During
his fifth trip to the Middle East in five months, U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry is trying to sound an upbeat tone about the prospects
for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
It appears as if
Kerry didn’t send the Israelis a memo about his current efforts. Or,
worse, he did send a memo, which elicited the usual Israeli response:
building more settlements on Palestinian land.
From time to time
in recent years, and decades, U.S. officials suddenly begin making
positive statements about the need for a Palestinian-Israeli peace;
sometimes, they even hold talks with the two sides. But in none of these
efforts does the U.S. manage to do anything about the core problem:
Washington cannot be an honest and impartial broker for a peace process
in which it overwhelmingly supports one side over the other with
military, economic and political assistance, and refuses to take
meaningful steps against that side’s ongoing use of settlement activity
which derails hopes for a deal.
As Kerry spoke from Kuwait,
Israeli municipal officials in Jerusalem were busy announcing their
latest land grab, this time to construct around 70 housing units in Har
Homa, a part of Greater Jerusalem that has been occupied by the
Israelis.
Once again, the Palestinians wield no tools of
meaningful pressure, while the Israelis work against the entire peace
process by creating the type of problems that push the two sides further
apart. And Kerry makes statements about peace being “difficult,” but
“possible.”
Perhaps he is unaware that people in this part of the
world have memories, and can recall the more dynamic policies and
policymakers from the U.S. in past decades. Whether or not one agrees
with the likes of Henry Kissinger or James Baker, at least they had a
clear idea of what they wanted their country to do in the Middle East
and the rest of the world. In contrast, recent U.S. foreign policy
stewards have been engaging in either flagrant disasters, such as on
Iraq under Saddam Hussein, or confusing hesitation, such as on Syria,
during the current crisis.
U.S. foreign policy these days is
reduced to asking officials from Russia and China, of all countries, to
respect the notion of the rule of law while begging for help to retrieve
Edward Snowden, after he revealed the massive level of surveillance and
spying by the National Security Agency.
Kerry, like his
predecessor Hillary Clinton and others, appears to ignore the idea that a
foreign policy based on making statements and performing positive spin
control can run into trouble when people discover there is no actual
vision or urgency behind such rhetoric. As a result, Washington’s
credibility sinks even further, while the perception that the Obama
administration has no true foreign policy steadily gains ground. The
only question is whether U.S. officials are truly aware of the damage
they are doing to their country’s interests.
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