Israeli Settlements, American Pressure, and Peace Steven J. Rosen printed text

PERSPECTIVES

ISBN 978-965-218-108-4

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

Institute for Contemporary Affairs

Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

P E R S P E C T I V E S

Israeli Settlements,

American Pressure, and Peace

Steven J. Rosen

Executive Summary

President Obama apparently believed that pressuring Israel to halt construction of

homes in Jewish neighborhoods in parts of Jerusalem formerly controlled by Jordan

would advance peace. In reality, the opposite ensued. As a result, he was the first

president since the Madrid conference in 1991 to have had no sustained high-level,

direct negotiations between the parties. Never before were peace negotiations held

up by putting the wish for a settlement freeze first. Mahmoud Abbas participated in 18

years of direct negotiations with seven Israeli governments, all without the settlements

freeze that he now insists is an absolute precondition to begin even low-level talks.

Obama's failure to distinguish construction in east Jerusalem from settlement

activity in the West Bank put him at odds with the Israeli consensus. No major party

in Israel, and no significant part of the Jewish public, is willing to count the Jewish

neighborhoods that fall within the juridical boundaries of Jerusalem as "settlements"

to be "frozen." Moreover, the concept of agreed settlement blocs laid the basis for a

compromise between the Israeli and American governments. In his letter of April 14,

2004, President George W. Bush acknowledged that,"In light of new realities on the

ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to

expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return

to the armistice lines of 1949."

The Sharon government reached an understanding with the Bush administration to

ban outward geographic expansion of established settlements, while reserving the

right to continue expansion inside the"construction line"of existing houses. The New             page

York Times reported on August 21,2004,"The Bush administration...now supports

construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as

long as the expansion does not extend outward." Almost all the construction that

the Netanyahu administration has allowed is either in Jerusalem or in the settlement

blocs, the two categories that Israel had thought were protected by understandings

with the Americans. From the Israeli point of view, then, Obama violated an Executive

Agreement that Sharon had negotiated with President Bush.

Elliott Abrams, who negotiated the Bush administration's compromises on the natural

growth of settlements, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "There were indeed agreements

between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on

the West Bank. The prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching

political reorientation...the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and

military position in Gaza....There was a bargained-for exchange." Israelis were bitterly

disappointed by the Obama administration's refusal to acknowledge agreements with

a prior U.S. government that the Israelis considered vital and binding. Sharon aide Dov

Weissglas said, "If decision-makers in IsraeL.discover, heaven forbid, that an American

pledge is only valid as long as the president in question is in office, nobody will want

such pledges."

Stalled peace negotiations in the Obama years cannot be blamed on Netanyahu's

policies of accelerating settlement construction. He has in fact slowed it down. What

has undermined peace negotiations, rather, is Obama's policy on the settlements - and

the unrealistic expectations that policy has nourished.

PAGE

Israeli Settlement Activity - "The Third Rail"

America's steadfast support for Israel, expressed in poll after poll since 1949, stands on

a solid foundation of common values and interests. The principal pillars of this unique

relationship are a common Judeo-Christian heritage; a natural affinity of free-market

democracies; mutual strategic interests including the struggle against terror and

extremism; and a sense of shared destiny.

Like any relationship, the America-Israel alliance is sometimes beset by frictions. In

recent years, principal among these is American unhappiness over Israeli settlement

activity, the "third rail" of the U.S.-lsrael relationship, spanning the terms of eight U.S.

presidents since 1967. For those seeking to drive a wedge between the United States

and Israel, the settlement issue has been the ideal pressure point. During the George H.

W. Bush administration, tensions over settlements strained ties so severely that direct

communication between the president of the United States and the prime minister of

Israel ground to a halt.

But no president has gone as far as Barack Obama in placing the settlement issue

squarely in the forefront of relations between the two countries. On May 27, 2009, just

weeks after Benjamin Netanyahu's inauguration as prime minister, and before working

to find common ground with Israel's new leader on areas of mutual interest, the Obama

administration launched a high-profile public campaign to confront him on this most

divisive and contentious issue. Standing in front of cameras with the Egyptian foreign

minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton threw down the gauntlet to Netanyahu,

announcing that President Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements - not some

settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions."1

On at least thirteen subsequent public occasions, Obama and his top officials have

added ever more sharply expressed objections to the building policies of the Israeli

government, often doing so in the presence of the Israeli prime minister himself. In his

marquis speech to the Muslim world delivered in Cairo on June 4, 2009, Obama 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."2 Vice President Joe Biden made equally sharp

remarks on March 9, 2010, excoriating Netanyahu for planning-board approval of new

housing units in east Jerusalem. Secretary Clinton was the most pointed of all: "The

president was very clear when Prime Minister Netanyahu was here. He wants to see a

stop to settlements....And we intend to press that point."

At a White House meeting on July 13, 2009, Obama was asked by American Jewish

leaders if it was not a mistake to let so much "daylight" show between the United States

and Israel. Obama shot back, "We had no daylight for eight years [under George W.

Bush], but no progress either."3

Obama apparently believed that pressuring Israel to halt construction of homes in

Jewish neighborhoods in parts of Jerusalem formerly controlled by Jordan would

advance peace. In reality, the opposite ensued. Though Obama came into office

determined to accelerate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, he is about to complete

a four-year term as the first president since the Madrid conference in 1991 to have had

no sustained high-level, direct negotiations between the parties. A largely ceremonial

meeting between Netanyahu and Abbas took place in September 2010, followed by five

lower-level, indirect meetings in Amman from October 2011 through January 2012. But

the Palestinians came to these minor meetings grudgingly, and there has been no real

bargaining between Israelis and Palestinians during the Obama years.

No president until Obama encouraged the Palestinians to believe that a "freeze on

natural growth" of settlements could be made a precondition for peace talks. While the

United States has never supported Israeli construction beyond the "Green Line," and

many administrations have stated that such construction complicates the peace process,

never before were peace negotiations held up by putting the wish for a settlement

freeze first. It is a matter of record that Mahmoud Abbas participated in 18 years of direct

negotiations with seven Israeli governments, all without the settlements freeze that he

now insists is an absolute precondition to begin even low-level talks.

Obama's strategy of confrontation over settlements, in other words, has backfired. The

Palestinian issue has now regressed to the pre-Madrid situation before 1991: Palestinians

once again refuse to meet with Israelis, and speak of abandoning the two-state solution

and returning to armed struggle.

By comparison, during the term of George W. Bush, who, Obama believes, did so little

for Israeli-Palestinian peace, Abbas met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for talks

that Abbas himself characterized as among the most productive ever held. Between

the November 2007 Annapolis Conference convened by Bush, and the end of 2008,

there were 288 negotiation sessions by 12 teams representing Olmert and Abbas, all

while limited construction of Jewish homes in east Jerusalem and the settlement blocs          page

continued.

Madrid, Oslo I, Oslo II, the Hebron Protocol, the Wye River Memorandum, Camp David,

Taba, the disengagement from Gaza, and the Olmert offer to Abbas - all these events

over the course of two decades were made possible by a continuing agreement to

disagree about Israeli construction of Jewish homes in Jewish neighborhoods outside

the pre-1967 line in east Jerusalem.

