THE PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY'S STRANGLEHOLD ON US POLITICS

The following was written in 2012

When asked to explain why the Palestinians are no nearer now to establishing an independent state than they were in 1993 when the Oslo Accords were signed, the response from other donors who have been deeply involved in the process is “Ask the Americans”. This includes Hans Teunissen, the Deputy Head of Mission for the Dutch Representative’s Office in the Palestinians territories. He lays the blame squarely on the United States and, more specifically, on former President George W. Bush:

"The donors, together with the international community, have said “our aim is an independent, viable, contiguous Palestinian state”. Now I think that our acts have not been in conformity with our stated objective. I personally blame the US largely for it in that totally during George Bush’s presidency I think the US was far too accommodating to the Israelis, and I think by doing so he has done a lot of harm, not necessarily just to the Palestinians but also to the position of the US in the Muslim world.

In fact, Israel has received favourable treatment from successive US governments and not just from the Bush Administration, although the American Government’s pro-Israel bias was admittedly more pronounced in the eight years following Bush’s election as US President in 2000. The US, which claims that it has “no better friend” than Israel, for many years gave its ally the green light to pursue its expansionist agenda. Furthermore, the US government effectively sustains Jewish settlements by providing tax breaks to US-based organisations which make financial contributions aimed at promoting the settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territories. The US also gives Israel access to intelligence that it denies to its NATO allies, and has, since 1972, vetoed no less than forty United Nations Security Council Resolutions that have been critical of its ally. The most recent of these came in February 2011 when the US vetoed a Resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity in the Palestinian territories. This is more than the combined number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. In addition to this, Israel can depend on the US to adopt its position when negotiating ‘peace’ with its neighbours. According to Aaron David Miller, who worked at the State Department for twenty-five years as a Middle East negotiator and Advisor on Arab-Israeli affairs: 

For far too long, many American officials involved in Arab-Israeli peacemaking, myself included, have acted as Israel's Attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, presidential candidates were “seemingly competing to see who could be strongest in defence of the Jewish State”. The Clinton Administration also took Israel’s side in the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority despite high expectations that, having presided over the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, it would build on the momentum generated by the peace agreement in order to achieve a comprehensive settlement between the two parties. 

The unconditional economic, military and diplomatic support that successive US governments have given to Israel is despite the fact that the latter is not seen to be a strategic asset to the United States. In fact, it is seen by many as a strategic liability. For example, Bernard Reich of George Washington University and the author of several books on US-Israeli relations, argues that Israel is of “limited military or economic importance to the United States…..it is not a strategically vital state”. This is reinforced by the Brandeis University defence expert, Robert Art, who notes that “Israel has little strategic value to the United States and is in many ways a strategic liability”. Even Bernard Lewis, the distinguished historian and himself an ardent supporter of Israel, notes that “whatever value Israel might have had as a strategic asset during the Cold War, that value obviously ended when the Cold War itself came to a close”.

A hard-hitting account of the reasons behind the US’s unstinting support for Israel is offered by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt, who contend that, rather than being based on strategic or moral considerations, American support for the Jewish State is due largely to the heavy influence that the pro-Israel Lobby has on American foreign policy. Describing the Lobby as “a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively works to move US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction”, Mearsheimer and Walt further argue that those who make up the Lobby work hard to ensure that Israel remains free from criticism from aspiring US politicians:

The individuals and groups in the United States that make up the Lobby care deeply about Israel, and they do not want American politicians to criticize it, even when criticism might be warranted and might even be in Israel’s own interest. Instead, these groups want US leaders to treat Israel as if it were a fifty-first State. Democrats and Republicans alike fear the Lobby’s clout. They all know that any politician who challenges its policies stands very little chance of becoming President.

The central contention in Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument is that, due largely to the influence of the pro-Israel Lobby, successive US governments have pursued policies in the Middle East which are against the US’s strategic interests. More recently, these include, among other things, the war in Iraq, and the Bush Administration’s public support for Israel’s war with Lebanon in 2006. They also include the US’s unwavering support for Israel’s “prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip with settlements, road networks and military bases, while brutally suppressing Palestinian attempts to resist these encroachments”. A similar argument is made by Tanya Reinhart, who speaks of Israel’s Policy of “ethnic cleansing” in the occupied Palestinian territories and of the Palestinian people’s attempts to prevent a “second Palestinian Nakba”. The result of this unconditional support to Israel has been to increase anti-American sentiment worldwide and make the American people more vulnerable to the threat of international terrorism. In the words of Mearsheimer and Walt:

Backing Israel so strongly is making Americans more vulnerable – not less – and making it harder for the United States to achieve important and urgent foreign policy goals.

