Every American president for decades has officially said that the United States is opposed to the construction of Israeli "settlements" in occupied Palestinian land. But such opposition has almost always come with wink-and-nod approval of continued settlement activity. Thus, even at the height of the Oslo Accords and the peace process and even under the governance of center-left Labor prime ministers, settlements continued to expand with little public criticism from the United States. The loophole of choice has been the notion of "natural growth," the idea that a given settlement's development due to increases in family size doesn't "really" constitute expansion. Obama's innovation has been to say-clearly, calmly, repeatedly, publicly, and privately-that this excuse is not good enough.
Given the enormous gap in power between the United States and Israel, a country with a population smaller than New York City and less economic output than Alabama, the resultant contest of wills between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel should be no contest at all. But Netanyahu does have a trump card to play, his ties to American foreign-policy hawks who've been savaging Obama for his stand on settlements. Right-wing pundit and lunatic conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney, for example, deemed Obama's Cairo speech "the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich."
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer sees hypocrisy at work. He sees the Obama administration running a foreign policy based on the practice of not dictating to others. A principle that "applies to everyone -- Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity."
Of course it's a canard to say that Obama doesn't dictate anything to Iran, which the administration is pressing to live up to its international agreements and halt nuclear-weapons activity. Israel, too, is being called upon to live up to its international agreements and freeze all settlement activity. There is nothing unusual about this. Obama is running an administration that believes in fulfilling obligations under international law. It's a principle that applies to Iran and to Israel and even to the United States, where Obama is halting illegal torture and recommitting us to our obligation under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to work toward global nuclear disarmament.
But the real debate here isn't about evenhandedness -- it's about settlements. Obama wants them to stop. And hawks want them to keep plugging along. As they see it, an end to settlement expansion is tantamount to preventing Israelis from having children. "No 'natural growth' means strangling to death the thriving towns close to the 1949 armistice line," Krauthammer writes. "It means no increase in population. Which means no babies." Congressional Republicans are hoping to use this issue as a "wedge" to pry Jewish voters from their loyalty to the Democratic Party.
The beginning of wisdom on this subject is with the point Gershom Gorenberg persuasively made at the Prospect last week -- the whole notion that "natural growth" is what's at issue is a lie.
Even if we were truly talking about natural growth, the idea that population increases require endless territorial expansion is bizarre, something out of the Middle Ages. The Palestinian population is growing at a substantially faster rate than the Jewish one -- does that mean Palestinians should start seizing land in Israel proper and building colonies on it? Of course not. Nor should France build settlements in Spain. What's more, if attempting to halt settlement growth is tantamount to telling people not to have babies, then clearly dismantling settlements would need to be off the table forever. By Krauthammer's logic, decent respect for Israeli family life requires unrestrained expansion of settlements and no surrender of territory. Which is another way of saying that the hawks are fundamentally opposed to any form of peace. They're just being a bit subtle about how they express that.
If Israel's population and government are truly determined to pursue such a course, it's not entirely clear that we can stop them. But it seems that the Israeli public is not that committed to the settlements. A recent poll indicates that a majority of Israelis disapprove of Obama's conduct but think that Netanyahu should listen to him anyway, the subtext being that most Israelis recognize the value of their country's special relationship with the United States. But some in the Israeli government don't see it that way. Minister Without Portfolio Yossi Peled has gone so far as to propose Israeli sanctions against the U.S. unless Obama stops being so pushy.
But one through-the-looking-glass minister does not a whole country make. It's likely that if Obama stands his ground, Netanyahu will either back down or else have his government toppled in favor of one that's prepared to deal with Obama. Either way, a full Israeli settlement freeze would be the best news for Middle East peace in years. And it looks to be achievable.