Obama would have served his mission better had he taken the opposite approach to the

relationship between settlements and peace. Getting to negotiations, and producing

an agreement on borders, would eliminate the settlement issue forever. Once the

border between the two states is agreed, all communities on the Israeli side will be

recognized as under the sovereignty of Israel, and no Israeli communities are likely to

remain inside what will be recognized as sovereign Palestine. Indeed, Mahmoud Abbas

has himself acknowledged that settlements are not the main barrier to an agreement.

When he negotiated with Ehud Olmert in 2008, Abbas said/The built-up area of all the

settlements was [only] 1.1 percent [of the West Bank territory], so when I offered them

1.9 [percent of the disputed territory in a 'land swap'], it was more than enough" to

permit an agreement.4

By now, it should be obvious even to those who cheered Obama on as he confronted

Netanyahu that the strategy of public confrontation over settlements has been

counterproductive. Abbas himself told Newsweek'm April 2011, "It was Obama who

suggested a full settlement freeze. I said OK, I accept. We both went up the tree. After

PAGE

that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump.

Three times he did it."5 Even Obama's Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George

Mitchell now concedes that it was a mistake to allow the Palestinians to think that a

freeze on settlements could be a precondition.6

But there were other mistakes in Obama's approach, about which less has been said.

The maximalist terms that Obama sought to impose made a solution less likely. Had he

framed the settlement issue in terms that distinguished between vital Israeli interests

and areas where compromise was possible, he might have been able to secure changes

in Israeli policy. Instead, he framed the choice in all-or-nothing language, hardening

past American policy on several issues of critical importance to Israel. Because these

less-noticed changes compounded Obama's missteps and planted the seeds for future

trouble, they merit a closer look than they have received until now.

Jerusalem

Obama's failure to distinguish construction in east Jerusalem from settlement

activity in the West Bank put him at odds with the Israeli consensus from the start.

Few in Israel conflate large, established Jewish neighborhoods in Israel's capital with

"non-consensus" settlements on remote West Bank hilltops. "East Jerusalem" Jewish

neighborhoods like Ramot, RamatShlomo, NeveYaakov, PisgatZe'ev, EastTalpiot, Har

Homa and Gilo, many now forty years old, are seen as much a part of Israel as Tel Aviv.

More than 40 percent of the Jews who live in Jerusalem (195,500 out of 480,000 in 2008)

live beyond the pre-1967 line in what Palestinians consider "occupied territory." No

major party in Israel, and no significant part of the Jewish public, is willing to count the

Jewish neighborhoods that fall within the juridical boundaries of Jerusalem that were

recorded in the "Basic Law-Jerusalem" in 1980, as "settlements" to be "frozen," regard less

of whether they are on land that was under Jordanian rule before 1967 or not. These

Jewish neighborhoods are considered an integral part of the sovereign State of Israel.

Even among Israelis who are willing to relinquish Arab-populated areas of Jerusalem to

achieve a comprehensive peace agreement (perhaps half of the Israeli public), there is

almost no support for sacrificing or impeding the Jewish communities inside the city

limits.

In Resolution 478, the UN Security Council ruled that the "Basic Law-Jerusalem" is

"Null and void...a violation of international law."8 Yet in the decades before Obama

took office, U.S. officials did not object strenuously to construction of Israeli homes

in east Jerusalem. They understood that such construction was a vital Israeli interest,

and one supported across the Israeli political spectrum. Although the U.S. also did not

formally recognize Israel's sovereignty over the area, America did grant a degree of

tacit recognition to a distinction between east Jerusalem and the West Bank. The State

Department, for instance, did not lump Israeli communities within Jerusalem into its

"settlements" statistics.

But Barack Obama moved the marker.

Obama would have been wise to take the advice of his own Middle East envoy, George

Mitchell, who said, "For the Israelis, what they're building in is in part of IsraeL.The

Israelis are not going to stop...construction in East Jerusalem....Our view is, let's get into

negotiations...and come up with a solution...including Jerusalem....We could spend the

next 14 years arguing over disputed legal issues or we can try to get a negotiation to

resolve them in a manner that meets the aspirations of both societies."9

Settlement Blocs

Another Obama policy shift moved the settlement issue out of the realistic zone

of compromise: his rejection of the Bush policy of treating the "settlement blocs"

differently from the "non-consensus" settlements deeper in the West Bank interior. The

special status of the blocs arose from the Camp David peace talks in July 2000, at which

Yasser Arafat accepted President Clinton's proposal that certain bedroom suburbs of

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, comprising only 5 percent of the land of the West Bank but

including about 80 percent of the settlers, would come under Israeli sovereignty.

In exchange, Israel would "swap" land from its own pre-1967 territory. Israel would

relinquish settlements outside the blocs, but retain the settlement blocs themselves.

The understandings reached at Camp David had no legal standing after the

negotiations collapsed in 2001, but the concept of agreed settlement blocs laid the

basis for a compromise between the succeeding Israeli and American governments.               pag e

In an exchange of letters on April 14,2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon acknowledged

"responsibilities facing the State of Israel" under the Roadmap, including "limitations

on the growth of settlements." President George W. Bush acknowledged in response

that, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli

populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status

negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949....H is

realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of

mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."10

Israel understood this Executive Agreement to mean that the U.S. would treat

settlements in the blocs that would remain part of sovereign Israel in a future

negotiation differently from settlements outside the blocs agreed upon at Camp David.

The government of Israel believed it had a commitment from the United States to accept

that a "freeze on natural growth" would not apply to construction inside these blocs,

provided that it remained within the territorial limits set forth at Camp David. Sharon's

successor, Ehud Olmert, stated this publicly in April 2008. "It was clear from day one to

Abbas, Rice, and Bush that construction would continue in population concentrations -

the areas mentioned in Bush's 2004 letter. I say this again today: Beitar Wit will be built,

Gush Etzion will be built; there will be construction in Pisgat Ze'ev and in the Jewish

neighborhoods in Jerusalem. It's clear that these areas will remain under Israeli control

in any future settlement."11

PAGE • 8

Here again, Obama moved the marker. Although his administration accepted the

validity of Bush's position in the April 14,2004, letter, it did not take the letter to mean

that construction in the settlement blocs should be considered differently.12 In the many

statements issued by Obama administration officials condemning Israeli construction

in settlements, no distinction was made between these blocs and the non-consensus

settlements in the West Bank interior. In fact, most of the construction to which the

Obama team objected took place either in Jerusalem or in these blocs. This is for the

simple reason that almost all the construction that the Netanyahu administration

has allowed is in these two categories that Israel had thought to be protected by

understandings and American exceptions. From the Israeli point of view, then, Obama

violated an Executive Agreement that Sharon had negotiated with President Bush.