The US-based pro-Israel Lobby’s most prominent elements include the Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations (CPMAJO), the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and the Anti- Defamation League (ADL). In fact, the Lobby boasts more than eighty separate organisations, more than fifty of which come under the auspices of CPMAJO and its Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein. Described by a former high-ranking US diplomat as “the most influential private citizen in American foreign policy-making”, Hoenlein is extremely well connected to America’s top policy-makers, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He is also a long-time supporter of the settler movement and deeply skeptical about the Middle East Peace Process. For those reasons, and given the fact that CPMAJO is an umbrella organization for such a large number of smaller organizations, it could be regarded as one of the most influential organisations making up the pro-Israel Lobby. Even more influential, however, is AIPAC. With an annual budget of $40-$60 million, AIPAC has enormous financial clout which it is able to translate into real influence in US policy-making circles. Thanks to the power of AIPAC, healthy debate on all issues concerning Israel is virtually non-existent on Capitol Hill. Described as “the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel”, AIPAC has a virtual stranglehold on Congress. AIPAC’s power is highlighted by its President, Howard Friedman, as follows:

"AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in-depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel’s predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We even ask candidates to author a ‘position paper’ on their view of the US-Israel relationship – so it’s clear where they stand on the subject".

In return for AIPAC’s support, elected members of the Senate must refrain from criticizing Israel. In fact, AIPAC has an “almost unchallenged hold on Congress”. In the words of a congressional staffer sympathetic to Israel, AIPAC “can count on well over half the house – 250 to 300 members – to do reflexively whatever AIPAC wants”. This has inevitably drawn the ire of those who would like to see the US play a more even-handed role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As Senator Ernest Hollings noted just before leaving office in 2004, for example, “you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here”. For his part, former President Jimmy Carter voiced his frustration at the lack of open debate in the US about the policies of Israel:

"It's almost politically suicidal in the United States for a member of the Congress who wants to seek re-election to take any stand that might be interpreted as anti- policy of the conservative Israeli government, which is equated, as I've seen it myself, as anti-Semitism".

For those reasons, one could be forgiven for calling Congress the ‘US Knesset’. 

AIPAC also controls a large network of pro-Israel Political Action Committees (PACs), which are on standby in order to start funneling campaign funds to aspiring senators once they gain its seal of approval. In return, AIPAC expects elected senators to work with it in order to achieve its aims, which a congressional staffer with strong sympathies towards Israel summarises as follows:

"What AIPAC wants can be summed up very succinctly: a powerful Israel free to occupy the territory it chooses; enfeebled Palestinians; and unquestioning support for Israel by the United States. AIPAC is skeptical of negotiations and peace accords, along with the efforts by Israeli doves, the Palestinians, and Americans to promote them".

The pro-Israel Lobby also includes a large number of Neo-conservative think-tanks. These include, among others, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Brookings Institution, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Jewish intellectuals and political players “comprise the core of the neo-conservative movement”. This explains why Neo-conservatism is often referred to as “American Jewish Conservatism”.

Some of the most high-profile members of the Neo-conservative movement – and who are also prominent members of the Neo-conservative think-tanks mentioned above – include Elliot Abrams, the Bush Administration’s Deputy National Security Advisor, who led US government efforts aimed at provoking a Palestinian civil war in the Gaza Strip. They also include, among many others, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith – some of the most ardent proponents of the doctrine of ‘pre-emption’ – military intervention in countries which are seen to pose a security threat to the United States and its allies in order to bring about ‘regime change’ in those countries. The 2003 war on Iraq is the most recent example of this. They are also, of-course, “strongly committed to Israel”.

The final component of the US-based pro-Israel Lobby is made up of the ‘Christian Zionists’, who believe that the return of the Jews to Palestine is a prelude to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Prominent members include religious leaders such as Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, as well as former House Majority Leaders Tom DeLay and Richard Armey. Naturally, Christian Zionists are strong supporters of the settler movement and therefore vehemently against the return of any land to the Palestinians. The zealous nature of the Christian Zionists was famously articulated by Pat Robertson, who stated that the stroke suffered by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in January 2006 was punishment from God for his decision to pull Israeli soldiers and settlers out of Gaza. 

