The Obama administration continues to pursue a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "actively and aggressively", as Obama himself vowed in the first days of his mandate. Central to this pursuit is the issue of a total freeze on Israeli colony construction - an obligation mandated by the road map for peace, which Israeli leaders refuse to honour.
US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell recently asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a commitment of a one-year freeze on all colony construction in the West Bank. He told the prime minister that without such a commitment there was no chance of getting the Arab states to normalise relations with Israel.
In the face of Israeli intransigence, expressions of protest and frustrations multiplied. Recently, Israel's ambassador to the US Michael Owen was summoned to the US State Department for a reprimand over the Israeli eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in Occupied East Jerusalem, an action which the State Department described as provocative and in violation of the road map. Similarly, Sweden, which currently holds the presidency of the European Union, also summoned Israel's ambassador to Stockholm Benn Dagan to protest the eviction of Palestinians from their homes.
As has usually been the case when Israel is under pressure for its actions, its legions of supporters in the US have gone on the attack. Remarkably, no one is keener to attack any criticisms of Israel than the American congress itself - once poignantly described as 'the real occupied territories'.
Israeli colonies in the Occupied Territories are universally recognised as a violation of international law, and successive US administrations have described them as an obstacle to peace. It is therefore a remarkable spectacle to see American legislators travelling all the way to Israel to express their concerns about the pressure their own president is exerting on Israel. The American delegation of Republican congressmen wholeheartedly espoused the Israeli position, claiming that the Obama administration's policy was misguided because it placed too much emphasis on colonies and ignored the bigger threat posed by Iran.
The American delegation expressed solidarity with Israel and claimed that their mission was intended to promote peace in the Middle East.
An equally distorted logic that flies in the face of the general consensus of the international community on the requirements for a peaceful settlement of the Palestine conflict informs the multi-pronged attacks mounted by Likud supporters in the United States.
For example, the powerful Jewish organisation The Anti-Defamation League earlier this month took a full-page advertisement in the New York Times which read: "The problem isn't [colonies], it's Arab rejection".
Under normal circumstance, the easily documented facts would suffice to rebut this argument, expose its fallacy and render it worthless. But we are not dealing with normal circumstances when it comes to attacking criticisms of Israel. The underlying logic is not to marshal evidence to justify Israeli actions but to attack Israel's critics and force them onto the defensive while Israeli policies are inexorably and systematically dispossessing the Palestinians and rendering a peaceful settlement of the conflict more elusive than ever.
The same logic received a boost last month when the Senate approved a bill that would strengthen the federal government's involvement in investigating hate crimes.
During Senate hearings on the proposed Matthew Sheppard Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder explained that the intent of the legislation was not to protect all minorities but rather 'historic' minorities. If this interpretation were to hold in court, it would be possible to construe criticisms of Israel as hate speech promoting anti-Semitism. In other words it might possibly lead to a situation where it would be considered a crime to criticise Israel.
Paul Craig Roberts, assistant secretary of the treasury in the Reagan administration, observed that, "Israel is getting away with its blatant use of the American government to silence its critics despite the fact that the Israeli press and Israeli soldiers have exposed the Israeli atrocities in Gaza".
Extending blindly uncritical support to the rejectionist camp in Israel, suppressing dissent, criminalising criticisms of Israel and reviving old propaganda lines are authoritarian tactics that threaten constitutionally protected freedom of expression; they are also not in the best interests of Israel since they seek to perpetrate an untenable situation and deter peace.
Notwithstanding propaganda to the contrary, never have the Arab states been more prepared to accept Israel in its 1967 borders.
Yet the rejectionist camp in Israel continues to prefer land over peace. That is because it continues to hold on to the old Zionist tenet of redeeming the land. The expansionist nature of the old Zionist ideology is threatened by the prospect of peace, which would necessarily limit the borders of Israel and put an end to the Zionist project.
In other words, a lasting peace will come only when Israeli leaders decide that the old Zionist tenet of redeeming land at the expense of the Palestinians is antiquated, obstructionist and in direct conflict with the international consensus on the requirements for peace in Palestine.
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