It’s unfortunate for Jackson Diehl that this column, in which he argues for Obama to ease up already on Israel over its past commitments to a settlement freeze, should come out the same day as this story in the New York Times, which reports that “Israel would be open to a complete freeze of settlement building in the West Bank for three to six months as part of a broad Middle East peace endeavor that included a Palestinian agreement to negotiate an end to the conflict and confidence-building steps by major Arab nations, senior Israeli officials said Sunday.”

A settlement “pause” is, of course, far short of what Israel committed to under the roadmap, as Peter Juul pointed out in an earlier post. While the Obama administration should continue to pressure Israel on its obligations, I think we should recognize this proposal, as with Netanyahu’s qualified endorsement of a Palestinian state, as positive (if certainly insufficient) progress.

While a settlement freeze is by no means impossible, there’s no doubt that it will be extremely difficult for Netanyahu with regard to his right-wing, settlements-supporting political coalition. Knowing this, it seems to me that the Obama team has created an excellent incentive for the Israelis to engage in final status talks, determine the final borders of Israel and Palestine, after which time Israel can build all it wants — inside Israel.

Diehl, on the other hand, frets that “the extraction of a freeze from Netanyahu is, as a practical matter, unnecessary.”

While further settlement expansion needs to be curbed, both the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments have gone along with previous U.S.-Israeli deals by which construction was to be limited to inside the periphery of settlements near Israel – since everyone knows those areas will be annexed to Israel in a final settlement.

To call this argument — because the Palestinians have begrudgingly gone along with past agreements under which the U.S. acquiesced to continued Israeli building on Palestinian land, it’s no big deal if Israel just keeps building on Palestinian land — specious really does injustice to the word.

It’s also strange that Diehl would accuse the administration of “raising the stakes” by holding Israel to commitments on settlements — commitments that he does not deny that Israel has made. This bespeaks a pretty cynical view of agreements between the U.S. and its partners. I should think Diehl would be more concerned with the loss of American credibility in the region that has resulted from years of a U.S. “wink, wink” policy toward Israeli settlement building — credibility that Obama is now trying to restore as a necessary first step toward resolving the conflict.

A few days ago, the anti-immigrant group, Numbers USA further relegated itself to the right-wing fringe by denouncing a potential “mainstream” ally, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and his “frightening pro-amnesty” stance. Shortly before President Obama’s Thursday bipartisan meeting on immigration reform, Numbers USA issued an email to its members bashing Cornyn:

“Sen. Cornyn has been making incredibly frightening pro-amnesty statements lately. Only you in Texas can shake him back to some degree of sensibility. Earlier this spring at a Senate hearing, he said that he is in agreement on most immigration issues with Sen. Schumer (the radically pro-amnesty Democrat from New York who chairs the Senate panel on immigration). Then yesterday, the authoritative Capitol Hill newspaper — Roll Call — said Cornyn intends to goad Obama into moving faster to pass comprehensive immigration reform. That terminology almost always means amnesty.”

Numbers USA, rest assured — in Cornyn’s case, his tempered “terminology” means nothing of the such. Though Sen. Cornyn praised Obama for beginning the immigration discussion, this weekend he reassured Texas voters that he strongly opposes “amnesty” in the same breath that he harshly criticized the unproductive agenda of groups like Numbers USA:

“Unfortunately you see groups like that basically are more interested in using money by using fear tactics rather than they are in talking about a subject in a rational and intelligent way…I do oppose amnesty, because I think my constituents in Texas oppose amnesty overwhelmingly. But that’s not to say that there can’t be some practical solution that falls short of amnesty that allows us to improve the status quo.”

Cornyn might want to double check with his constituents, but most polling indicates that the majority of Americans support a path to legalization for the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US. The very health of the GOP largely hinges on the party’s ability to regain the confidence of Latino voters who largely favor immigration reform legislation that contains a legalization component.

Cornyn has instead indicated that the only “practical solution” he is willing to support is a guest worker program — a controversial element of the immigration debate that labor groups strongly oppose. The nation’s two largest labor federations equate any new guest worker program to an “indentured servant” initiative.

