Obama's evenhanded Mideast policy

Evenhandedness usually is considered to be a positive attribute in diplomacy, but when it comes to the Middle East, many Israelis and their supporters see it as code for a pro-Arab policy. In that view, President Obama's insistence that Israel freeze Jewish settlement construction is anti-Israeli and a sop to the Arab street. That's wrong. Obama has committed himself to a comprehensive peace that would give Palestinians a state of their own and provide Israel with security and recognition from the wider Arab world. This is the right goal, but it cannot be achieved if Israel continues to expand settlements and create new "facts on the ground" ahead of a negotiated agreement.

The idea that Obama is "anti-Israeli" is far-fetched. Speaking at Cairo University in June, Obama declared categorically to the Muslim world that the bond between the United States and Israel is "unbreakable." Israel remains a key ally, the No. 1 recipient of U.S. foreign aid at more than $2.7 billion this year. The special relationship between the two countries was demonstrated once again this week by visits from four high-ranking administration officials. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, national security advisor James L. Jones, special envoy George J. Mitchell and Mideast specialist Dennis Ross traveled there to assure Israel of U.S. military cooperation and opposition to Iran's nuclear ambitions, as well as to press the settlement issue and to try to put the peace process back on track.

That said, it is true that Obama has made significant policy shifts in order to serve as an effective peace broker. Not since President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III demanded a halt to settlement expansion in the occupied territories in the early 1990s has a U.S. president taken a stand against construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem neighborhoods, where Palestinians hope to establish their future state. In the years since then, the Jewish settlement population in the West Bank at least tripled to more than 300,000, and new Jewish projects were built in East Jerusalem. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved another one this month, seemingly in protest against U.S. demands.) President George W. Bush went so far as to send a letter to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 stating that settlement blocs with "major Israeli population centers" made it "unrealistic" to expect a complete return of the land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. While that may end up being the case, the future of settlements has to be resolved through negotiations. Such preemptive moves stand as proof to Palestinians and most of the Arab world that neither Israel nor the United States is serious about creating a viable Palestinian state.