Has any president ever shown such a complete change of position on a central matter of American foreign policy as Barack Obama has this week in relation to Israel and the Palestinians?
Obama took office in 2009 determined to alter the American relationship with Israel as part of an overall reset in US Mideast policy. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he basically said: Nah, forget it. Back to Bush.
Oh, he had a press conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and he told an audience of wildly enthusiastic (and presumably rather carefully selected) Israeli students that they should work for peace with the Palestinians and not let their voices be drowned out.
“You must create the change you want to see,” Obama advised — a piece of Zen gobbledygook that’s basically the same as saying: Hey, whatever, you’re a democracy, you figure it out.
Which is the right thing to say to an ally, by the way, even if it is a new kind of thing for Obama to say to Israel.
But when it came to policy, Obama simply jettisoned his signal demand from 2009 — the insistence that Israel freeze “settlement activity” as a precondition for peace talks with the Palestinians.
This was a remarkable turnabout, by any reckoning, because the settlement freeze was the Obama administration’s only Mideast peace policy innovation.
The freeze had first been proposed in the so-called “road map” of 2002, but Israel had rejected it outright. And, in any case, it was only to be implemented in tandem with the conclusion of Palestinian violence against Israel — which has never ceased, as the rocket attacks from Gaza on the town of Sderot during Obama’s visit demonstrated.
Obama revived the settlement freeze as a not-so-tacit message to the Arab and Muslim world that he was tilting away from George W. Bush’s inarguable tilt toward Israel.
Acting on genuinely dreadful advice from Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, two “smart Jews” (as he called them) among his senior White House staff, Obama tried a “tough love” approach toward Israel with the delusion that there was an enthusiastic majority for his critical attitude among American and Israeli Jews.
It was instantly clear that, like a lot of “tough love” approaches, his was far more tough than it was loving. Mix in the chafing personality of Israeli Premier Bibi Netanyahu and the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States quickly became toxic.
Except for one thing. As the political connection came under deep strain, the military and high-tech relationship between the Israel Defense Forces and the Pentagon (and CIA) that had begun under the Bush administration was functioning with growing intimacy and rapport.
The increasing reliance of the Obama administration on pilotless drones provided a crucial connection, since targeted terrorist killings by drone was a warfighting technique largely innovated by the Israelis. Plus, Israel has been providing a real-time, real-world test of missile-defense systems with the “Iron Dome” technology it has developed with the United States.
Did the advantages of the “special relationship” finally catch up on Obama? Did he tire of the perpetual bad-faith excuses of the Palestinians for refusing to engage in serious negotiations?
Or are skeptics of Obama’s tone change this week right? Was he merely engaging in a seduction of the Israeli public that up to now has genuinely disliked him (with approval ratings between 4 and 10 percent, if you can believe it) to give him personal leverage if and when he wants to stop Netanyahu from launching a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities?
Is Obama stipulating that there be no preconditions to peace negotiations so he can give his new secretary of state, John Kerry, running room to go at the issue anew? Has he made encouraging noises to bluff the Israeli public into welcoming a softer, gentler form of American pressure?
We’ll see. In the meantime, Second-Term Obama just gave First-Term Obama a whack on the tush.