It is important to note, however, that the organisations comprising the pro-Israel Lobby do not agree on everything. Nor is it the case that the hard-line positions adopted by organisations like AIPAC and CPMAJO in relation to the Middle East Peace Process are representative of the views of all Jewish Americans. Indeed, the latest polls have shown that the majority of Jewish Americans favour the establishment of a Palestinian State as a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. This could explain the reason behind the recent establishment of ‘J-Street’, a ‘pro-Israel, pro-peace’ organization which aims to loosen AIPAC’s grip on Congress and encourage the US government to put pressure on Israel to cease its policy of building Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land and come to a negotiated peace settlement with the Palestinians. Daniel Levy, a co-founder of the group, argues forcefully that Jewish Americans have for long been misrepresented by the likes of AIPAC and its Neo-conservative allies. He describes America’s Jewish community as:

"A community that is very, very liberal, votes 78% Obama, overall a community that prides itself in the role it played historically in the US in advancing civil rights, was suddenly being identified with the most illiberal reactionary regressive policies advocated by groups that claimed to be doing this in the name of American Jewry and the name of Israel, making alliances with these dreadful people on the far-right of American politics".

Inevitably, however, J-Street and similar organisations before it have drawn the wrath of AIPAC and its supporters, most notably in Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Israeli government. Shortly after its launch, J-Street was subjected to a vicious smear campaign by American Jewish extremists, who succeeded in discouraging many members of Congress from attending J-Street’s first conference. Israel’s Ambassador to the United States also boycotted the conference in protest at the group’s relatively moderate stance towards the Palestinians. This serves to illustrate how members of the Lobby who openly criticize Israel are quickly marginalized.

Despite the euphoria resulting from the Oslo Declaration in 1993, the prospects for the establishment of a Palestinian State were never good. This is not only due to the fact that Israeli actions on the ground made such an outcome less and less likely as the years have gone by, however. It is also due in large part to the fact that influential elements of the pro-Israel lobby which were firmly embedded within both the Bush and Clinton Administrations drove both Administrations to adopt policies aimed at impeding progress towards the creation of a Palestinian State. During the Clinton Presidency, for example, the two men who had particular influence on the US government’s policy towards Israel and the Palestinians were Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross. Indyk served on Clinton’s National Security Council. He also served as Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State and had two stints as US Ambassador to Israel between 1995 and 2001. He was also, however, a former AIPAC official and a co-founder of the staunchly pro-Israel Neo-conservative Washington Institute for Near-East Policy (WINEP). Indyk is currently the Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy at the Neo-conservative Brookings Institution. Dennis Ross, on the other hand, was Clinton’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, and first joined WINEP after he left government in 2001. Despite stepping down as Special Assistant to current US President Barack Obama and rejoining WINEP in November 2011, Ross remains heavily involved in framing US Policy towards Israel and the Middle East. Shortly after Ross’s departure, the White House made a request for a ‘secure line’ to be installed in his office at WINEP which could be used to discuss confidential information without the risk of wiretapping.

Both Indyk and Ross were amongst Clinton’s closest advisors at the failed Camp David Summit in July 2001 which preceded the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in 2001. Furthermore, both were, and still remain, fervent supporters of Israel. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that, rather than playing the role of ‘honest broker’, the Clinton Administration adopted Israel’s position at the Camp David Talks. The late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and Israel’s Prime Minister at the time, Ehud Barak, were invited to Camp David by President Bill Clinton in a final bid to sign a peace agreement before the end of the latter’s term as President. During the negotiations, the American delegation “took its cues from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, coordinated negotiating positions in advance, and did not offer its own independent proposals for settling the conflict”. In the words of Avi Shlaim:

"Like his predecessor [Benjamin Netanyahu], Barak treated the President of the United States like a Clerk and got impatient when his orders were not carried out immediately".

To the Palestinians, the US was perceived to be so biased towards Israel that the Palestinian negotiating team was left complaining that they were “negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag and one an American flag”. In the end, Clinton and his advisors pointed the finger of blame for the failure of the Camp David Summit at Arafat’s door, with Ross describing Arafat as a revolutionary who has “made being a victim an art form; he can’t redefine himself into someone who must end all claims and truly end the conflict”. In truth, however, a major contributing factor to the failure of the summit was the American negotiating team, led by Ross and Indyk. According to Mearsheimer and Walt, their well-known sympathies for Israel “made it more difficult for the Administration to operate effectively during the negotiations and made it less inclined to bring US leverage to bear on the Israeli government, thus reducing the chances of securing a peace deal”.

