A Point of View: After meeting with Obama, what's next?

I had the opportunity to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House on July 13, along with fifteen other representatives of Jewish organizations. Afterwards, everyone wanted to know whether I now felt reassured about the state of US-Israel relations.
  
I start off with the premise that pro-Israeli attitudes in this country are so deeply embedded and multi-layered that no particular policy approach can easily change that. On top of that, the President said a number of things that reminded me of the bi-partisan character of support for Israel which has been the hallmark of the relationship.
  

Barack Obama addressed Jewish community leaders last
year at Congregation Rodeph Shalom in Philadelphia,
saying he would work as president to diminish tensions
between the black and Jewish communities.
PHOTO: AP

He said, as he did in Cairo, that the bonds between the countries are unbreakable; that America would never allow Israel's security to be in jeopardy. He talked about the need for the Arab world to take steps toward normalizing relations with Israel and indicated, though the media had not focused on it, the many steps the administration has taken to move the Arab world in that direction. He acknowledged the need to deal with public perceptions that he was focusing only on what Israel had to do by speaking more often about the Arab and Palestinian requirements.

In sum, grounds for reassurance.

Where I and others felt less comfortable was in the assumptions that seem to underlie the President's approach. First, is his outreach to the Muslim world. I understand the need to do this as a vital factor in protecting American interests, as long as it is not at Israel's expense. However, I left the meeting with the sense that the Obama administration believes that after the Bush administration, there is a need for the US to demonstrate that it can be tough with Israel to win back credibility with Muslims. We are seeing it already on the settlement issue and once established as a mode of operation, it can emerge again and again.
   
What is particularly troubling about this is that it is based on a misreading of recent history. It simplistically describes what happened in the Bush years and rests on assumptions that Bush policy was so one-sided toward Israel that the Arabs have a right to feel aggrieved. The truth is while the policy was strongly pro-Israel it was never a zero-sum game. The enunciation of the need for a Palestinian state, the road map, disengagement from Gaza in 2005, and the Annapolis process in 2007 were hardly one-sided and provided opportunities for progress toward peace if the Palestinians were truly interested. The notion that we have to pressure Israel to show our bona fides to the Arabs is to buy into their distorted version of history.
  
At the same time, this theme ignores what Israel has done in recent years to advance peace and the reality that these initiatives met with greater Palestinian extremism rather than moderation. Israel's offer of a Palestinian state at Camp David in 2000, its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, also in 2000 and its disengagement from Gaza were all steps upon which there could have been building toward peace. Instead, the Palestinians responded with rejection, suicide bombs and kidnappings, extremist politics and rockets. That history is being ignored.
  
A second assumption that is troubling is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the key to US interests in the region. To his credit, President Obama rejected the concept of linkage between the Palestinian and Iran issues. I welcome that.
 
Still, I continue to sense that the administration is putting too much weight on solving the conflict. We all want to see progress and I have no problem with the administration view that the US must be much more engaged to achieve progress. But I am concerned when expectations rise dramatically, as when the president says that he expects the problem to be resolved in two years.

Going back to the Carter administration and Zbigniew Brzezinski, the idea of a comprehensive agreement as the centerpiece of American interests in the Middle East invariably led to undue pressure on Israel, a strain in US-Israel relations, without real progress toward peace. This is because the Arab world then, and now, hasn't been ready to reach an agreement  and, if there is a determination at all costs to get there, the tendency is to blame Israel for the stalemate. Once such a process begins, arguments about whether Israel truly serves American interests come into play.

Finally, I worry about perceptions arising from these assumptions. Anti-Israel forces around the world, those who engage in boycotts, resolutions and propaganda believe they have largely triumphed everywhere but in America. Now right or wrong, because of the lack of clarity coming from the administration, they sense a unique opportunity to separate America from Israel. I think they are wrong but the public rhetoric of the administration is necessary to dampen those aspirations and to make it clear that the special relationship between the US and Israel, which in no way contradicts the goal of an equitable peace and better relations with the Arab world, is alive and well.
 
I'm glad President Obama reached out to Jewish leaders. It is a good beginning, but there is a lot of work still to be done for full reassurance.