Sooner or later I was going to have to address this issue here. Some of what our Homegirl has been dealing with this past week is the angry backlash from the Palestinians and the Arab states, even those closest to us, due to her remarks in Jerusalem and in Morocco last week. She has been right in front of the onslaught all week, and since she’s our Homegirl, this has been disturbing to us. There have been many, many articles flying around the internet attacking her and her remarks. Some of these have emanated from Israeli sources. But the reaction is by and large, international and erupted, of course, here in the U.S. on blogs and in the press.
So, in defense of my Homegirl, I would like to argue that while her words were indeed her words, the policy is the policy, and our policy of demanding a freeze on settlements was one that she stated firmly over and over again last Spring. If she has conceded anything here, I believe the concession is not of her making alone. President Obama met with Mahmoud Abbas and Binyamin Netanyahu in September at UNGA. At that time, our firm anti-settlement growth policy began to dissolve. A month later, in her report commissioned by the President during UNGA, our Homegirl passed on the reports by her special envoy, George Mitchell, that the negotiations were at an impasse and would not be getting off the ground soon.
Then came her trip to Pakistan, Abu Dhabi, Jerusalem, Morocco, and the adjuncted extension to Egypt. In Abu Dhabi, she did not throw any praise or support toward Abbas. In Jerusalem she praised Netayahu’s “unprecedented” agreement to stop building settlements after these last 3,000, and in Morocco, she faced anger necessitating the ad hoc stop in Egypt.
Well, I cannot deny that she said those things any more than anyone can deny how firmly against settlement growth she was back in the Spring, so there has to be more to this than Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, single-handedly and in isolation, shifting U.S. Policy re: settlements. I will not pretend to know what goes on in the Situation Room during high-level NSC meetings, but IF our policy has changed (I am not certain that it has), I am not sure the Secretary of State alone has the power to make such a revision independently.
She depends heavily on her staff for briefings and updates, and wisely has chosen to employ special envoys to regions at risk. Certainly their input, from the ground, has a certain impact. I just cannot believe that her brush is the only one painting this canvas.
As I said above, I will not link here to all of the articles critical of Hillary this week. I will link only to this one.
November 6, 2009: An Ode to Light a Fire: In The House and Secretary of State
Two paragraphs there caught my attention, especially given who her special envoy to the Middle East is. First this:
All the settlements are illegal under international law and the precedent of US failure to act was well established by 1973, when Ariel Sharon bragged to Winston Churchill III, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years time, neither the United Nations, nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.”
This creates a Northern Ireland situation in one generation. Sharon was savvy enough to know that once the populations were mixed in the occupied territories a two state solution was about as likely as the Six Counties ever becoming part of the Irish Free State. If anybody in the Obama Administration and the Clinton State Department recognizes this, it has to be George Mitchell. The question of freezing settlements might not only be moot, but it may well have been moot for many years.
The paragraph that immediately follows that one rang a bell with this Irish-Catholic-American Homegirl:
Back in 2005, top U.S. law enforcement officials attended a briefing organized by the Council for the National Interest regarding how charities “such as B’nai B’rith and Hadassah were in direct control of the World Zionist Organization and directly linked to a massive money-laundering operation…and the settlements are an indirect generator of terrorism against the United States.”
Speaking of Northern Ireland, remember NORAID? They were collecting money right in Catholic churches here in the U.S., and it ended up buying guns and ammo for the IRA. Many knew this, and gave willingly anyway! I would not be surprised if they bought some arms and ammunition from Israel.
So! I cannot, and will not try to spin what our Homegirl said. The Palestinian people deserve a united state of their own. Not a land divided. Not a land criss-crossed with 30-foot walls and checkpoints (if you have ever been anywhere with checkpoints, you know just how intimidating that is). Not a second-class nation with all of its necessities controlled by another. I believe our Homegirl is dedicated to that.
But I wonder if she, or anybody can undo what began when Sharon made that statement 36 years ago. Israel has successfully created a two-county replica of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland with the same kind of religious division. Two generations have grown up in this political structure. As George Mitchell, and our Homegirl, so involved in the Northern Ireland peace process, must know, Ireland will never be, as the song so hopefully rings, A Nation Once Again. And it is looking bleaker and bleaker that Palestine will ever be a nation. We should have been much more careful in 1947. We should have predicted what was sure to happen. We should have listened to our then Secretary of State George C. Marshall who counseled circumspection. But we did not, and here we stand, with his successor, our Homegirl, in a tight spot – not entirely of her making.
Stacyx of Secretary Clinton blog had a great idea today. I do not want to share it without her permission. If she decides to post it here, I would be happy to see it.
