Joe Biden’s Trip to Israel: The Backstory
Mar 14th, 2010 | 20 responses
The press has been full of stories about the shabby way in which Vice-President Joe Biden was treated on his recent trip to Israel and his confrontation with P.M. Benjamin Netanyahu over the unexpected (to the United States) news that Israel was going ahead with the construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.
The larger context is less well known. Mark Perry explains it in the current edition of Foreign Policy:
On January 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief JCS Chairman Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) “too old, too slow…and too late.”
The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” [...]
The Mullen briefing and Petraeus’s request [to have the West Bank and Gaza added to his area of operations--kk] hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus’s request [...] was denied[,] the Obama Administration decided it would redouble its efforts. … While the American press speculated that Mullen’s trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians “in a larger, regional, context” – as having a direct impact on America’s status in the region. Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.
Israel didn’t. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus’s Mullen briefing: “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: “The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.” The message couldn’t be plainer: Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives.
20 Responses to “Joe Biden’s Trip to Israel: The Backstory”
In all fairness,
“This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: “The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.”
Biden was making some valid points. No matter how illogical and demented it is, as the saying goes, “If the Arabs say there's linkage [a purported connection, no matter how tenuous or simply bizarre, between anything that happens anywhere, but especially in the Middle East, with the Israeli-Arab conflict -- as a rationalization or pretext for other conflict of any and all kinds], then there's linkage.”
I just hope our inmates running Washington don't continue to overreact to Israel, which is probably pre-positioning itself as strongly as possible before negotiating (usually one-sided as Israel's expense) with the Arabs this time.
It might be funny (and risk being really stupid) if ObamaCo decided to be really tough and seek a concrete (as opposed to diplo-blathery prior-elitist Road Map fluffiness) path toward forcing Israel to concede more or be more “peaceful” by withholding aid to that nation (it is a huge recipient; typically it and Egypt have been #1 and #2 since Carter) as a serious method that might offer serious results.
(Yes, I know, lefties will be delighted at the prospect of someone being concrete and serious about it.)
Can there be any question that Netanyahu pulled this deliberately? Can there be any question that Netanyahu et al. – even though they do not represent a majority of Israelis – will do anything they can to discredit any US administration which takes Mideast peace seriously?
With the apocalyptic christianist right wing promoting Israel's victory as a first step to the Rapture and AIPAC's Israel-is-always-right attitude, there is little hope for a real set of peace negotiations any time soon.
DLS to the contrary, the branch of Israel politics represented by Netanyahu and company really do not want peace except at the wrong side of a 20 foot wall and 60 foot exclusion zone, or at the wrong end of a gun. This is not simple pre-positioning. The extremists running Israel today seem to see any real settlement as capitulation to the Palestinians. Just as Hamas feels about settling with Israel.
I just continue to be amazed that anyone, anywhere, on either side of the argument, can think that the US position makes one whit of difference, except in the very short term and in the theater of political showmanship.
None of us will live to see peace in the Middle East. The primary actors there simply do not want it. They each want victory on their terms, and their terms only. Even if the more moderate factions from each side could craft a potentially workable solution, the radicals on each side would ensure it failed.
This conflict has been going on for thousands of years. There is absolutely no indication that lasting peace, or even temporary peace, is any closer now than it was 10, 25, 100, 1000+ years ago.
“This is not simple pre-positioning.”
Then it may more likely, than I believe, be testing Obama. I find the timing really suspicious.
(It's not as thought they are inept and doing controversial things almost at random, as though they're out of touch with the real world and electorate, as the Obama administration has been. From the start I had believed this decision by the current Israeli government was well-planned and also was deliberately timed for effect. What effect, I guess is more of a question than I believe or believed.)
“US position makes one whit of difference”
Cut the foreign aid money and I'm sure it will make a difference, particularly knowing Obama has at least three more years in office remaining.
“None of us will live to see peace in the Middle East.”
I believe Israel's general strategy is very Oriental, similar to Japan's refusal to apologize for colonial and war crimes. They're simply waiting for the aggrieved refugees and other people with valid claims to die.
Thousands of years? Bull!!! You can't have a conflict with people who aren't there…
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict has only been going on since the 1920's following the the Balfour Declarations when Jews started emigrating to Palestine which was a British Mandate. Prior to that there was no real conflict in that there were not enough Jews in Palestine to make a difference…
Gee, silly me. I guess the Jews were never the slaves of the Egyptians, The Jews had never been NEAR Jerusalem before.
Until the 1920's, Arabs and Jews got along like brothers and sisters in your warped world, huh?
Go get a history book on the Middle East, read it, and stop making a complete clown of yourself. If that is possible.