After Bill Clinton was succeeded as US President by George W. Bush in 2000, US efforts at foiling moves towards the establishment of a Palestinian State gathered pace. As was the case during the Clinton Administration, these efforts were spearheaded by influential elements of the US-based pro-Israel Lobby, both outside and also within the Bush Administration. Only days after the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, AIPAC launched an attack on members of the Bush Administration who were beginning to push once again for a negotiated solution to the conflict, claiming that they were “undermining America’s war against terrorism. They are encouraging the President to reward, rather than punish, those that harbour and support terrorism”. For his part, Mortimer Zuckerman, the Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, branded Bush’s vision for a two-state solution a “very short-sighted and erroneous policy”. In October 2001, prominent organisations such as AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents also urged Bush not to meet with Arafat and to refrain from pressurizing Ariel Sharon to end his incursion into Palestinian areas that had been re-occupied following the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. This was in reference to ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ in March 2002 – the decision by Sharon to reoccupy all the Palestinian areas that had been ceded to the PA under the terms of the Oslo Accords which were signed between the two sides in 1993. This signaled the height of the Al-Aqsa Intifada and caused widespread suffering on the Palestinian side. For example, according to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories:

"The entire population of the West Bank suffered as a result of the operation. Dozens of Palestinians were killed, hundreds wounded, thousands detained, and hundreds of thousands imprisoned in their homes without food and water. Many were hurt in actions that had nothing to do with “striking at the terrorist infrastructure”…The human rights violations perpetrated during the operation are the most extensive and severe since Israel occupied the territories in 1967. Acts that were previously rare, such as looting and using civilians as human shields, became routine".

In fact, according to a United Nations Report, a total of 497 Palestinians were killed as a result of the operation and just under 1,500 were wounded.

In addition to the widespread human suffering caused, Israeli soldiers set about destroying Palestinian civilian infrastructure. In the words of Hanan Ashrawi, “the Israelis came and destroyed everything…they destroyed roads, electricity poles, private property, attacked institutions and confiscated hard disks…” A United Nations Report documented “extensive physical damage to Palestinian civilian property. The UN also concluded that fifty Palestinian schools were damaged, eleven were totally destroyed, nine were vandalized, fifteen used as military outposts, and a further fifteen were used as mass arrest and detention centres. In other words, the Palestinian civilian infrastructure which would have acted as the backbone for a future state was systematically targeted by Israeli soldiers. Despite all this, the pro-Israel Lobby was hard at work in its attempts to dissuade President Bush from putting pressure on the Israelis to withdraw. Prominent Neo-conservatives attacked Colin Powell for his intention to meet with Arafat during his visit to the region in an attempt to put an end to the violence. For his part, senior Christian Zionist and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay threatened to sponsor a strongly-worded declaration of Congressional support for Israel, despite objections from the White House. Also, a group of Christian Zionists, led by the Reverend Jerry Falwell, sent President Bush a letter demanding that his Administration “end pressure” on Sharon to withdraw from the West Bank. According to Romesh Ratnesar of Time Magazine, “after Falwell adjured his followers to do the same, the White House was flooded with calls and emails. The next day senior presidential aides phoned Falwell to reassure him that Bush stood behind Sharon”.

The same pattern followed the unveiling of the Road Map for Peace in the Middle East by the Quartet of Nations on 30th April 2003, namely the United States, the EU, the UN and Russia. The Road Map called for reciprocal steps to be taken by both the PA and Israel in order to arrive at the desired target of establishing a Palestinian State by 2005. It stressed that a “two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty”. The document called for a “comprehensive” settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by 2005, culminating in the establishment of an “independent Palestinian State living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its Arab neighbours”. It envisaged three different phases for arriving at this goal. During Phase One, the Palestinians were, among other things, required to end their uprising and resume security co-operation with Israel. They were also required to undertake comprehensive security reform in order to make their security forces more effective at fighting “terrorism and incitement against Israel”. The “rebuilt and refocused” security apparatus would then begin:

"Sustained, targeted, and effective operations aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. This includes commencing confiscation of illegal weapons and consolidation of security authority, free of association with terror and corruption".

