U.S. Relations With Israel Hit “Crisis Of Historic Proportions”

Mar 15, 2010 8 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

Times Online:

The White House is refusing to back down today in a bitter dispute with Israel over settlements in Jerusalem that has stalled peace talks, split Jewish lobbyists in Washington and which the Pentagon believes is threatening the lives of American soldiers in the broader Middle East.

As Palestinians threatened to boycott future talks, the depth of the dispute was revealed when Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, was quoted today warning that US-Israeli relations were “in their worst crisis since 1975 – a crisis of historic proportions”.

Still smarting over the announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem during the visit to Israel last week by Joe Biden, the US Vice-President, Hillary Clinton has called the move and its timing “insulting” towards the US.

Her remarks were echoed by senior White House officials at the weekend who spoke of Israel’s “affront” to Washington after Mr Biden’s effort to restart the peace process was sabotaged by the prospect of new Jewish settlements in districts claimed by

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, has apologised for embarrassing Mr Biden but has given no sign of ordering a halt to the project to build 1,600 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, an East Jerusalem neighbourhood conquered by Israel in 1967.

Mrs Clinton extracted the promise of a ten-month freeze on Israeli settlement-building from Mr Netanyahu last year.

Washington sees the construction project as a betrayal of trust, but the American response appears to have been doubly emboldened by an extraordinary briefing given to the Pentagon in January by the staff of General David Petraeus, the top-ranking US military officer in the Middle East and Central Asia.

A team of experts assembled by General Petraeus told Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Arab leaders were losing faith in America’s commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal; that the lives of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were ultimately at stake; and that George Mitchell, the White House special envoy to the Middle East, was “too old, too slow… and too late”.

Israeli media reported today that Washington is demanding that the Ramat Shlomo project be cancelled as a precondition for resuming peace talks.

There were also reports of American demands for further conciliatory gestures towards the Palestinians, including a release of prisoners and a promise that when negotiations restart they will cover all the fundamental questions still unresolved between the two sides, including the status of Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees who lost their homes in 1948.

Senator Mitchell is due to return to the region this week to try to revive his plan for “proximity talks” between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, and Israel.

The two sides have been negotiating directly for most of the past decade; it is a measure of their mutual mistrust since Mr Netanyahu’s return to power that despite Mr Mitchell’s best efforts over the past 14 months they have agreed only to negotiate through him.

Mr Netanyahu is due in Washington next weekend to attend the annual conference of the American-Israel Political Action Committee, the influential pro-Israel group, which today called on the White House to tone down its “very worrying” rhetoric.

There was little sign of that happening, as a delegation of left-leaning Jewish American activists visited the White House with a message of support for the Administration.

“We need a peace agreement to secure Israel and because it is an imperative US national security interest,” Amy Spitalnik of the J Street think-tank told The Times.

Echoing the concerns of General Petraeus, she added: “What we saw last week harms America’s credibility in the region. This conflict is being used as a propaganda tool by our real enemies in the region, especially Iran.”

Thomas Friedman, the influential New York Times columnist and occasional presidential golfing partner, had some trenchant advice for the Administration.

Instead of “fuming and making up” when wrongfooted by the announcement of new settlements, he wrote, Mr Biden should have “snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home” and left a note telling Israel: “You have lost contact with reality”.