Hi! It actually wasn’t my idea but it’s an idea that has been floating around the internet since last weekend when Abbas became so demoralized and then announced he will not run for reelection- the possibility of the Palestinians going to the UN and unilaterally declaring statehood along the 1967 borders- in a way, that is an attractive idea- it would force many of the parties to fish or cut bait so-to-speak. Given the expansion of settlements (as your quote from Ariel Sharon makes clear) over the past several decades it is clear that Israel’s goal is to gobble up as much Palestinian land (or land that the Palestinians deem to be part of any future Palestinian state) so as to make Palestinian statehood merely an idea that will never come to fruition.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126594.html
This is an idea that scares the sh*t out of both Israel and the US because lets be honest, despite all the talk of “peace in the Middle East” as soon as an Israeli or US politician starts to make meaningful steps in that regard, the US Congress and the conservative coalitions in Israel push back. All of this makes me wonder if the US and Israel (and of course Hamas- I don’t want to let them off the hook here) really *want* the type of peace which the Palestinians envision for themselves.
For the most part, international law views Israeli incursion past the 1967 borders as illegal so doesn’t it make sense that that is a starting point? Well, yes it does except for everything you and I said above- neither the US nor Israel are willing to concede that and of course illegal Israeli settlements (and “outposts”) have been strategically placed so as to make that impossible. While the official US position has been to oppose the settlement expansion we have done little or nothing to really stop it and for those who say we would never have been able to do that because Israel is a sovereign nation I say “BS”- we work behind the scenes ALL the time to change governments we don’t like, we cut off the purse strings to effect changes we find favorable to our interests- of course we could have pushed harder over the past decades to get Israel to stop its incursions but for political reasons, we did not.
This is why I personally view the demand of a halt of ALL settlement activity to not only be reasonable, but necessary.
Now, a big problem is Hamas- unless Hamas and Fatah are willing to lay down arms and acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and their right to do so without fear of attack, this wouldn’t work. So yes, of course the Palestinians bear a lot of responsibility for the current situation too. There is enough blame to go around. Is it possible for the palestinians to do this all w/o Hamas and then turn around and start arresting and rounding up Hamas with the help of the UN once statehood is declared? I don’t know. As a sovereign nation Palestine would be allowed to have a military which they obviously don’t have now. I definitely think they would need international help (to root out Hamas militants) initially although that begs the question- would Hamas simply continue as a terrorist organization despite statehood? I honestly don’t know.
One would hope that if the Palestinians were offered a state based upon the 1967 borders, that would be incentive enough for even the militants to recognize the futility of continuing to try to wage a guerrilla war with Israel and more moderate Palestinians but I honestly don’t know.
If Hamas were to refuse to put down their arms and their war against Israel EVEN when offered statehood based upon 1967 borders, then I’m not sure what the hell Hamas wants- if their struggle is based upon nothing but the total eradication of Israel then they are doomed to failure (as they should be) because that is as big of an obstacle (if not more) to Palestinian statehood as settlement expansion. Hamas does not seem to have the best interest of the Palestinian people in mind and hopefully the Palestinian people realize this- support for Hamas has dropped significantly and I can’t help but wonder if the Palestinians are finally starting to realize that Hamas offers nothing but more suffering and violence and that it will NEVER end. Hamas has not been able to keep the Palestinians safe- in fact, quite the opposite, as Operation Cast Lead demonstrated. As angry as some Palestinians are with Israel, lets hope that they realize that Hamas offers them nothing but more hatred, more violence and more suffering.
It’s tricky and there’s obviously no easy solution. I don’t want to be naive in saying that they should unilaterally declare statehood because I know that that won’t magically eradicate all the problems but at this point I just don’t see a way forward- this has been going on for decades and every time a well-meaning leader (Carter, Bill Clinton, Obama) tries to move towards peace the very people they are TRYING to help throw up huge, self-defeating roadblocks.
Sorry for my rambling, I just don’t know…
Yes! Your suggestion that Hamas lay down its arms – that would be dramatic – as it was when the Irish National Liberation Army did right before Hillary’s arrival in Ireland.
It would be a statement. Even better, they should follow the IRA roadmap and establish a political party like Sinn Féin – dramatically a political rather than military or paramilitary entity. In other words, go legit.
As you point out, Hamas is in a weakened state right now. If they really want peace and really want to help the Palestinian people this is a roadmap that can help.
This paths works. As the John Lennon-Yoko Ono song goes, “War is over if you want it, war is over now.”
It can only happen if people really want it.