The Bush-Sharon Settlements Compromise

This brings us to a third principle that Israel thought it had agreed on with the U.S., only

to find it undone by the Obama administration. The Sharon government reached an

understanding with the Bush administration to ban outward geographic expansion of

established settlements, while reserving the right to continue what then-Foreign Minister

Shimon Peres dubbed "vertical growth," meaning upward or infill expansion inside the

"construction line" of existing houses. The purpose was to prevent outward horizontal

expansion that might give the Palestinians the impression of "creeping annexation,"

while accommodating the needs of Israeli communities to add a room or build between

existing houses.

The Bush-Sharon understanding was recorded in a letter from Sharon's top aide, Dov

Weissglas, to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in June 2003. Weissglas

reiterated that there were "understandings reached between Israel and the U.S.

regarding settlements....No new towns will be built, and construction will be frozen in

the existing towns, except for building within the existing building lines, as opposed to the

municipal border."13 Prime Minister Sharon implied such an agreement in his speech at

the Herzliya Conference on December 18,2003:"lsrael will meet all its obligations with

regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the

existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic

incentives and no construction of new settlements."14

A few months later, on April 18,2004, Sharon's aide Dov Weissglas asserted, in another

letter to Rice,"the following understanding, which had been reached between us:

Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an

effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line

of settlements in Judea and Samaria. An Israeli team, in conjunction with Ambassador

Kurtzer, will review aerial photos of settlements and will jointly define the construction line

of each of the settlements'.'^

The government of Israel acted swiftly to enforce the distinction. On August 5, 2004,

a settler newspaper reported that/The Defense Ministry has completed a large-scale

project to mark the existing built-up borders of all the Jewish communities and towns

in Judea and Samaria - and no further construction will be allowed beyond them. Yediot

Ahronot reports today that aerial photos will be sent to the United States, which will

monitor every building aberration.Though the towns will be allowed to appeal the

decision, every building beyond the marked borders could be subject to immediate

demolition. The above program is in accordance with the commitment Prime Minister

Sharon gave U.S. President George Bush three months ago."16

Despite the Bush administration's reluctance publicly to acknowledge these settlements

understandings, there were several public indications that it had. The New York Times

reported on August 21, 2004,"The Bush administration...has modified its policy and

signaled approval of growth in at least some Israeli settlements in the occupied West

Bank, American and Israeli officials say....The administration now supports construction of

new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion

does not extend outward...according to the officials."17The next month, the Washington

Post cited remarks Deputy Secretary of State Richard L Armitage made in an interview

with Egyptian television: "If you have settlements that already exist and you put more

people into them but don't expand the physicaL.area - that might be one thing. But if

the physical area expands and encroaches, and it takes more of Palestinian land, well, this

is another." The Post also quoted a senior administration official who said, "It makes no

difference if the Israelis add another house within a block of existing homes."18

The Bush-Sharon understandings about settlements were reported again by the New

York Times,19 and the Guardian,20 and were partly confirmed by former ambassador to

Israel Daniel Kurtzer.21

But on June 7,2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denied that the Obama

administration was bound by any such understanding."That was an understanding

that was entered into, so far as we are told, orally. That was never made a part of the

official record of the negotiations, as it was passed on to our administration....Nobody in

a position of authority at the time that the Obama administration came into office said

anything about it. And in fact, there is also a record that President Bush contradicted

even that oral agreement."22 White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon

Johndroe went further, and said flatly, "There is no understanding."

Sharon's representative Dov Weissglas countered that in April 2004 he had negotiated a

"verbal understanding" with Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, and that

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice subsequently approved the deal. "I do not

recall that we had any kind of written formulation," except his own letters back to Rice

stating that the agreements existed.23

Elliott Abrams, who negotiated the Bush administration's compromises on the natural

growth of settlements, agreed with Weissglas in the Wall Street Journal. "There were

indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli

settlements on the West Bank. The prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking

a wrenching political reorientation...the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement

and military position in Gaza....There was a bargained-for exchange. Mr. Sharon was

determined to...confront his former allies on Israel's right by abandoning the 'Greater

Israel' position....He asked for our support and got it, including the agreement that we

would not demand a total settlement freeze."24

PAGE

Israelis were bitterly disappointed by the Obama administration's refusal to

acknowledge agreements with a prior U.S. government that the Israelis considered

vital and binding. Sharon aide Weissglas said, "Final-status peace treaties...will require

many American guarantees and obligations, especially in respect to long-term security

arrangements. Without these, it is doubtful whether an agreement can be reached. Yet if

decision-makers in IsraeL.discover, heaven forbid, that an American pledge is only valid

as long as the president in question is in office, nobody will want such pledges."25

Obama, however, was not persuaded by Israel's remonstrations. His administration's

priority was to convince the Palestinians and the Muslim world that he was prepared to

put pressure on Israel to achieve peace.

The Failure of the Settlement Freeze

Led by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, the Obama peace team was

seized with the idea of a settlement "freeze" as a confidence-building measure to lure

the reluctant Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Mitchell had been associated

with the freeze concept since the Mideast peace commission he headed in 2001

concluded that "Israel should freeze all settlement activity, including the 'natural growth'

of existing settlements/The Bush administration signed on to the freeze idea in 2003,

when it joined with the EU, Russia, and the Secretary General of the UN to promulgate

page • 10                            the "Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict/The

Roadmap requires, in Phase I, that,"Consistent with the Mitchell Report, the Government

of Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements)."26 But,

as explained above, the U.S. and Israel had worked out detailed understandings during

the Bush administration just how the Roadmap was to be applied on the ground.

In an effort to placate Obama, in November 2009 Netanyahu announced a ten-month

freeze on construction permits for new residences and the start of any new residential

construction in the settlements. "We have been told by many of our friends that once

Israel takes the first meaningful steps toward peace, the Palestinians and Arab states

would respond....l hope that this decision will help launch meaningful negotiations to

reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and

the Palestinians." George Mitchell said, "We did get a 10-month...moratorium on new

housing construction starts on the West Bank, which was less than what we asked for,

less than what the Palestinians wanted, but was more than any government of Israel had

ever done on that subject, and it was a significant action which I believe the Palestinians

should have responded to by getting into negotiations earlier."27

For nine of the ten months of the freeze, Netanyahu's concession did not have the

intended effect. For all but the last month, Mahmoud Abbas refused to resume

negotiations even with the freeze, saying it fell short of the total freeze in Jerusalem

that President Obama had promised him. "At first, President Obama stated in Cairo that

Israel must stop all construction activities in the settlements. Could we demand less

than that?" Mitchell later said, "The real loss was that we didn't get a full ten months. We

didn't get nine months or eight months. We got one month - less than a month, and

it was not enough time to gain traction and get the parties invested in continuing the

process."28

The administration expressed disappointment that Abbas exploited the president's

firm position on settlements and made it into a precondition. Secretary of State Clinton

said that the demand for an absolute settlement freeze as a precondition for talks was

unprecedented. Settlements have "always been an issue within the negotiations....

There's never been a precondition."29 Mitchell later said, "It was not a precondition.