The Israeli government has responded again to President Obama’s pressure to freeze all construction in settlements, in accordance with Israel’s obligations under the 2003 roadmap. Unfortunately, the Israeli government doesn’t seem to understand what the word “freeze” means. The New York Times reports today that the Israeli government will propose a conditional suspension of some settlement construction in a meeting between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell today. But this quasi-suspension seems more designed to relieve the pressure the Obama administration is placing on Israel for a settlement freeze than actually fulfill the roadmap obligations.

According to the Times, the Israeli offer will only last three to six months, during which a final status deal with the Palestinians and a broader end to the Arab-Israeli conflict will be negotiated. Construction projects currently under way would not be affected by the Israeli proposal, nor would construction in East Jerusalem. While this offer represents a shift from the Netanyahu government’s earlier stance of allowing “natural growth” in settlements, it’s still a far cry from the complete freeze demanded by both President Obama and the roadmap. Portraying it as a “freeze” when it allows settlement construction currently underway to move forward and excludes East Jerusalem –- the status of which is presumably subject to final status negotiations -– is rhetorical sleight of hand that attempts to portray Israel as being reasonable.

This dishonesty is compounded by reports that Barak’s Defense Ministry approved the construction of 50 new homes in an existing settlement just before Barak came to Washington bearing the Israeli government’s new proposal. This new construction is supposed to give settlers evicted from an illegal outpost homes, but it’s unclear why an existing settlement needs to be expanded to accommodate them. An illegal outpost is dismantled, but its residents are relocated to an existing settlement that will require additional construction in order to house them. Meanwhile, the Israeli defense minister will come to Washington bearing a settlement freeze that isn’t really a freeze.

So far, President Obama has been right to remain steadfast on a complete settlement freeze as outlined in the roadmap. Neither he nor Special Envoy Mitchell should let the Israeli government get away with rhetorical sleight of hand or shell games when it comes to the settlements. The fact that the Netanyahu government has already inched away from its own uncompromising position indicates that the United States can obtain more concessions if it remains firm on the issue.

Tomorrow is the deadline for U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq, a date Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is calling a “great victory.” But in a new interview with Washington Times radio, Vice President Cheney was still pushing the U.S. to stay in Iraq, saying that withdrawal would “waste” the sacrifice of U.S. troops:

Mr. Cheney told The Washington Times’ America’s Morning News radio show that he is a strong believer in Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and that the general is doing what needs to be done.

“But what he says concerns me: That there is still a continuing problem. One might speculate that insurgents are waiting as soon as they get an opportunity to launch more attacks.

“I hope Iraqis can deal with it. At some point they have to stand on their own. But I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.“

Cheney said that he respects Odierno, who is concerned that there “is still a continuing problem.” Cheney was referencing Odierno’s comments from a CNN interview yesterday. However, Cheney left out the rest of the general’s comments, in which he said that he doesn’t see such “a breakdown in stability” likely to happen:

ODIERNO: Well, again, I think — I think it has to do with if we see a breakdown in stability in Iraq; if we see a consistent increase in violence; if we see that the Iraqi security forces aren’t able to respond; if we have some event that it caused some instability, then that would cause us to, maybe, after we’re asked by the government of Iraq, to help.

I don’t see that right now. I believe we’re on the right path. And I want to make sure you understand that. I believe we are still on the right path. I think security and stability is headed in the right direction as we move through 30 June.

Furthermore, in an interview with CBS yesterday, U.S. ambassador to Iraq Christopher Hill said that in “overall trends, you see that violence in this year, ’09, are considerably less. … We think, we are certainly ready to make this move and most importantly we believe the Iraqi forces are ready to take over this mission.”

Cheney has long been fear-mongering on U.S. withdrawal, hoping to keep troops in Iraq as long as possible. In April 2008 he made the misleading claim that al Qaeda would “acquire control” of Iraq’s oil resources if the U.S. left, also compared withdrawal to “betrayal.”