Israel’s commitment during this first phase was to affirm its support to the two-state solution, refrain from all hostile activities towards Palestinians and freeze all settlement activity, including ‘natural growth’ within Jewish settlements. Phase Two of the document envisaged the creation of a Palestinian State with provisional borders and attributes of sovereignty. However, movement towards this phase would be conditional on both parties meeting the conditions set out in Phase One. Finally, Phase Three of the initiative involved progress towards arriving at a permanent status agreement by 2005. Again, this would depend on the extent to which the conditions set out in Phases One and Two had been fulfilled.

However, Sharon had already dismissed the document as “irrelevant” and vowed to kill it off. Again, he sought the help of prominent members of the pro-Israel Lobby who themselves expressed reservations about the Road Map. The Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, Mortimer Zukerman, dubbed the initiative the “road map to nowhere”. And despite her best efforts, President Bush’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, failed to win their backing for the initiative. Those expressing deep skepticism about the Road Map also included Abraham Foxman and Malcolm Hoenlein – the Heads of two of the most influential pro-Israel organisations – the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Conference of Presidents, respectively. AIPAC, too, weighed in by delivering a letter to President Bush. Signed by 283 House members, the letter urged Bush not to exert any pressure on Israel into accepting the Road Map and demanded that the PA implement far-reaching security sector reform before Israel could be asked to make any concessions. Having failed to win the backing of prominent members of the pro-Israel Lobby, the Road Map for Peace in the Middle East had virtually no chance of succeeding. In the words of Mearsheimer and Walt:

"Apart from more dovish groups such as the Tikkun Community and the Israel Policy Forum, there were few pro-Israel groups enthusiastically backing the Road Map. That meant it had no future".

The Road Map, however, faced vehement opposition from within the Bush Administration as well. Highly influential Neo-conservatives such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams signaled to Sharon that, because the Palestinians would not be able to keep their end of the bargain, particularly in the security sphere, no US pressure on the Israelis would be forthcoming. In the words of Haaretz Commentator Akiva Eldar:

"The message that they [the Israelis] are getting now, is that the Rumsfeld-Richard Perle school of thought is now in charge, people who were against the Oslo peace process, people who don't trust the Palestinians, people who feel that after what they did in Iraq, the Palestinians must now go after and crack down hard on the Islamists, the radicals, the terrorists - something the Palestinians may be unable to accomplish….These are people who are against any conciliation. In their interpretation of the Road Map, Sharon need not make a single move until the Palestinian Authority has demonstrated that it is putting up a significant battle against the militants in its midst. Moreover, they know that Sharon has raised the required threshold to so high a level that it is unrealistic to believe that the Palestinians could reach it".

For those reasons, Sharon did not seem too concerned about the Bush Administration’s latest peace initiative. He did, however, want to make sure. Having already upped the ante on the ground by intensifying his policy of assassinating prominent leaders of Palestinian resistance groups, he was ready to announce Israel’s disengagement from Gaza. By undertaking this unilateral move, Sharon had decided to kill off the Road Map once and for all and, with it, the prospects of establishing a Palestinian State. Inevitably, Sharon turned to prominent members of the pro-Israel Lobby for help and in November 2003, invited one such member, President Bush’s Deputy National Security Advisor and former Senior Director of the Neo-conservative Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Elliott Abrams, to a secret meeting in Rome. At the meeting, Sharon told Abrams that, rather than pursuing a negotiated settlement to the conflict, he had decided to impose his own settlement on the Palestinians. Satisfied that such a pre-emptive move would gain Israel time to consolidate its position in the West Bank and create a precedent for imposing a final border unilaterally, Abrams gave his backing to Sharon’s plan. And so did the Bush Administration. Sharon certainly knew what he was doing. Sensing that his disengagement plan may draw strong criticism from other elements of the pro-Israel Lobby, Sharon needed someone he could trust to communicate the plan to the Bush Administration and to the wider American Jewry. That man was Elliott Abrams. In fact, when news of Sharon’s impending disengagement plan broke, Neo-conservative members of the Bush Administration such as Defense Under-Secretary Douglas Feith and Daniel Pipes of the Neo-conservative Middle East Forum asked potential critics to “hold their fire” because Elliott Abrams “knew what he was doing was in the best interests of Israel”. It is easy to see why. Abrams is an ardent Neo-conservative who is staunchly devoted to Israel. In the words of investigative journalist Tom Barry:

"Perhaps more than any other member of Bush's foreign policy team, Abrams embodies the Administration's zealous, ideological, and dangerously delusional vision of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East".