The mistake was to not make that as clear as we could have. The president's position

was...not stated as preconditions, although, unfortunately, they were then adopted as

preconditions."30 Abbas had negotiated with seven previous Israeli prime ministers -

Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu (in his first term), Barak, Sharon, and Olmert, without

the precondition that he now demands of Netanyahu. As Mitchell said on September 22,

2009, "We do not believe in preconditions. We do not impose them. And we urge others

not to impose preconditions."31 A Middle East Quartet Statement of March 19, 2010,

called for "the resumption without preconditions of direct bilateral negotiations that

resolve all final status issues, as previously agreed by the parties."32

The administration was confounded by Abbas' refusal to use Netanyahu's concession as

an opening to peace talks. Later, after leaving office, Mitchell observed that, "I personally

negotiated with the Israeli leaders to bring about a ten-month halt in new housing

construction activity. The Palestinians opposed it on the grounds, in their words, that

it was worse than useless. So they refused to enter into the negotiations until nine

months of the ten had elapsed. Once they entered, they then said it was indispensable.

What had been worse than useless a few months before then became indispensable

and they said they would not remain in the talks unless that indispensable element was

extended."33

Still, the Obama administration declined to admonish Abbas in public for refusing to

negotiate, as it had repeatedly admonished Netanyahu for construction activity in

settlements. In refusing to meet with Israel, Abbas violated one of the most important

commitments his predecessor Yasir Arafat made at the start of the Oslo process, which

included this pledge to then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on September 9,1993: "The

PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of

the conflict between the two sides, and declares that all outstanding issues relating

to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations."34 Abbas also violated

the pledge that he himself made at the Annapolis conference, witnessed by foreign

ministers of 47 countries on November 27,2007: "We agree to immediately launch

good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty, resolving all

outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous

agreements. We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations."35

Yet his violation of these solemn commitments earned Abbas no reprimand from the

Obama team.

page • 11

Before Obama, Settlement Construction Did Not Impede

Peace Negotiations

What is most remarkable about the Obama diplomacy is its apparent obliviousness to

the history of the relationship between settlements and peace in previous negotiations,

of which the Obama team is seemingly unaware. President Bill Clinton did not ask Israeli

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to freeze all housing construction in settlements, including

Jerusalem, in order to get the Oslo process started. Had he made such a demand, Rabin

would have refused. Rabin told the Knesset, "I explained to the president of the United

States that I wouldn't forbid Jews from building privately in the area of Judea and

Samaria....l am sorry that within united Jerusalem construction is not more massive."36

In 1993, the same year as the famous handshake on the White House lawn, the Rabin

government completed the construction of more than 6,000 units in the Pisgat Zeev

neighborhood of east Jerusalem, out of a total of 13,000 units that were in various

stages of completion in areas of the city that had been outside Israeli lines before 1967.

Nonetheless, Arafat sat down with Rabin, even while Israel's construction in Jerusalem

continued unabated. On September 13,1993, the Oslo peace accord was signed - by

the same Mahmoud Abbas who refuses to sit down today. A year later, Rabin, who built

homes for Jews in east Jerusalem, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Altogether, Rabin's government completed 30,000 dwelling units in the West Bank,

Gaza, and Jerusalem in the four years prior to the prime minister's assassination. Even

pag e • 12                            the January 9,1995, announcement of a plan to build 15,000 additional apartments in

east Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the 1967 borders (especially Pisgat Zeev, Neve

Yaakov, Gilo, and Har Homa) did not stop negotiations, which resulted in the Oslo II

accord of September 28,1995.

And what was the Clinton administration's reaction toward Rabin's construction of

Jewish homes in east Jerusalem? Mild annoyance. On January 3,1995, in response to the

Rabin government's announcement of expanded construction, the State Department

spokesman said, "The parties themselves...have to judge whether it presents any kind

of a problem in their own dialogue. The important thing is to continue to meet." The

spokesman added on January 10,1995, "We admit that settlements are a problem, but

we...enjoin the parties to deal with these issues in their negotiations."

Clinton's Middle East peace advisor, Martin Indyk, told the U.S. Senate the following

month that Rabin's government had recently "given approval for something like 4,000

to 5,000 new housing units to go up in settlements around the Jerusalem area." Clinton,

he added, had decided to stay out of it. "To take action now...would be very explosive

in the negotiations, and frankly, would put us out of business as a facilitator of those

negotiations." Had Clinton taken Obama's approach, it might well have exploded the

negotiations and brought the Oslo process to a halt.

This is far from the only example of instances in which construction in Jerusalem

did nothing to impede diplomatic progress. Two years after Oslo II, in January 1997,

Abbas and Arafat sat down with another Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, to sign the

Hebron Protocol, which provided for the withdrawal of the Israeli armed forces from

80 percent of the very sensitive area of Hebron in the West Bank. Arafat and Abbas had

no illusions that Netanyahu intended to freeze Israeli construction in east Jerusalem.

In fact, Netanyahu had announced that he would proceed with the building of Har

Homa, a controversial Israeli suburb conceived by Rabin. Nor, another 18 months later,

did the Palestinians' fierce objections to Har Homa prevent them from joining the Wye

Plantation negotiations in October 1998. These talks led to an agreement known as

the Wye River Memorandum, in which Netanyahu, under considerable pressure from

Clinton, agreed to pull the Israel Defense Forces out of an additional 13 percent of the

West Bank. This move was fiercely opposed by Netanyahu's right flank, and in January

1999 it led to his downfall when the hard-liners in his coalition defected.

Had Clinton demanded that Netanyahu freeze construction in Jerusalem, and had Arafat

made a freeze a precondition for negotiations, neither the Hebron nor Wye agreements

would have been signed.

The Labor government that was elected in the wake of Netanyahu's ouster in 1999

continued the pattern of building in Jerusalem while moving forward in negotiations

with the Palestinians. At the Camp David summit (July 11 -25,2000), then-Prime Minister

Ehud Barak crossed Israel's known "red lines," offering the Palestinians most of the West

Bank and a capital in Jerusalem, along with land swaps. Yet even as he was taking these

unprecedented steps, Barak was accelerating the construction of Har Homa and other

Jerusalem communities. While the talks accelerated, Barak also moved ahead with the

Ras al-Amud neighborhood on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. President Clinton said

he "would have preferred that this decision was not taken." But Clinton added that the

United States "cannot prevent Israel from building in Har Homa." Haim Ramon, Rabin's

minister for Jerusalem affairs, said: "I would like to make it clear that the government has

no intention of stopping the building at Har Homa."

Here again, had Clinton taken Obama's position and issued an ultimatum demanding

that all construction in Jerusalem stop, and had Arafat made that American demand a

precondition to begin negotiations, neither the Camp David summit of 2000 nor the

Taba talks in January 2001 could have occurred.

The next Israeli government, headed by retired general Ariel Sharon, did not seek any

breakthroughs in negotiations with the Palestinians, but did order Israel's most dramatic

territorial concession since 1967: the withdrawal of all Israeli soldiers from every square

inch of Gaza, along with the abandonment of 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the

West Bank. In the "unilateral disengagement" of August-December 2005, Sharon pulled

8,000 Israeli settlers from their homes against fierce opposition from his right flank.

