Think Progress

Palin: ‘Jewish Settlements Should Expand,’ Even In Palestinian Areas

In an interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin separated herself from decades of U.S. policy — which has held that Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegitimate and an impediment to peace — saying that she thinks “Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expand”:

WALTERS: The Obama administration does not want Israel to build any more settlements on what they consider Palestinian territory. What is your view on this?

PALIN: I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.

WALTERS: Even if it’s [in] Palestinian areas?

PALIN: I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expand.

Not only does Palin disagree with the Obama administration on that, she also disagrees with the Bush administration, whose 2002 “roadmap for peace” called for a settlement freeze. In fact, every U.S. administration since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967 has opposed Israel’s building of settlements, which are held to be illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention:

Article 49. The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

In addition to violating Israel’s obligations under international law, the settlements are a major source of anger and frustration for Palestinians, and one of the main drivers of extremism and violence among both Palestinians and Israelis. By further entrenching Israel within the Palestinian territories, the settlements also make a two-state solution — which both Presidents Bush and Obama have recognized as a central U.S. national security interest — far more difficult to achieve.

Palin’s wild views on Jewish settlements might help her steal some radical right-wing religious support from Mike Huckabee, but they have disastrous implications both for U.S. and Israeli security, as well as for Palestinian national and human rights.

Blair On Middle East Peace Talks: ‘You’ll Never Get The Most Optimal Context…So Let’s Get It Going’

This Saturday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will travel to Israel for her first official visit since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was sworn in. Her visit comes at a time when the Middle East peace dialogue appears to have stalled. Clinton “aims to push forward the discussions with Israel and the Palestinians about agreeing to a framework for negotiations.”

In an interview with ThinkProgress today, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — who previously served as a Middle East envoy — said, “I just think the essential thing is to get the negotiations underway. You’ll never get the most optimal context. … It’ll never be perfect, so let’s get it going.” Blair also emphasized the need to show “real changes on the ground.”

Rather than embrace final-status negotiations for a two-state solution in the Middle East, Netanyahu has recently suggested the idea of forging an “economic peace” with Palestinians. Blair told us this idea isn’t practical because economic issues must be coupled with political progress:

You’ve got to have the political and the economic and the security. But however, having said that, the economics — provided it’s not separated out from the politics or the security — the economics can play a part. The West Bank economy at the moment is growing pretty strongly. … So it’s not all bad news, but you need the political context.

Watch it:

The Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo asked Blair about the UK experience with community schools. Blair, who was at the Center for American Progress today to discuss how to improve student outcomes, emphasized that the longer hours and valuable services provided by community schools could mean they are “the wave of the future.”

Huckabee Rejects Two-State Solution

On a visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories this week, former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee supported Israel’s right to build settlements on Palestinian land. He also stated his opposition to a two-state solution, saying that there is no room for a Palestinian state “in the middle of the Jewish homeland”:

Speaking to a small group of foreign reporters in Jerusalem, Huckabee, seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2012, said the international community should consider establishing a Palestinian state some place else.

“The question is should the Palestinians have a place to call their own? Yes, I have no problem with that. Should it be in the middle of the Jewish homeland? That’s what I think has to be honestly assessed as virtually unrealistic.”

This isn’t the first time Huckabee has come out against a two-state solution and endorsed the idea of Palestinian population transfer. In August 2008, Huckabee said, “The two-state solution is no solution, but will cause only problems,” insisting that “the Palestinians can create their homeland in many other places in the Middle East, outside Israel.” Ironically, the Jerusalem Post reported that Huckabee “did not want to impose his views on the situation or to Americanize it.”

Huckabee’s current visit is being sponsored by the American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a non-profit organization “that sends millions of shekels worth of donations to Israel every year for clearly political purposes, such as buying Arab properties in East Jerusalem.” Israel’s Haaretz reported that the group “is registered in the United States as an organization that funds educational institutes in Israel,” but that its financing of settlements in East Jerusalem would “seem to violate the organization’s tax-exempt status.”

Yesterday, Huckabee attended a reception at the Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem, which “became the focus of American-Israeli tensions last month.” The Obama administration has objected to Israeli plans for construction of a new Jewish settlement at the hotel, which is “located in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood.”

Israeli Ambassador Says Iran Not Deterrable Because ‘The Regime Is Not Secular’

During an interview yesterday with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren said that Israel would not be wholly satisfied if Iran agreed to supervision over its nuclear program. “Certainly from Israel’s perspective, we would not be very much at ease with that,” he said. “We have seen how Iran has worked to subvert, to sidestep any type of international supervision of its nuclear program.”