Abrams strongly criticized mainstream Jewish organizations for maintaining their support for peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as a “self-delusion”. He further claimed that the Palestinian leadership "does not want peace with Israel, and there will be no peace”.

The motivation behind Sharon’s disengagement plan was explained by Dov Weisglass, Sharon’s closest Advisor, and that was to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian State. Even more significantly, however, Weisglass claimed that the Bush Administration supported, not just Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, but also “the resulting impediment to the creation of a Palestinian State”.

"The disengagement plan means that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians….You prevent the establishment of a Palestinian State and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called a Palestinian State, with all that it entails, has been removed from the agenda indefinitely….all with a Presidential blessing and the ratification of both Houses of Congress". 

So, having previously declared that the Road Map for Peace was “the only course that will bring durable peace and security”, President Bush gave his blessing to Sharon’s disengagement plan. And in a further blow to Palestinian aspirations, Bush delivered a speech on 14th April 2004, in which he stated that Israel would not have to withdraw from all territories it occupied in the June 1967 War:

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers [illegal Jewish settlements], 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".

This is in contravention of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which emphasises the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls on Israel to withdraw from territories it had just occupied. Bush also said that Palestinian refugees would not be allowed to return to their homes in Israel:

"A solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian State and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel".

This is also in clear contravention of ‘Paragraph 11’ of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194, which upholds the right of Palestinian refugees to be allowed to return to their homes and for compensation to be paid to those who choose not to do so. The speech, which represented a reversal of the stated policy of all previous US Presidents, was widely interpreted as an attempt to placate the pro-Israel Lobby, particularly in view of the upcoming Presidential elections and in the context of Bush’s quest for reelection. The speech was needed in order to win over the Jewish vote. In fact, the significance of Bush’s speech was highlighted by a Republican aide on Capitol Hill, who noted that “this [President Bush’s speech] will make it that much harder for John Kerry to win Florida”. Bush’s weakness in the face of concerted pressure from various elements of the pro-Israel Lobby, both within and outside his Administration, was at the expense of movement towards the establishment of a Palestinian State. 

However, this is not the only occasion on which the US and other major Western powers had violated International Humanitarian Law at the expense of the Palestinians. They had also done so in relation to Israel’s decision to build the West Bank Separation Barrier, or “Wall” in 2002. This prompted the International Court of Justice to issue a ruling in July of that year which declared the Barrier “illegal” under international law and called on Israel to dismantle it. However, the ruling also obliged Western powers to work towards dismantling the Barrier, as stated in ‘paragraph 159’:

"The Court is of the view that all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction. It is also for all States, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end. In addition, all the States parties to the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 are under an obligation, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention".

The rationale for this ruling is provided in ‘paragraph 157’, which states that “a great many rules of humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict are so fundamental to the respect of the human person and 'elementary considerations of humanity' . . .", that they are "to be observed by all states whether or not they have ratified the conventions that contain them, because they constitute intransgressible principles of international customary law". In the Court’s view, these rules incorporate obligations “which are essentially of an erga omnes character, meaning that the obligation to enforce the ruling falls on all states rather than the state against which the decision is made – in this case Israel. Following on from this, ‘paragraph 160’ of the ruling called on the United Nations Security Council and its General Assembly to “consider what further action is required to bring to an end the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall and the associated regime”. The failure of the US-led Western donor community to comply with the Court’s ruling means that they, too, may have violated International Humanitarian Law and thus prevented the Palestinians from practicing their natural right to self-determination.

During George W. Bush’s presidency, Elliott Abrams was seen as the “main obstacle” to putting any kind of meaningful pressure on Israel. He worked tirelessly to undermine various attempts by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to bring the two sides together and negotiate peace. According to official sources, Abrams worked “systematically to undermine the prospect of serious negotiations designed to give substance to Rice’s hopes….”. On the ground, this meant that the US was failing in its duty to bring any pressure to bear on Israel to make meaningful moves towards establishing a Palestinian State. Instead, the Palestinians faced endless demands to implement various ‘reforms’, particularly in the spheres of security and finance, to end ‘incitement’ against Israel, and to crack down on Palestinian groups that were spearheading the fight against Israeli occupation. According to Camille Mansour, “whenever the Palestinians met a certain condition, the Americans deliberately invented a new condition so as not to apply any pressure on Israel”. Mansour continues:

"There is always a new condition. The aim is not to pressurize Israel. First it was “end the violence”, then “change the constitution”, then it was “appoint a Prime Minister”. They use all these conditions as a pretext for not pressurizing Israel". 