Four months after the disengagement from Gaza, Sharon fell into a coma. After his

deputy, Ehud Olmert, took office, the new prime minister sought a resumption of

negotiations with the Palestinians. Following the Annapolis summit in November 2007,

Abbas, who had taken over as president of the Palestinian Authority and head of the

PLO after Arafat's death in November 2004, agreed to begin intensive negotiations with

Olmert. While Abbas expressed his unhappiness with continued Israeli construction in

east Jerusalem and the settlement blocs, he did not make cancelation of these projects

a precondition for talks. Nor did Abbas cut off negotiations in April 2008 when Olmert

told the Israeli newspaper YediotAhronot, "It was clear from day one to Abbas...that

construction would continue in population concentrations - the areas mentioned

PAGE • 13

PAGE • 14

in Bush's 2004 letter....Beitar lllit will be built, Gush Etzion will be built; there will be

construction in Pisgat Zeev and in the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem...areas [that]

will remain under Israeli control in any future settlement."37

These negotiations yielded significant results: on September 16,2008, Olmert offered

Abbas 93 percent of the West Bank, the partition of Jerusalem, and a land swap.

The chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat boasted to a Jordanian newspaper that

Abbas had achieved considerable progress with the Olmert government between the

November 2007 Annapolis talks and the end of 2008 in 288 negotiation sessions by 12

committees - all while Israeli construction continued.

Paradoxical as it may seem to those who supported Obama's decision to confront

Netanyahu about settlements, the historical record reveals that limited Israeli

construction in Jerusalem and the settlement blocs can be reconciled with peace

negotiations.

Netanyahu is building fewer houses at a slower pace and in fewer and less contested

places than many of those who preceded him. In an April 8, 2012, interview with Fareed

Zakaria, Ehud Barak said,

This government of Netanyahu is not the most aggressive in building....l was the

prime minister 12 years ago. I negotiated a very generous proposal with previous

Chairman Arafat, together with President Clinton....During that time, we were

building four times the pace of construction that Israel executed now. I was the

defense minister in Ehud Olmert's government five years ago when he proposed

an extremely generous proposal to Abu Mazen [Abbas]. We were building about

twice the pace that we are building now....We are listening very carefully to the

needs of our citizens, on the one hand, and to the needs of the Palestinian future

state, as well as the demands from the world. And we are not going over any hill

or valley and establishing new settlements....Those settlements which are going

to remain part of Israel, even in the final status agreement, namely the settlement

blocs, should be built and developed as any other part of Israel.38

Stalled peace negotiations in the Obama years cannot be blamed on Netanyahu's

policies of accelerating settlement construction. He has in fact slowed it down. What has

undermined peace negotiations, rather, is Obama's policy on the settlements - and the

unrealistic expectations that policy has nourished.

Settlements and the UN Security Council

For those who seek to drive a wedge in the U.S.-lsrael relationship over the settlement

issue, the UN Security Council is the ideal venue, a place where the Palestinians

have many friends and the Israelis have few. Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the

UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, described the Security Council thirty years ago in a way that

makes plain how little has changed: "What takes place in the Security Council more

closely resembles a mugging than either a political debate or an effort at problem-

solving....lsrael iscastasvillain...in [a] melodrama...thatfeatures...many attackers and

a great deal of verbal violence....The goal is isolation and humiliation of the victim....

The attackers, encountering no obstacles, grow bolder, while other nations become

progressively more reluctant to associate themselves with the accused, out of fear that

they themselves will become a target of bloc hostility."39 The Arabs have long sought to

use the Security Council in order to impose their own terms on final status arbitrations

between Israelis and Palestinians, to defy an American president to veto an anti-Israel

resolution, and to rivet attention on a high-visibility issue where Israel has the least

sympathy and American-Israeli differences are deepest.

Consider the case of a one-sided Arab draft resolution condemning Israel. If a president

abstains to allow it to pass, or even votes for it, he contributes to Israel's global isolation

and delegitimization. He may even create a basis for sanctions against an American

ally. But if he blocks the resolution by using the American veto, he is accused of

inconsistency with his own principles and capitulation to the pro-Israel lobby. Either

way, by maneuvering the president into a tight spot, the Security Council tactic offers

Arabs an opportunity to amplify American resentment of Israel's policies.

The proponents of these resolutions at the Security Council further sharpen the

dilemma by adopting the American administration's own rhetoric. When Abbas brought

the issue to the UN in January 2011, he said, "We drafted it using the same words that

Secretary Clinton is using and so we don't see why the U.S. would veto it."40

In reality, all draft resolutions condemning Israeli settlements that have been

promulgated by supporters of the Palestinians in the Security Council contain language

that no administration since 1980 has supported. Without exception, all such drafts                page • is

assert that Israeli communities in Jerusalem and the West Bank are "illegal." This is not

U.S. policy. For example, a resolution introduced in January 2011 by supporters of the

Palestinians claimed that "all Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian

Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal" because of "the applicability of the

Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12

August 1949, to the Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem."41

This is not the declared policy of the United States. Successive U.S. administrations

have deplored settlement activity as an obstacle to peace, but no American president

- except Jimmy Carter - has taken the view that building Jewish homes in Jerusalem

constitutes a violation of the Geneva conventions.42 If an American president were to

take the position that all Israeli construction outside the former 1967 line is illegal, it

would have the effect of criminalizing the Jewish communities of the eastern sector of

Jerusalem, where 40 percent of the Jews in that city live, as well as the settlement blocs

proposed by President Clinton and acknowledged by President Bush to be part of Israel.

In other words, such a move would amount to an act of legal aggression against Israel

by its foremost ally.

President Jimmy Carter was the exception. Referring to Israeli settlements in April 1980,

Carter said: "We do not think they are legal." As his secretary of state explained, "Article

49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the territories," including

Jerusalem. The relevant article states: "The Occupying Power shall not...transfer parts of

its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."43 But many American experts

doubt that this can be applied properly to the Israeli case.44 Obligations under the

Geneva Convention apply to territory occupied by one state but legally recognized as

the property ofanother state. The West Bankand east Jerusalem were under Jordanian

control before 1967, but they were not legally recognized (even by Jordan) as the

sovereign territory of Jordan prior to coming under Israeli control in 1967. They are,

therefore, properly understood as "disputed" rather than "occupied" territories, so the

Convention does not apply.

President Ronald Reagan rejected Carter's position and maintained that the settlements

were "ill-advised" and "unnecessarily provocative," but they were "not illegal."45 All

American presidents since have followed Reagan's approach, and none has repeated

Carter's formulation that settlements are "illegal." President Obama, for example, has

said that settlements "undermine efforts to achieve peace," but he, too, has avoided

calling them "illegal."46 So the drafts branding Israeli settlements as illegal do not reflect

established U.S. policy.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike have consistently and resolutely

urged presidents to exercise the veto to defend Israel from one-sided resolutions at the

Security Council - even in the controversial matter of settlements. For example, on June

21,2010,87 senators sent a bipartisan letter to Obama: "We ask you to stand firm in the

future at the United Nations Security Council and to use your veto power, if necessary, to

prevent any...biased or one-sided resolutions from passing." As a presidential candidate,

Barack Obama called on the Bush administration to veto resolutions that singled out

Israel for blame.47

In the forty years since Richard Nixon's first veto in Israel's defense on September 10,

pag e • 16                            1972, every American president has used the veto to block anti-Israel resolutions.

