A Point of View: Hillary's Middle East saga

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's excursion to the Middle East has the look about it of a leader responding to the latest political pressure point. She goes to Jerusalem and says that Israeli settlements should not stand in the way of negotiations, and even compliments the Netanyahu government for the steps it has taken.

She then proceeds to Morocco and says that America has always opposed Israeli settlements and Israel is very far from meeting American expectations on the subject.

Despite the appearance of pandering to local concerns, the Secretary of State's trip has been important in setting straight American priorities in an effort to get the peace process back on track.

Let's be clear. The tension that has arisen between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government since last spring is not about Israeli settlements per se, but about how Israeli settlements fit in to the larger challenge of peacemaking.

American presidents one after another have opposed Israeli settlements since the 1970s when the settler movement truly emerged. Some did so with greater vigor than others, in particular Jimmy Carter, who not only criticized settlements but also said that they were an obstacle to peace, and George Bush the elder, who held up loan guarantees as long as Israel continued settlement expansion.

So, as Secretary Clinton said in Morocco, the Obama administration was hardly breaking new ground in its demand that Israel freeze settlement building.

Where it was moving in a new direction was in taking previous comments about settlements being an obstacle to peace and making that the centerpiece of American policy. In fact, Israeli settlements, whether one supported them or opposed them, had never prevented negotiations from taking place when the will to negotiate otherwise existed. But now, by the US insisting that Israel freeze settlements as a precondition to restarting negotiations, we were indeed creating a reality which did not exist heretofore: Settlements were blocking peace talks. Palestinians now said they wouldn't negotiate as long as Israel continued to expand settlements.

Over a period of time, the administration came to realize that giving settlements a level of importance by which they could now even prevent the parties to come to the table was a mistake. They understood that for Israel, the issue will be hard enough, though necessary, to address in the context of a final resolution of the conflict - not, however, just to get to the table. In that light, the concessions Netanyahu did make in recent months to restrain, if not freeze, settlement building, are significant and were duly recognized by the Secretary of State. 

Now the administration has re-established a sensible equilibrium on the issue. It will continue to state its critical views of Israeli settlements, as Ms. Clinton did in Morocco, calling on Israel to do "far more" to halt settlement expansion. At the same time it will no longer give the Palestinians an incentive to avoid negotiations by making it again a precondition for those negotiations.

What this does is move the settlement issue back where it belongs, as an important matter for the negotiating table as part of the broader Israeli-Palestinian talks. Let us remember that when those talks offered hope for progress, at Camp David in 2000 and in the Annapolis process in 2008, Israel offered to dismantle a majority of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Starting negotiations again may be a challenge because of the continual internal conflict between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas because of the Palestinian election scheduled for January 24. At least, however, the additional impediment to a return to the table, the settlement issue, has been moved back to its proper place.

In that respect, Secretary Clinton's trip to the region looks a lot better. She has reiterated the American view that settlements are problematic, which should reassure the Arabs and the Palestinians that America has not retreated on that. And, she has eased the unnecessary tension between the US and Israel while removing another excuse for the Palestinians to move toward peace talks.

The truth is that those who oppose Israeli settlements should have the greatest incentive to come to the table and reach a peace agreement as soon as possible. That is the best way to deal with the issue. Maybe Ms. Clinton's new balancing act can be a catalyst in getting that message across.