When Zakaria noted that U.S. policies of deterrence against the Soviet Union and China have worked in the past, Oren dismissed the possibility that Iran can be deterred because Iran is “not secular”:

ZAKARIA: Mao was certainly about as crazy as leaders get in terms of the bizarre statements, their willingness to talk about the destruction of the world, inflicting enormous casualties. If these guys were deterred by the fact that they would suffer retaliation, why will Iran not be deterred?

OREN: Because the Maoist regime, the Stalinist regime were secular regimes. They had secular ideologies. … But the Iranian regime is not a secular regime. The Iranian regime is carrying out what they believe to be a divinely ordained task on the planet, and that is the conduct of a holy war.

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Oren is subscribing to the radical “Iran as irrational actor” view espoused by the likes of far right neocons Micheal Ledeen and Frank Gaffney. Just because a nation is religious does not make it undeterrable.

As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss notes, “Iran’s actual policy choices over the last three decades indicate rational strategic calculations. … Preservation of the Islamic Republic, not some crazy desire to trigger the apocalypse, is what guides Iranian policy.” Mehdi Khalaji, an expert in Shiite theology at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has studied in Qom, has challenged the theory that Iran’s leaders are willing to commit national suicide in pursuit of some wider religious goal:

As the theory of the guardianship of the jurist requires, the most significant task of the Supreme Leader is to safeguard the regime, even by overruling Islamic law. Therefore, it seems like Khamenei, unlike the Iranian president, does not welcome and military confrontation with the West, the United States, or Israel.

When asked recently if Iran could be deterred, nuclear expert and Harvard professor Graham Allison, who is renowned for his expertise on bureaucratic decision making said “the benefit that Iran could hope to achieve by building up its own military forces, including nuclear forces would be significantly diminished,” with a credible U.S.-led military deterrent.

Israeli Consul Recalled After Authoring Memo Critical of Israel’s Approach To Obama Administration

Last week, an internal memorandum written by Boston-based Israeli consul general Nadav Tamir was leaked to the Israeli press, causing a media “firestorm” in Israel. In the memo, Tamir writes that the US-Israeli relationship is suffering as a result of Israeli hostility towards President Obama’s efforts to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an end:

During a visit to Israel, I became more aware that we have a damaging misunderstanding regarding the intentions and policies of the American administration. I must note that even if I am wrong in my assessment of the American administration, the way in which we manage our relations nowadays is causing strategic damage to two very important aspects that make up our special relationship and they are the level of intimacy in coordinating policies, and the support of US public opinion towards Israel. [...]

In many American circles, there is a feeling these days, that while the Obama administration tries to resolve global conflicts, it must deal with the refusal to cooperate by governments in Iran, North Korea, and Israel. Aaron Miller’s words, spoken after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, clearly show this feeling. He said it was a meeting between Obama yes we can and Netanyahu no you won’t. [...]

There are, of course, players in American and Israeli politics who oppose Obama ideologically and are willing to sacrifice the special relationship between the countries to further their own political agenda, but we cannot let these players damage the bipartisan attitude that rightly characterized the conduct of Israeli governments toward the US.

As a result of his memorandum, Tamir was recalled back to Israel and Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman angrily told the press that “if someone is not happy and can’t live with government policy, the way is not to criticize and leak but to resign.” Some in the conservative community in Boston have sympathy for Lieberman’s position. Tom Mountain, a right-wing columnist for the Jewish Advocate, wrote in response to the controversy, “The bottom line is that the Obama government has been hostile to the Israeli government from the beginning. … Tamir is writing as an apologist for the Obama administration.’’

Yet many in the Jewish community around Boston have come to Tamir’s aid. Jonathan Sarna, a Jewish historian at Brandeis University, told the press that Tamir has “been seen as the most effective [consul] that anyone can remember.” And Michael Ross, the President of the Boston City Council and a son of Holocaust survivors, called Tamir a “dedicated advocate for Israel.”

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe defended Tamir in an editorial titled “Called out for telling the truth” today. The Globe writes, “Tamir was acting well within the rules of his position…when he offered his government some frank advice about how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies are alienating some Americans. Monitoring local opinion is part of what consuls do, and Tamir shouldn’t be punished for doing his job.”

Huckabee To Broadcast His Fox News Show From An Israeli Settlement

Israel’s Haaretz reports that “former U.S. presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee plans to broadcast his weekend show on Fox News” from a settlement construction site in East Jerusalem:

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said Huckabee will air the talkshow during a solidarity visit to the site of the project, which is in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

Hikind, who is active in right-wing Jewish causes, told Haaretz that dozens of U.S. activists will participate in the mission, in order to express their support for the project and the man behind it, Irving Moskowitz.