Richard Nixon vetoed two; Gerald Ford four; Ronald Reagan eighteen (!); George H.W.

Bush four; Bill Clinton three; George W. Bush nine; and Barack Obama one. In April 1980,

even Jimmy Carter mustered the courage to veto such a resolution, on the grounds that

it was inimical to the Camp David Accords he had brokered.

In all, eight American presidents have recorded 42 vetoes in Israel's defense at the UN

Security Council. Most often, the stated or implied reason to explain the need for a veto

was lack of balance. In about half of the 42 veto statements, the American representative

acknowledged that the United States shared concerns about a given Israeli action but

objected either to the wording of the resolution or to the appropriateness of bringing

the issue before the Security Council.

The actual number of anti-Israel resolutions and Presidential Statements that have been

prevented from coming to a vote at all due to the credible threat of an American veto

is probably far higher than these 42 recorded votes. Celine Nahory, an expert on the

Security Council, says such instances "must add up to many hundreds.Jn closed-door

informal consultations [where] the Council largely conducts its business."48

The record is similar on the subset of draft resolutions that have dealt specifically with

the settlements question. No president since Carter has permitted anti-Israel UN Security

Council resolutions on settlements to pass. Ronald Reagan vetoed two: on August

2,1983 (while Menachem Begin was Israeli prime minister) and on January 30,1986

(during Shimon Peres' term). Bill Clinton vetoed three draft resolutions condemning

Israeli settlements, one while Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister (draft Resolution

S/1995/394 vetoed on May 17,1995),49 and two during Benjamin Netanyahu's first term

(draft Resolution S/1997/199, sponsored by the United Kingdom and France, vetoed on

March 7,1997,50 and draft Resolution S/1997/241, vetoed on March 21,1997).51

Most recently, on February 18, 2011, President Obama vetoed draft resolution S/2011 /24

condemning Israeli settlements.52 U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice presented the U.S.

reasoning:

Our opposition to the resolution before this Council today should...not be

misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity. On the contrary, we reject

in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity....

[But] every potential action must be measured against one overriding standard:

will it move the parties closer to negotiations and an agreement? Unfortunately,

this draft resolution risks hardening the positions of both sides. It could encourage

the parties to stay out of negotiations and, if and when they did resume, to return

to the Security Council whenever they reach an impasse....While we agree with

our fellow Council members...about the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli

settlement activity, we think it unwise for this Council to attempt to resolve the

core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians.53

In addition to these six vetoes, successive U.S. administrations since Carter have

defeated by "silent veto" many other anti-settlement initiatives at the Security Council

that did not reach the voting stage because fervent American opposition dissuaded

their proponents from pressing the issue.

The Carter administration was the only U.S. government to vote in favor of a UN Security

Council Resolution declaring Israeli settlements to be "illegal": Resolution 465 on March

1,1980.54 Carter subsequently disavowed his ambassador's vote for this resolution,

saying that his instruction had not been properly communicated and that the U.S.

should have abstained. An abstention still would have permitted the resolution to pass.

In addition to voting for Resolution 465, Carter did abstain on (and thereby permitted

to pass) two other resolutions against Israeli settlements containing similar language:

Resolutions 446 on March 22,1979,55 and 452 on July 20,1979.56

Resolution 465 said that "the Fourth Geneva Convention.Js applicable to the Arab

territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem." It added that "all

measures taken by Israel to change the...demographic composition...or status of the...

territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem...have no legal validity and that

Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population.Jn those territories

constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention." New York Senator

Daniel P. Moynihan, who had served as UN ambassador five years earlier, said, "As a

direct result of [Carter Administration] policy, the Security Council was allowed to

degenerate to the condition of the General Assembly."

Presidents since Carter have had greater clarity about the hazards of moving

Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking into a venue that is profoundly hostile to Israel. But

each incoming American president must grapple anew with this Hobson's choice:

settlements, on the one hand, and abandoning an ally, on the other. It is a problem

certain to arise again.

PAGE • 17

PAGE • 18

Goading the President to Confront Israel

The background chorus calling on the president to put more pressure on Israel

serves as another enduring feature of American diplomacy in the Middle East. Books,

newspapers, magazines, and lecture halls are filled with experts reciting a familiar

catechism: Israel is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East, and only a president

determined to defy the fearsome Israel lobby can bring Israel to heel. Europeans,

Arab governments, State Department Arabists, and even some Jewish pro-pressure

organizations reinforce this message.

Some presidents, like George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, instinctively resist these

entreaties (though even they succumbed to the pressure at times). Other presidents,

like BarackObama, are receptive to the pressure argument from the beginning. And

of all the items on the menu of Mideast diplomacy, the issue of settlements is the one

most loudly invoked by the pressure chorus.

The pressure theory met its first full-scale test in the first two years of Obama's term.

In the end, the president obtained a result opposite to the one that he was promised.

Contrary to what was confidently predicted, we are now further from substantive peace

negotiations than at any time since 1991. A scientist observing such dismal results in

a test tube would conclude that his hypothesis was faulty. But political science being

what it is, most of the Mideast pressurists cling to the opposite conclusion. They

continue to insist that settlements are the main obstacle to peace negotiations, and that

to accelerate peacemaking a president should begin by confronting Israel on the issue.

There is an alternative that might yield far better results: First, before a prime minister

of Israel and a president of the United States turn to the vexing issue of settlements,

they should establish a relationship of cooperation and trust on a wider set of issues.

Later, during the inevitable dialogue about settlements, they can draw on this reservoir

of goodwill. Second, this dialogue should be conducted in private, protected from the

fierce winds of public controversy, while the two sides explore the boundaries of the

attainable.

Each side, moreover, must take into account the vital interests of the other. The

president must acknowledge that the maximalist demand for a total freeze on

construction inside the capital of Israel in neighborhoods where 40 percent of Jewish

residents of Jerusalem make their homes is asking too much. Such a demand is bound

to lead to an impasse.

The prime minister, meanwhile, must understand that unrestricted expansion of West

Bank settlements will put a severe strain on relations with the United States and Europe

and ignite a diplomatic firestorm. It is in Israel's vital interest to find a sustainable set of

limitations that Israeli society can accept, that make it possible at the same time to meet

Israel's international needs.

The art of diplomacy on settlements involves a two-fold task: to craft a sophisticated set

of limitations on which both sides can agree, and to reconcile what the United States

needs to manage the international diplomatic environment, with the boundaries that

Israelis can accept.

