At Counterpunch, Avi Shlaim lays bare the emperor's nakedness regarding 43 years of American "failure" to bring about peace in the middle east. The simplest answer is becaue more than wanting peace in the middle east, the U.S. wants to appease whatever government happens to be ruling Israel at any moment, and the U.S. does not wish to allow any state or entity other than itself to be the broker.
Shlaim prose is stark and succinct:
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been both a major concern of American diplomacy since 1967 and the arena of persistent failure.
There are many reasons for America’s failure to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians but the most fundamental one is that it is a dishonest broker. As a result of its palpable partiality towards Israel, America has lost all credibility in the eyes not only of the Palestinians but of the wider Arab and Muslim worlds.
The so-called peace process has been all process and no peace. Peace talks that go nowhere slowly provide Israel with just the cover it needs to pursue its expansionist agenda on the West Bank.
Here is the key to why some authority outside of the Israelis and the Palestinians must broker the peace deal.
The asymmetry of power between Israel and the Palestinians is so great that only a third party can bridge the gap. In plain language, this means leaning on Israel to end the occupation and to permit the emergence of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In theory America is committed to a two-state solution to the conflict but in practise it has done very little to push Israel into such a settlement. It is not that America lacks the means to bring pressure to bear on Israel. On the contrary, Israel is crucially, and almost exclusively, dependent on America for military, diplomatic, and financial support.
As for the prospects of our president President, the Bland One, Schlaim writes:
Obama is an inspiring orator. However, to use an American phrase, he has talked the talk but he has not walked the walk. The rhetoric has changed but in practical terms there has been more continuity than change. Partiality towards Israel remains the order of the day and it vitiates the possibility of a genuinely even-handed policy.
Sadly, in practical terms, there has been more continuity than change in much of the Obama administration's policies - ever larger bailouts for the financial firms, no-tooth legislation "passed" to appease the investment banks, a health care program that only an insurance industry executive could love, prisoners continue to be held at GITMO, etc, etc, etc.
To be fair to Obama, he recognised at the outset that Jewish settlements on the West Bank are the main obstacle to progress. He admitted, in effect, that there can be a peace process but no peace if Israel continues the colonisation of the West Bank.
So Baracksie - thou winner of the pulitzer Peace prize, whacha gonna do about dat?
There is an Arabic saying that something that starts crooked, remains crooked. These peace talks started in a crooked way because they did not meet the most fundamental Palestinian requirement: a complete freeze on settlement activity.
The conclusion is inescapable: Netanyahu is not a genuine partner for the Palestinians on the road to peace. Land-grabbing and peace-making simply do not go together and Netanyahu has opted for the former.
Netanyahu is like a man who, while negotiating the division of a pizza, continues to eat it.
The American position is pusillanimous and feeble. Instead of taking a firm position on the side of the Palestinians and pressing the point of principle, they press the weaker party to make more and more concessions. Under these conditions, the prospects of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are close to zero.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel, only more illegal settlements, and consequently more strife, more violence, more bloodshed, and ultimately another war.
Pressing the weaker party to make more and more concessions has pretty much BEEN the way of U.S. governance for a long long time now, domestically, and internationally, politically and economically, culturally and spiritually.
Trouble is, the weaker ones just keep fighting back.
And when the emotional torrents burst through the dam here at home, there is going to be hell to pay.