Hikind is a former follower of Meir Kahane, a Jewish extremist who was assassinated in 1990. Two Kahanist organizations, Kach and Kahane Chai, are on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Irving Moskowitz is a Florida-based gambling magnate who funds right-wing pro-Israel organizations in the United States and radical Israeli settler groups and settlement projects in the occupied territories, like the one in Sheikh Jarrah. Moskowitz is also a longtime funder of conservative think tanks like the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Center for Security Policy (CSP).

Huckabee has been an outspoken supporter of Israeli settlements — and opponent of a two-state solution. Last July, Huckabee told World Net Daily that “the two-state solution is no solution, but will cause only problems. … The Palestinians can create their homeland in many other places in the Middle East, outside Israel.”

The Israel Project: Ending Settlements = ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

Columnist Douglas Bloomfield reports that The Israel Project (TIP) — a Washington- based group that describes itself as “devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace” — advocates accusing those who support removing illegal Israeli settlements of promoting “a kind of ethnic cleansing to move all Jews” from the West Bank.

Bloomfield obtained a copy of TIP’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, “a manual on how to talk to journalists and opinion molders about the Arab-Israeli conflict.” The manual states:

“The single toughest issue” to defend among Americans generally and American Jews in particular is settlements, says the manual, and “hostility towards them and towards Israeli policy that appears to encourage settlement activity.” [...]

Similarly, TIP says the “best argument” for settlements is this: Since Arabs citizens of Israel “enjoy equal rights,” telling Jews they can’t live in the Palestinian state “is a racist idea.”

As Bloomfield notes, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said recently that Jews who choose to live in the new state of Palestine “will not enjoy any less rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel.”

Last Thursday, TIP organized a press call with Israeli spokesman Mark Regev, who defended continued building in Israel settlements. Given the numerous Israeli administrative and security measures that function to divest Palestinians of their property and put it into the hands of Israeli settlers, TIP’s use of the term “ethnic cleansing” is patently ridiculous.

Lieberman Says He’s ‘Pleasantly Encouraged’ By Obama, But Disagrees With His Middle East And Health Care Agenda

In an interview with Bloomberg’s Al Hunt, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) — who campaigned hard against President Obama during the 2008 election and supported his Republican challenger John McCain — said that he’s impressed with how Obama is handling the job.

“Put me down now as pleasantly encouraged by the first five months,” Lieberman said. “He has been strong, particularly on foreign policy. I think President Obama is off to a very, very good start in a very difficult time in our nation’s history.” Lieberman lauded Obama’s recent Cairo speech to the Muslim world, saying it was a “significant step overall. … My guess is he opened some minds in the Muslim world.”

Despite the laudatory comments of Obama’s foreign policy vision, Lieberman offered criticism of the president’s efforts to urge Israel to stop its settlement activities. “I thought the focus on the President’s direct call in that speech in Cairo for the Israelis to freeze all settlement activity — including the ‘natural growth‘ of settlements that everybody agrees are no longer settlements — …that was risky in the sense that it may lead listeners to believe that the main reason there is not an Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is the Israeli settlement policy,” he said:

HUNT: Do you disagree then with the President and Secretary Clinton that there ought to be a freeze — no growth in those settlements now?

LIEBERMAN: I do. I disagree.

Watch it:

On Obama’s domestic agenda, Lieberman announced his opposition to a public health insurance option. “I don’t favor a public option, and I don’t favor a public option because I think there’s plenty of competition in the private insurance market,” he argued. (He’s wrong.) Lieberman warned that political pressure in favor of the public option may thwart efforts at achieving health care reform. “Let’s get something done instead of having a debate,” he said.

Separately, Lieberman said he “could support” the Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation in the House. “It’s a great act of legislative leadership,” he added, saying the critical issue is convincing “people from states that get a lot of their electricity from coal-burning power plants that we can make this change without skyrocketing the cost of living and the cost of doing business.”

Liz Cheney: Obama’s Language On Israel Goes ‘Much Further’ Than The Bush-Era Road Map For Peace

During his speech today, President Obama reiterated standing U.S. policy that the expansion of Israeli settlements in Palestine must be ended. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop,” he said.

On MSNBC this afternoon, former Vice President Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney, argued that Obama’s insistence that Israel freeze settlement expansion goes “much further” than the Roadmap to Peace negotiated by the Bush administration in 2002:

MITCHELL: Can you clarify at all a dispute some or among former Bush administration middle east experts and officials as to whether there was a secret promise or an agreement with Israel that Israel could proceed with settlement expansion to accommodate population growth?