For eighteen years, from the Madrid conference to 2008, presidents and prime ministers

found workable solutions to the settlements issue that allowed peace negotiations to

progress. If there is to be renewed diplomatic progress between Israelis and Palestinians,

the United States will have to find collaborative solutions with Israel instead of relying

on confrontation. The diplomacy of pressure leads only to a dead end.

PAGE • 19

Notes

PAGE • 20

1 "Press Availability with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed AN Aboul Gheit," U.S. Department of

State, May 27, 2009, http://www.state.goV/secretary/rm/2009a/05/124009.htm.

2 "Text: Obama's Speech in Cairo," New York Times, June 4,2009, http://www.nytimes.

com/2009/06/04/us/politics/04obama.text.html?pagewanted=all.

3 Ron Kampeas, "At White House, U.S. Jews Offer Little Resistance to Obama Policy on Settlements,"

JTA-Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 13, 2009, http://www.jta.org/news/article/2009/07/13/1006510/

obama-gets-jewish-support-on-peace-push-questions-about-style.

4 Bernard Avishai, "A Plan for Peace that Still Could Be," New York Times Magazine, February 7,2011,

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13lsrael-t.html?pagewanted=all.

5 "The Wrath of Abbas," Daily Beast, August 24, 2011, http://www.thedailybeast.com/

newsweek/2011/04/24/the-wrath-of-abbas.html.

6 "This Week Transcript: George Mitchell and King Abdullah II," This Week with George Stephanopo-

ulos, ABC News, May 22, 2011, http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-george-mitchell-

king-abdullah-ii/story?id=13658888&page=4.

7 "Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel," Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 30,1980, http://

www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1980_1989/Basic+Law-+Jerusalem-+Capital+of+lsrael.htm.

8 http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/399/71/IMG/NR039971.pdf7OpenElernent.

9 Steven J. Rosen, "Interesting George Mitchell Interview," Middle East Forum, January 7,2010, http://

www.meforum.org/blog/obama-mideast-monitor/2010/01/interesting-george-mitchell-interview.

10 "Exchange of Letters between PM Sharon and President Bush," Israel Ministry of Foreign Af-

fairs, April 14, 2004, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Reference+Documents/

Exchange+of+letters+Sharon-Bush+14-Apr-2004.htm.

11 Glenn Kessler, "Israelis Claim Secret Agreement with U.S.," Washington Post, April 24,2008, http://

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/23/AR2008042303128_pf.html.

12 Ron Kampeas, "Democrats Launch Major Pro-Obama Pushback among Jews," JTA, June 7,2011,

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/06/07/3088053/democrats-launch-major-pro-obama-push-

back-among-jews.

13 Settlement Report, May-June 2004, Foundation for Middle East Peace, http://www.fmep.org/re-

ports/archive/vol.-14/no.-3/israels-policy-of-creating-facts-wins-over-the-bush-administration;and

ArutzSheva, August 5,2004, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/66852.

14 Steven J. Rosen, "Obama and a Settlements Freeze," Middle East Forum, January 28,2009, http://

www.meforum.org/2057/obama-and-a-settlements-freeze.

,5"Letterfrom DovWeissglas, Chief of the PM's Bureau, to National Security Adviser, Dr. Con-

doleezza Rice," Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, April 18,2004, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/

Peace+Process/Reference+Documents/Letter+Weissglas-Rice+18-Apr-2004.htm.This aerial photo

standard came to be called the "Google Earth test."

16 "New Decree: No Expansion Allowed in Judea and Samaria," ArutzSheva, August 5, 2004, http://

www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/66852.

17 Steven R.Weisman, "U.S. Now Said to Support Growth for Some West Bank Settlements," New York

Times, August 21, 2004, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B06E5DF173EF932A157

5BC0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print.

18 Glenn Kessler, "U.S., Israel Discuss Internal Growth in West Bank Settlements," Washing-

ton Post, October 30,2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10520-2004-

Oct29?language=printer.

,9Weisman, "U.S. Now Said to Support Growth."

20 Conal Urquhart, "Secret US Deal Wrecks Road Map for Peace," Guardian, August 27, 2004, http://

www.guardian.co.uk/guardianweekly/story/0„1291598,00.html.

21 Glenn Kessler, "Israelis Claim Secret Agreement with U.S.," Washington Post, April 24,2008, http://

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/23/AR2008042303128_pf.html.

22 "Clinton Denies Bush Agreement with Israel on Settlements"; interview with ABC News

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/06/clinton-denies-bush-agreement-with-israel-on-

settlements/.

23 Kessler, "Israelis Claim Secret Agreement with U.S."

24 Elliott Abrams, "Hillary Is Wrong about the Settlements," Wall Street Journal, June 26,2009, http://

online.wsj.com/article/SB124588743827950599.html.

25 DovWeissglas, "Agreements Must Be Honored: DovWeissglas Slams Obama Administration's

Denial of Israeli Agreement with Bush," YnetNews, February 7, 2009, http://www.ynetnews.com/

articles/0,7340,L-3740136,00.html.

26 http://www.un.org/media/main/roadmap122002.html.

27 Steve demons, "Is Peace Possible," S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, January 12,

2012, http://www.centerpeace.Org/highlights_detail.php?id_high2=8.

2Slbid.

29"Remarks with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu," U.S. Department of State, October 31,

2009, http://unispal.un.Org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/59B672935FAEFB3E8525766200610E55.

30 "This Week Transcript: George Mitchell and King Abdullah II."

31 "press Briefing by UN Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell, on the President's

Trilateral Meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel and President Abbas of the Palestinian

Authority," The White House—Office of the Press Secretary, September 22,2009, http://www.white-

house.gov/the-press-office/briefing-us-special-envoy-middle-east-peace-george-mitchell.

32 "Middle East Quartet Statement," March 19, 2010, Moscow, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/

uedocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/113436.pdf.

33 "Exchange of Letters between Rabin and Arafat," September 9,1993, http://www.chathamhouse.

org/sites/default/files/public/Meetings/Meeting%20Transcripts/171011miliband_mitchell.pdf.

34 Ibid.

35 "Annapolis Agreement: Full Text," Guardian, November 27, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/

world/200 7/nov/27/israel.usa1.

36 Steven J. Rosen, "Obama's Foolish Settlements Ultimatum," Foreign Policy, April 1, 2010, http://

www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/01/obama_s_foolish_settlements_ultimatum.

37 Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer, "Olmert: Israel Not Under Syrian Nuclear Threat," YnetNews,

April 20,2008, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3533720,00.html.

38 "Israeli Defense Minister on Settlements," CNN, April 10, 2012, http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.

cnn.com/2012/04/10/israeli-defense-minister-on-settlements/.

39 Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, "U.N. 'Mugging' Fails," New York Times, March 31,1983, http://www.nytimes.

com/1983/03/31/opinion/un-mugging-fails.html.

40 Associated Press and Haaretz Service, "Palestinian Draft Condemning Israeli Settlements De-

signed to Win U.S. Support," Ha'aretz, http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestin-

ian-draft-condemning-israeli-settlements-designed-to-win-u-s-support-1.334461.

41 "Full Text: UN Security Council Draft Resolution," Ma'an News Agency, June 6, 2012, http://maan-

news.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=361385.

