This week, as John Kerry marks a year at the helm of the State Department, almost everyone in the Mideast is angry at him, while much of Washington is puzzled.
The Americans are trying to make sense of the secretary of state’s reported belief that President Obama needs a new Syria policy because the current one has failed. Isn’t it Kerry’s job to produce that policy?
But first let’s handle the anger, which mostly turns on Kerry’s nonstop push for an Israel-Palestine accord. Kerry sees this as so crucial that he’s visited the area more than any other spot and created the largest team at State to steer peace talks.
Yet this week top officials in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government are heaping curses at Kerry.
Why? In Munich Saturday, Kerry warned Israelis of all the plagues awaiting if they fail to resolve the age-old dispute with the Palestinians by Passover. “There are talk of boycotts and other kinds of things,” Kerry warned, “Are we all going to be better with all of that?”
The message to Israel: Sign on to the (yet-unpublished) “framework agreement” that Kerry’s team is preparing — or else, well, all “kinds of things” might happen (including, as he warned last November, a new eruption of Palestinian violence).
Such talk is “unacceptable,” Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, a Netanyahu confidante, told Israel Radio: “Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a gun to its head” while dealing with issues that are “critical to our national interests.”
Other Cabinet ministers went even further, some (unfairly) calling Kerry an “anti-Semite.”
Oh, the subtlety.
Kerry “has a proud record of over three decades of steadfast support for Israel’s security and well-being, including staunch opposition to boycotts,” his spokeswoman, Jen Psaky, protested. He’s merely describing reality, she added.
But as the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman explained in an unusually stinging statement, such a description can “create a reality of its own,” and so hurt Kerry’s peace efforts.
Some in Israel, including Finance Minister Yair Lapid, do indeed fear that “the world” will accuse Israel of blowing up the US-led process, and the ensuing boycotts would hurt the economy.
Yet the threat isn’t that great. Arab-led boycotts didn’t start with the “occupation.” They’ve been a staple of anti-Zionism from Day One of the Jewish state, which early on was much more dependent on outside trade (and donations) than now.
Today, while some small European banks are threatening to sever ties with Israeli financial institutions, the country’s record $80 billion in foreign-currency reserves points to quite healthy financial relations with the world. Trade with Asia and the Americas is booming.
That’s because investors base decisions on business considerations, rather than politics. And as the Omaha Oracle, Warren Buffett, says, “Israel is the leading, largest and most promising investment hub outside the United States.”
So the boycott threat did more to anger lots of Israelis than it will possibly do to get Jerusalem to agree to Kerry’s peace proposals.
Which, incidentally, have others unhappy. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, for one, vows he’ll never agree to Netanyahu’s demand that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state, which Kerry reportedly plans to include in that “framework agreement.”
Ditto Jordan. Yes, King Abdullah has long advocated pushing Israeli-Palestinian peace-processing to the front. But now Jordan’s worried about being flooded by Palestinians in the wake of a deal. A group of retired Jordanian generals this week described Kerry’s emerging plan as “an American-Zionist plot to liquidate the Palestinian cause at the expense of Jordan.”
Oh, the subtlety.
Top regional leaders, and many in America, have long warned Kerry against making Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking the centerpiece of his regional policy. Jordan’s former foreign minister, Marwan Muasher, compared the effort to the Lone Ranger’s, telling the Jewish Forward last year that inside the Obama administration, “There is not even a Tonto, it is just him doing it alone.”
Yes, miracles can happen. Conversely, some of Kerry’s dire predictions could come true. Would the Jewish state be worse off if, like Hillary Clinton, he’d just left it and the Palestinians be?
He does have other concerns, such as his reported admission that US policy on Syria is “collapsing.” And he may soon have to admit the same on Iran.
Perhaps if Kerry worried less about real and imagined future dangers on the road between Jerusalem and Ramallah, his State Department would have the resources to address the very real catastrophes that now threaten the future of the entire region.