That was a mere 5000 odd years ago, about as relevant to current events in the Middle-East as…
There was this little event called the Diaspora which occurred in 70 CE during which the Romans kicked the Jews out of Palestine… You may have heard of it, ever since that event until the British encouraged them to return to Palestine, they were a tiny minority in Palestine…
In 1922 the British took the first census of Palestine:
Out of total population of 752,048, we had 589,177 Muslim, 71,464 Jews, 83,790 Christians and 7,617 Others… And most of these Jews were relatively new-comers…
At least as well as the Jews and the Christians got along, the word “Pogrom” is not an Arabic word, now is it? Nor is the Phrase “Final Solution” Arabic, is it?
Now that's a damn good idea, you should do that… you could start with this book: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 (Paperback) . You'll notice the years in the title: 1881-2001, relevant to current events, not to biblical myths that are over five thousand years old…
Biblical myths?? Really? Even as a non-Christian, I accept the fact that much of the Old Testament has strong historical underpinnings.
And you are really being obliviously ignorant of what I am saying, as you just contradicted yourself. First you want to claim that the Jews in Palestine didn't exist until the Balfour Declarations, then you want to claim that their history goes back 5,000 years (and I did say 1,000+). But guess what you say. That has nothing to do with today!
And gee, citing a book that only deals with 1881 on in the Middle East as 'proof' that there were no Jews in the Israel/Palestine peninsula is very self serving. Why not cite “When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present” by Gail Colins as proof there were no women in the US prior to 1960?
Try this one, “David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman</>. They are historians, and they are pretty confident there were a LOT of Jews in Palestine before the 1920's.
“The Israeli/Palestinian conflict has only been going on since the 1920's following the the Balfour Declarations”
No, just the most recent conflict.
Interestingly, among the other laughers brought to us by your friends the PLO is that they base their bogus claim to modern nationalism (something the Left finds evil except where politically expedient, same as a fellow Jew-hater in Germany found with respect to his own aggressive intentions) on none other than than:
something Western:
“Article 2:Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.”
http://www.mideastweb.org/plocha.htm
There was this small historical event that occurred in 70 AD, in which the Jews having pissed off the Romans one time too many, got themselves slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands, and the few suckers who survived were told in no uncertain terms to depart what is now Palestine and not show their faces in the neighborhood if they knew what was good for them. From that point in time, until the 1880's, there were no Jews (or close enough as to make no difference) in Palestine, therefor there could not be any conflicts between Jews and Palestinians for at least eighteen hundred years… The current conflict dates from the 1880's at the earliest and therefor has not existed for thousand of years.
Now if you think that the Jews have a claim on the land of Palestine and the right to kick the Palestinians out, you must logically accept that Native Americans have a claim on the US and the right to kick all the non American Indians out, and the Australian Aborigines have a claim on Australia and the right to kick all non Aborigines out, after all Native Americans and the Aborigines have far better and far more recent claims than the Jews do…
And what other Palestinian/Israeli conflict has there been? Battles and Dates Requested…
“And what other Palestinian/Israeli conflict has there been? Battles and Dates Requested…”
There has been a long Jewish presence in the area (some claim it is continuous) and some Arabs resented the immigration of Jews after 1890. No wars at the time, but conflicts, yes.
Only if more than a handful of Jews in an area defines long Jewish presence and using that standard the same can be said for pretty much any European & Mediterranean country…
So basically, what you're saying is that until European Jews started showing up in large numbers after the 1880's, there was no real conflict…
“Only if more than a handful of Jews in an area defines long Jewish presence and using that standard the same can be said for pretty much any European & Mediterranean country…”
The same can be said for Arab presence in the Palestnian region. Not to mention, no development and other details important under international law.
“So basically, what you're saying is that until European Jews started showing up in large numbers after the 1880's, there was no real conflict…”
Nothing like the modern warfare that began in the twentieth century, Don — after post-1890 immigration of Jews and a similar buildup of Arabs. (The land has been fought over earnestly since then.) No “real” conflict known to be anything like those of the twentieth century.
No it can't!!! There were plenty of Arabs living in Palestine prior to the 1880's…
“There were plenty of Arabs living in Palestine prior to the 1880's… “
That's not what I've encountered. The area was a wasteland and a remote part of the Ottoman Empire. I could be wrong and am not trying to be (excessively) confrontational about this. Obviously in theory it ought to be more desireable than other desert areas, being on the wet side of the mountains and facing the sea.
I guess the Jews were never the slaves of the Egyptians.
Maybe, maybe not. That is not within the realm of objective history.
It is somewhat, although not conclusively. From Seventy Great Mysteries of the Ancient World' edited by Brian M. Fagan: