Was the Focus on Settlements Wrong?

As peace talks flounder, just as they were expected to, many are coming out to criticize the Obama administration now for the early focus on settlement construction. Obama's regular, pro-Israel critics are basking in the glory of the failure. But was the focus on settlements the wrong way to start engaging this conflict on the part of the Obama administration? Robert Malley, whose work I respect, says so in this New York Times piece:

"The original sin was putting so much emphasis on settlements, an issue we couldn’t resolve," said Robert Malley, the Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group. "We’ve spent the last year trying to undo the damage of that step."

I have to disagree with Malley here and any others who are making the same argument. I don't believe the focus on settlements was wrong, but I also don't think the Obama administration handled this issue the right way. The handling of the settlement issue was a failure not because it was the wrong issue to tackle, but simply because the United States never applied any leverage over Israel to force them to stop building settlements. So it is not that the US picked the wrong issue, but rather that they did nothing - NOTHING - to change Israel's behavior on that issue. Simply asking is not enough. Here is the proof, and, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words or a thousands of settlement homes.


Can you guess during which period from 1977-2006 was the only instance in history when the United States conditioned aid to Israel based on halting settlement construction? If you guessed right around 1991-2, you guessed right. During a period when the United States was giving Israel aid to the tune of $1000 per Israeli, the Israeli government asked for an additional 10 million in loan guarantees. The George H.W. Bush administration, riding high after the end of the first Gulf War, was able to get an AIPAC sensitive congress to delay the loan guarantees. Within months, the Madrid peace conference took place, and, well, you can see how settlement construction slowed.

If Obama, who came in with tremendous public support early on, put some real muscle behind his request, this entire process would have played out differently. But of course that never happened, and Obama is too weak domestically now to do anything bold enough that could jeopardize domestic support.

So, no, the problem was not the early focus on settlements, it was the failure to back up the early focus on settlements with any real leverage. Sure, some will argue that settlements are not an issue because they will be determined when borders are negotiated. But if Palestinians need settlements removed and the Israelis refuse, why would Palestinians believe that the United States would press the Israelis to dismantle settlements when they can't even press them to stop illegally building them. For Palestinians, the failure to handle the settlement issue with the proper pressure indicated that the United States was incapable of mediating the negotiations, and would certainly not be in a position to push the Israelis on the stickier issues like Jerusalem and refugees. It's an indication that American-mediated negotiations, the only type of negotiations the Americans will allow, are incapable of succeeding.

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