Abrams continued to play this role after Sharon was succeeded by Ehud Olmert as Israel’s Prime Minister in June 2006. He built a close relationship with two of Olmert’s closest advisors, Yoram Turbowitz and Shalom Turgeman, and all three men worked together to ensure that the Bush Administration did not pressure Israel into pursuing policies that Olmert did not like. According to Daniel Levy, a former advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister, “if Rice is getting too active with her peace-making quest, T + T [Turbowitz and Turgeman] can always be dispatched to Elliot Abrams at the White House, who in turn will enlist Cheney to keep the President in toe”. Henry Siegman, the Council on Foreign Relations and Director for the US/Middle East Project, reinforces this argument by referring to Abram’s secret meetings with Olmert’s advisors to inform them that US pressure on Israel would not be forthcoming:

"The Bush administration has done nothing to press Israel to deliver on its commitments, beyond Washington's empty rhetoric about a two-state 'political horizon'….Every time there emerged the slightest hint that the United States may finally engage seriously in a political process, Elliott Abrams would meet secretly with Olmert's envoys in Europe or elsewhere to reassure them that there exists no such danger".

Decades on from the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians are no nearer to establishing their state. Whilst there are other reasons for this, it is largely due to the success of the pro-Israel Lobby in infiltrating the policy-making process in leading Western countries – particularly the UK and the US – and preventing their governments from pursuing their publicly-declared goal of establishing a Palestinian State. No other lobby group has as big a stake as the pro-Israel Lobby does in relation to Israel’s expansionist policies in the occupied Palestinian territories on the one hand, and the Palestinian peoples’ ongoing quest for self-determination, on the other. For this reason, it would be difficult to dispute the US and UK -based pro-Israel Lobby’s success over the three decades or so or so in steering their policies away from their publicly-stated goal of bringing about the establishment of an independent, viable and sovereign Palestinian State. 

US hostility towards the Palestinians continued after George W. Bush was succeeded as President by Barack Obama in 2008. Obama had already set the stage for his presidency in a speech which he delivered at AIPAC’s Annual Conference in June 2007. In it, he underlined American support to the Jewish State and expressed his opposition to any peace agreement with the Palestinians which entailed the division of Jerusalem:

"Any agreement with the Palestinians must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognised, defensible borders. And Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and must remain undivided".

This was music to the ears of the pro-Israel Lobby. For the Palestinians, it meant that American policy towards them was not likely to change, whoever became President. Since then, however, relations between Israel and its friends in the Lobby on the one hand, and the Obama Administration on the other, deteriorated slightly, principally over the issue of Jewish settlements. Relations between the two countries deteriorated still further in March 2010 after Israel’s announcement that it was building an extra 1600 housing units in East Jerusalem. The announcement was made as US Vice President Joe Biden was visiting the region in order to advance peace negotiations between the two sides. This prompted the pro-Israel Lobby to act. Later that month, AIPAC circulated a letter on Capitol Hill describing the US government’s criticism of Israel “a matter of serious concern”. It also called on the Obama Administration to “take immediate steps to defuse the tension” with Israel and to “reinforce its relationship” with the Jewish State. Since then, US policy under the Obama Administration has been more predictable and in keeping with that of the Bush and Clinton Administrations before it. In December 2011, with an eye on the forthcoming Presidential elections, Obama boasted that his Administration has provided more support to Israel than any other before it:

"It’s hard to remember a time when the [US] Administration gave more support to the security of Israel. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s a fact".

It is easy to see why. Less than nine months earlier, Obama’s Administration had vetoed a United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning Jewish settlements built on occupied Palestinian territory. In September 2011, President Obama informed the Palestinian Authority that the US would veto any Palestinian application for statehood at the United Nations. Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, had threatened to turn to the UN after Israel refused to freeze Jewish settlement activity in the oPt. On 23rd September 2011, Abbas declared that the peace process had failed and submitted his request to the UN for recognition of a Palestinian State. The US Congress responded almost immediately by withholding almost $200 million of financial aid to the Palestinians as punishment for Abbas’s statehood bid. And in October 2011, the US government cut off all funding to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) after the organization admitted Palestine as a full member. Therefore, far from signalling a departure from the policies of his predecessor, Barack Obama continues to pursue the same US policy of foiling any efforts at establishing an independent and viable Palestinian State.

The above was written in 2012