CHENEY: It is a very complicated issue and the Road Map does talk about settlements. … But there’s the issue of, in existing settlements, if a family has a baby, are you allowed to build another room in the house? … I think there’s no question that this White House has gone much further in saying to the Israelis, “you must absolutely stop all of it.” And without, in my view, being as demanding of the Palestinians in terms of the security side of this equation.

Watch it:

Cheney is right to note that the Road Map to Peace — negotiated while she served in the Bush administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs — “does talk about settlements.” But she apparently doesn’t recall that when the Road Map talks about settlements, it is in the context of clearly stipulating that the Israeli government must freeze all settlement expansion — “including natural growth.” From the Road Map:

Cheney did not address a reported secret deal between former President Bush and Israel allowing some settlement expansion, despite being asked about it by host Andrea Mitchell:

Additionally, it is simply false to say that the Obama administration is not “being as demanding of the Palestinians” with regard to the security of Israel and its citizens. In his speech this morning, Obama made it clear that the U.S. would accept nothing less than full renunciation of violence in pursuit of political objectives on the part of the Palestinians:

Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That’s not how moral authority is claimed; that’s how it is surrendered.

At another point in the interview, Cheney repeated Eric Erickson’s false claim that Obama equated conditions for Jews during the Holocaust with conditions in Palestine today.

Some Congressional Democrats Are Undermining Obama’s Israel-Palestine Policy

Last month, President Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pressed for focus on a resolution to the Israel-Palestine dispute. Obama specifically called on Israel to freeze all settlements in the West Bank. “Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s a difficult issue. I recognize that. But it’s an important one, and it has to be addressed.”

Previous Israeli governments have come to expect the White House to allow loopholes in any demand on settlement freezes, such as the Bush administration’s back-door agreement with the Israelis back in late 2002 allowing expansion within existing West Bank settlements, what the Israelis call “natural growth.” Israelis have used “natural growth” arguments to justify funding further settlement expansion. In fact, recent data show that “in 2007, natural growth accounted for 63 percent of settlement population growth, whereas internal migration accounted for 37 percent.”

This time, however, the Obama administration is holding firm and doing so publicly. More importantly, it appeared that Netanyahu ran into problems when dealing with Congress on the settlement issue soon after meeting Obama:

Whereas in the past Israeli leaders have sometimes eased pressure from Washington on the settlements issue by going to members of Congress, this time, observers in Washington and Israel say, key pro-Israel allies in Congress have been largely reinforcing the Obama team’s message to Netanyahu. What changed? “Members of Congress have more willing to follow the leadership of the administration … because [they] believe it is in our national security interest to move toward ending the conflict and that it is not a zero sum for Israel,” the former senior Clinton administration official said.

However, Politico reports this week that support for Obama’s message on Israel-Palestine among Democrats in Congress is starting to wane. “My concern is that we are applying pressure to the wrong party in this dispute,” said Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV). Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) complained, “I would have liked to hear the president talk more about the Palestinian obligation to cut down on terrorism.” Today, the L.A. Times reports more dissent from congressional Democrats:

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House foreign affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, said focusing on settlement activity “detracts” from top U.S. goals in the region. However, he added: “I do not support a settlement freeze that calls on Israeli families not to grow, get married, or forces them to throw away their grandparents. Telling people not to have children is unthinkable and inhumane.“

Ackerman’s claim is a canard. No one is calling on Israeli families “not to grow.” And as Matt Yglesias notes, “Ackerman’s position is just the position that peace is impossible, and that Israel must fight forever to squeeze the Palestinians out of the West Bank, while the Palestinians must fight forever for the destruction of Israel.”

Moreover, Weiner’s comment is not even factually accurate; Obama has made it very clear on numerous occasions that the Palestinians must meet their obligations under the “road map” to a two-state solution laid out in 2003. But Obama has also said the Israelis must meet their obligations as well. A provision in the road map specifically states that Israel “freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).”

In an interview with NPR this week, Obama acknowledged that private agreements with the Israelis on the settlements issue (such as the Bush administration’s in 2002) undermines American credibility in the peace process. “I think what is certainly true is that the United States has to follow through on what it says,” he said, adding that “it is important for us to be clear about what we believe will lead to peace and that there’s not equivocation and there’s not a sense that we expect only compromise on one side; it’s going to have to be two-sided.”

Indeed, today in his speech at Cairo University in Egypt, Obama said that both sides need to follow through with their commitments. “The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people…Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist,” he said. “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”