the ancestral homelands of the Jewish people) and East Jerusalem (including the ancient Jewish Quarter) are “occupied Palestinian territory”. So what is there left to negotiate? It naturally follows that the Palestinians have no incentive to give Israel peace, and they won’t.
Khalid Abu Toameh, a distinguished Israeli Arab journalist, whom I’ve known for about two decades, noted that the Palestinian Authority sees Resolution 2334 as a green light for more violence, murders and confrontation. He also said that if presidential elections by the PA were held today in the West Bank, Hamas would win by a comfortable margin. The second way it harms Israel is that this gives a strategic boost to the boycott of Israel as a whole. It calls on states “to distinguish in their relevant dealings between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967”. Since no Israeli company makes that distinction, all Israeli economic activity is now threatened with boycotts. Furthermore, it implicitly encourages the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israeli officials who might have been engaged in the “war crime” of settlement building.
Back in June 2016, in an article printed by The Sunday Guardian (Two-state solution for Israel, Palestine may open a Pandora’s box, 26 June), I repeated what some analysts had been fearing. “There is some speculation that, after the elections in November and before Obama leaves office in January, he may attempt to shore up his legacy by imposing a solution to the peace process by not using the US veto in the UN Security Council… Abbas of the PA is banking on this, which explains why he consistently refuses to meet with Netanyahu for face-to-face negotiations. Why should he meet him if the Americans can deliver what he wants without having to pay any diplomatic price?”
As it turned out, it wasn’t a French resolution, but they hosted their own, somewhat farcical, conference on 15 January, attended by some 70 countries, to lend support to Res. 2334. The UK, to its credit, expressed reservations and declined to send a high-level delegation. A Foreign Office statement said it had “particular reservations” about a conference “intended to advance peace between the parties that does not involve them”, adding that it had not signed up to the joint communiqué.
What are the possible repercussions? The Trump administration will find it difficult, if not impossible, to reverse the resolution. The new US President may consider the following options:
* Moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capitol, Jerusalem.
* A strategic review of the US-UN relationship, together with a reduction or withholding of funds to the UN. (The US accounts for around 22% of its budget).
* Demand changes to the payment schedule. Currently it’s based on the ability to pay rather than, for example, on population.
* Impose restrictions (particularly on travel) on UN member states which do not have diplomatic relations with the US, but have UN missions on US territory.
* Demand changes to the permanent membership of the Security Council. As American Thinker suggests, France’s seat could be re-allocated as an EU seat. It would be in the West’s interests to include India, which has good relations with Israel. Muslim states would protest, but it would align India closer to Western longer-term interests.
* Adopt legislation that would impose sanctions on European government and private entities that engage in BDS (boycott, divestment, sanction) activities against Israel and take steps to discourage the Palestinian Authority from continuing to attempt to mobilise the ICC against Israel.
* Reaffirm the letter from President George W. Bush to PM Ariel Sharon in which Bush recognised that major settlement blocs will remain part of Israel under any peace treaty.
And Israel?
* Its continued recognition of the PLO makes little sense now that the Palestinians have successfully killed the peace process by abrogating Res. 242. This would have implications for the Donald Trump administration. If Israel ended its recognition of the PLO, it’s possible the US will follow suit.
* A reappraisal of the working relationship between the IDF (based in Area C) and PA forces (in Areas A and B) in the West Bank, which has, until now, worked reasonably well, and has done much to keep Abbas in power while acting as a check on Hamas. After all, these potentially hostile PA forces now take their orders from leaders who reject peaceful coexistence.
* The application of Israeli law to Area C, even the possibility of its annexation.
Res. 2334 was sponsored by New Zealand (apparently heavily lobbied by Secretary John Kerry and by the UK’s Boris Johnson), and also by Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal, not known as upholding Western democratic values as Israel does. They explained to the Council that settlements “are the single biggest threat to peace”—not, apparently, seven decades of unremitting Arab terror and violent rejection of Jewish self-determination in the historic homeland of the Jewish people that long pre-dates Israel’s 1967 war of self defence and the building of settlements. Moral incoherence indeed.
Christopher Dreyfus is a former member of Council of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, London.