42 Glenn Kessler, "Old Legal Opinion Raises New Questions," Washington Post, June 17,2009, http://

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603285.html.

43 "Statements on American Policy toward Settlements by U.S. Government Officials - 1968-2009,"

Foundation for Middle East Peace, http://fmep.org/analysis/analysis/israeli-settlements-in-the-

occupied-territories.

44 Nicholas Rostow, "Are the Settlements Illegal?" American Interest, March/April 2010, http://www.

the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=782.

45 "Statements on American Policy toward Settlements."

^"Remarks by the President on a New Beginning," The White House-Office of the Press Secretary

(Cairo, Egypt), June 4,2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-Presi-

dent-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/.

PAGE • 21

http://www.buzzvines.com/node/3787.

48 Steven J. Rosen, "Will Obama Use His UN Veto?" Commentary, September 2010, http://www.com-

mentarymagazine.com/article/will-obama-use-his-un-veto/.

49 "Botswana, Honduras, Indonesia, Nigeria, Oman and Rwanda: Draft Resolution," United Na-

tions Security Council, S/1995/394, May 17,1995, http://unispal.un.Org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/

F58C6AD432A5A3980525651B00529AE9.

50 "France, Portugal, Sweden and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Draft Reso-

lution," United Nations Security Council, S/1997/199, March 7,1997, http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL

NSF/0/F97C162F6A30647205256531005B4E15.

51 "Egypt and Qatar: Draft Resolution," United Nations Security Council, S/1997/241, March 21,1997,

http://unispal.un.Org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/88F7FB474668764705256531005B7239.

52 United Nations Security Council, S/2011/24, February 18,2011, http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NS

F/0/9397A59AD7BFA70B8525783F004F194A.

53 "Explanation of Vote by Ambassador Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United

Nations, on the Resolution on the Situation in the Middle East, Including the Question of Palestine,

in the Security Council Chamber," United States Mission to the United Nations, February 18,2011,

http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/2011/156816.htm.

54 Security Council Resolution 465 (1980), United National Security Council, S/RES/465, March 1980,

http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/2011/156816.htm.

55 Security Council Resolution 446, United Nations Security Council, S/RES/446, March 22,1979,

http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/db942872b9eae454852560f6005a76fb/ba123cded3ea84a58525

60e50077c2dc?OpenDocument.

56 Security Council Resolution 452, United Nations Security Council, S/RES/452, July 20,1979, http://

domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/db942872b9eae454852560f6005a76fb/0b7116abb4b7e3e9852560e50

07688aO?OpenDocument.

PAGE • 22

About the Author

Steven J. Rosen is Director of the Washington Project of the Middle East Forum.

He served as Associate Director of the National Security Strategies Program at

the RAND Corporation, followed by 23 years with the American Israel Public Affairs

Committee (AIPAC) where he was Director of Foreign Policy Issues. This publication

draws on previous work by the author published in Commentary and Foreign Policy.

PAGE • 23

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs

(Y'y) m'-roi iq'* wiy1! ■rrtun'n 7D-i»n

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is a leading

independent research institute specializing in

public diplomacy and foreign policy. Founded in

1976, the Center has produced hundreds of studies

and initiatives by leading experts on a wide range

of strategic topics. Dr. Dore Gold, Israel's former

ambassador to the UN, has headed the Jerusalem

Center since 2000.

Jerusalem Center Programs:

Institute for Contemporary Affairs (ICA) -

A diplomacy program, founded in 2002 jointly with

the Wechsler Family Foundation, that presents

Israel's case on current issues through high-level

briefings by government and military leaders to the

foreign diplomatic corps and foreign press, as well as

production and dissemination of information materials.

Global Law Forum - A ground-breaking program that

undertakes studies and advances policy initiatives

to protect Israel's legal rights in its conflict with the

Palestinians, the Arab world, and radical Islam, (www.

globallawforum.org)

Defensible Borders Initiative - A major security

and public diplomacy initiative that analyzes current

terror threats and Israel's corresponding territorial

requirements, particularly in the strategically vital West

Bank, that Israel must maintain to fulfill its existential

security and defense needs, (www.defensibleborders.

org)

Jerusalem in International Diplomacy -

Dr. Dore Gold analyzes the legal and historic rights

of Israel in Jerusalem and exposes the dangers

of compromise that will unleash a new jihadist

momentum in his book The Fight for Jerusalem:

Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy

City (Regnery, 2007). Adv. Justus Reid Weiner looks

at Illegal Construction in Jerusalem: A Variation on an

Alarming Global Phenomenon (2003). Veteran Israeli

journalist Nadav Shragai documents nearly a century

of Arab violence against Jews in Israel triggered by the

commonly believed myth that the Jews are seeking to

destroy the Al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem in The "Al-

Aksa is in Danger" Libel: The History of a Lie.

Iran and the Threats to the West -

Preparation of a legal document jointly with leading

Israeli and international scholars and public

personalities on the initiation of legal proceedings

against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

for incitement to commit genocide and participate in

genocide. This program also features major policy

studies by security and academic experts on Iran's use

of terror proxies and allies in the regime's war against

the West and its race for regional supremacy.

Combating Delegitimization - A major multilingual

public diplomacy program exposing those forces

that are questioning Israel's very legitimacy, while

carrying out initiatives to strengthen Israel's

fundamental right to security and to reinforce the

historical connection between the Jewish people and

their historical homeland including Jerusalem. The

program also provides resources for commentators

and educates students to effectively communicate

these messages to promote attitude change in

targeted populations.

Anti-Semitism After the Holocaust - Initiated and

directed by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, this program

includes conferences, seminars, and publications

discussing restitution, the academic boycott, Holocaust

denial, and anti-Semitism in the Arab world, European

countries, and the post-Soviet states.

Jerusalem Center Serial Publications:

Jerusalem Viewpoints - providing in-depth analysis

of changing events in Israel and the Middle East since

1977.

Jerusalem Issue Briefs - insider briefings by top-

level Israeli government officials, military experts,

and academics, as part of the Center's Institute for

Contemporary Affairs.

Daily Alert - a daily digest of hyperlinked news and

commentary on Israel and the Middle East from the

world and Israeli press.

Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism - a monthly

publication examining anti-Semitism afterthe

Holocaust.

Jewish Political Studies Review - a scholarly journal

founded in 1989.

Jerusalem Center Websites

www.jcpa.org (English)

www.jcpa.org.il (Hebrew)

www.jcpa-lecape.org (French)

www.jer-zentrum.org (German)

www.facebook.com/jerusalemcenter

www.twitter.com/JerusalemCenter

www.youtube.com/TheJerusalemCenter

President - Dr. Dore Gold

Director General - Chaya Herskovic

Steering Committee:

Prof. Arthur I. Eidelman

Prof. Rela Mintz Geffen

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

Zvi R. Marom

Prof. Yakir Plessner

Prof. Shmuel Sandler

Prof. Efraim Torgovnik

English - www.jcpa.org

Hebrew - www.jcpa.org.