By Thanapathi
US Vice President, Joe Biden undertook a crucial tour to the Middle East last week in the hope of reviving the stalled peace process. His trip however demonstrated how incredibly complicated and sensitive the task is going to be. In what is considered a snub to the VP, Israel announced that it would be expanding Jewish settlements into the West Bank, a move that has been discouraged by the US. The current US administration has been insisting to its ally to halt the expansion of its territory into the regions of the West Bank which it occupied after the 1967 Arab Israeli War. The ceasing of the expansions has been cited by the Palestinians as a prerequisite to commence negotiations on a final agreement.

The message to Biden couldn’t have been clearer. Israel was not willing to simply obey its most important ally. Domestic politics in the US make it impossible for it to take sterner action against Israel. The influential Jewish lobby and the sizable Christian conservative voter block back in the US consider their country’s unquestioned support of Israel as the corner of the nation’s foreign policy. Any president or administration willing to risk irk of this constituency is running the risk of electoral debacle.

Just over a year since coming into office, President Barack Obama has almost nothing to show as far as Middle East peace is concerned. After eight long years of conservative administration of President George Bush who gave a blank cheque to Israel to “do what it wants”, the Obama presidency was expected regain the position of America as the peace broker in the region. His reach out to the Muslim world in a policy speech made in Cairo, Egypt last year he reiterated the vision of his administration to see a two state solution to the Palestinian problem. Yet for all its rhetoric Obama has little to show as results.

Vice President Joe Biden’s visit was meant to be a catalyst for the restart of negotiations and an effort to repair relations frayed by Israeli fears that President Obama tilts too much toward the Palestinians. Joe Biden is considered in Washington as a staunch and uncompromising supporter on Israel. Yet the Israeli announcement of expansion cannot be taken as anything but a diplomatic snub to Biden and to the Obama administration.
Wrapping up his four-day visit to Israel and the West Bank, Biden said he’s counting on U.S. envoy George Mitchell to get Israeli-Palestinian talks started for the first time in 15 months, even if they are conducted indirectly. The aim of the indirect talks is to start direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to draw out a permanent border between the two nations and create a Palestinian state. Even the United States does not recognise Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. With the settlements that have already taken place in the West Bank Palestinians are now offered only 20 percent of the land that was originally demarcated by the UN in 1948 for the Palestinian State. The Obama administration favours a broad Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank as part of a statehood deal and implies U.S. support for east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. But there are deep doubts in Israel that a treaty sharply reducing its territory would enhance the country’s security.

The peace process between the Israeli’s and the Palestinians has been under way for nearly two decades, but there have been no direct negotiations between the two sides since Israel’s war in Gaza a year ago. Days before President Obama took office the Israeli’s attacked the Gaza Strip, a narrow stretch of Palestinian territory separated from the West Bank, to purge what it called terrorists who were firing rockets into to Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to the concept of a Palestinian state but is unlikely to heed the call for withdrawal from the West Bank or halt the expansion of Jewish settlements. The current proposal to build 1600 homes is considered as the tip of the iceberg with some reports suggesting that 50,000 more units are being planned.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his meeting with Vice President Biden sought guarantees from Washington that it would pressure Israel to cancel its plan for new housing units in East Jerusalem. Biden in turn told the Palestinian leader that the United States opposes settlement construction but is determined to resume talks.

The US for its clout over Israel has been considered as the only viable powerbroker in the region. Under U.S. pressure at Camp David in 1977, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin yielded to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s demands for recovery of every inch of territory Egypt lost in the 1967 Six-Day War to secure a peace treaty. In 1993 President Bill Clinton succeeded in brining Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation and the Israeli government to the negotiation table. The Oslo deal as it was dubbed was the last best chance for the two sides to resolve the long standing dispute. Yet due to numerous factors that process failed dragging the whole region into a period of turmoil for the past two decades.

The US’s continued unconditional support for Israel is the single greatest liability for America in the Arab world. It’s also why any action that makes a peace bargain more remote, such as this latest settlement announcement, is a threat to both American and Israeli interests. When President Obama was elected into office much was expected from him, not only in the US but across the world. He was considered another Kennedy, a rock star among presidents. While no one assumed Middle East peace would be easy there was an almost religious faith, at least in the liberal world, that Obama is the man for the job. His Cairo speech which intended to amend ties with the Muslim nations gave renewed hope that this administration would be significantly different to the one it succeeded. Yet after a year of inaction now hope for a permanent Middle East peace deal seems remote as ever. The US administration’s latest efforts to jump start the peace process by sending Vice President Joe Biden to the region has shown how much ground it has lost during the year of absence. Israel even with its overwhelming dependence on the United States is showing signs of anxiety to charter its own course even against the dictates of its most important ally. The Palestinians have also been frustrated over the lack of any progress in the promised two state solution. A recipe for a larger disaster is now brewing in the region. What promised to be the greatest foreign policy achievement for President Obama might quite possibly be his biggest disappointment to the world.