Obama’s golden opportunity
A new secretary of defence not afraid to take on the powerful Jewish lobby can help the president draw up a viable and fair two-state solution
Is US President Barack Obama ready to crack the whip, now that he has lost his first choice to serve as secretary of state and is about to name a new secretary of defence who has been for a long time loudly critical of Israeli policies?
Chuck Hagel, a highly respected two-term Republican senator until 2008, is expected to be named the new secretary of defence for the second term of President Obama. According to the Washington Post, his appeal to Obama “is his history as an early Republican dissenter on the Iraq war, the issue that Obama rode to prominence as a freshman senator”. He had called the American invasion of Iraq “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam”.
But, the paper continued, Hagel’s chief drawback “is likely to be opposition from prominent US supporters of Israel, who question his commitment to Israel’s security”. Several prominent Democratic Jewish activists had reportedly complained at a White House party last week celebrating the Jewish Hanukah for Hagel’s voting against “Israel’s interests” while in the US Senate. He, for example, refused to join those urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group and also, after leaving the Senate, had called upon Obama to open talks with Hamas.
Hagel is also well-known known for his enthusiastic support of the Middle East “peace process” and a two-state solution of Palestine and Israel.
On the other hand, The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli daily, describes Hagel, a former Nebraska senator, as “a so-called ‘country club’ Republican not endowed with the pro-Israel reflexes that so many officeholders in the Republican party have come to possess since the days of Ronald Reagan”.
Obama’s choice of Hagel is another gamble that he believes will succeed. The feeling here is that the Republican party will not dare to make another attempt against another senior Obama nominee which saw the elimination of Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the Untied Nations who was slated to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
All this political turmoil in Washington has come at a sordid time for Israel following the elevation of Palestine to UN membership as an observer state with full rights to join the various bodies of the international organisation. Moreover, Germany and three other European members of the UN Security Council were at the time of writing in the process of issuing a statement condemning Israel’s projected colonial plans in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank — steps that were taken by the Benjamin Netanyahu government in retaliation against the UN action in support of the Palestinians.
In this respect, more than 400 American Jewish clergy from various parts of the US had called on the Israeli prime minister not go ahead with new construction in a corridor connect occupied east Jerusalem to the illegal Israeli colony of Maale Adumim. “We fear that building settlements [colonies] in E-1 would be the final blow to a peaceful solution,” read the letter released last Monday and organised by J Street, Americans for Peace Now and Rabbis for Human Rights-North America. “If Israel builds in E-1, it will cut [occupied] east Jerusalem off from its West Bank surroundings and effectively bifurcate the West Bank. In doing so, E-1 will literally represent an obstacle to a two-state solution.”
Another blow that the Netanyahu government received this week was the resignation of its powerful right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman following an indictment for breach of trust in a fraud and money-laundering case filed by the country’s attorney-general. The resignation will undoubtedly affect the upcoming national elections in Israel next month, threatening to upend the Israeli political system. The precarious situation within Israel received another shattering blow when a new survey revealed that 37 per cent of Israelis would leave the country if they could, citing economic opportunities as the main reason.
This is a golden opportunity for Obama to immediately focus hard on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the hope of finding an equitable settlement, something all his predecessors could not do. The presence of a key cabinet secretary who is not intimidated is a shot in the arm.
George S. Hishmeh is a Washington-based columnist. He can be contacted at ghishmeh@gulfnews.com