Obama is Fumbling a Chance for Middle East Peace

President Obama has divided foreign opinion. In the eyes of Western Europe, he is doing just great. Support for his handling of international affairs has quadrupled by comparison with the meager levels of President Bush, according to a survey conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and its partners. But that is only part of the story. In Eastern Europe, there is more skepticism about what he is doing regarding Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. And the disenchantment in Eastern Europe is nothing compared with the fearful majorities in the Middle East's most thriving democracy: Israel.

The numbers are startling. Obama's popularity in Israel has plunged to the point where now only 4 percent believe he is a friend. Obama should worry about this. So should we all, for the alienation has significant consequences for peace.

American support and American credibility are crucial for Israel. It is the confidence in America's friendship and support that will enable Israel to fulfill hopes for peace in the region. Alas, the American pressure campaign following Obama's ascent has had one clear outcome, and not one we had hoped for: It has made a peace deal much less likely. Obama has not exerted pressure equally. He ignores what Israel has done in recent years to advance the cause of peace and what the Arabs have failed to do. The onus has been on Israel and Israel alone. This has allowed the Arabs yet again to abdicate responsibility. It has reinforced the long-standing Arab belief that the United States can "deliver Israel" if only it has the will to do so, thereby reducing Arab incentives to make concessions in direct negotiations with Israel. The moderate Arab states, whose principal concern is not Israel but an expansionist Iran seeking domination in the Middle East, have been unwilling to raise a finger to advance the process—not Egypt, not Jordan, not Saudi Arabia.

While that may have been unsurprising, the public nature of their rejection was unusual.

As if on cue, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, announced that he would not negotiate on any issue with the new Israeli government until Obama's settlement prohibitions are met, both in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Abbas had previously negotiated with both Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, and Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister, without such qualifications, so Obama has dumped a solid blockade of concrete on the famous road map to peace. Abbas didn't leave it at that. He issued another set of unilateral, nonnegotiable demands as a condition for "negotiation": an independent Palestinian state, a pull back to the pre-June 1967 borders, minus the Palestinian land bridge between the West Bank and Gaza, and a Palestinian right of return to Israel. In short, come to a meeting to surrender. And this from a man who has no control over Hamas, which could veto any breakthrough from the Palestinian side. Abbas has now refused to make a deal with three different Israeli prime ministers.

Obama has misdirected his political capital by focusing on the idea that the Arab conflict is fundamentally about Israeli West Bank settlements or about Israel's denial of the Palestinians' legitimate aspirations for a state of their own in the West Bank and Gaza. It is not. It is not about the territories that the Arabs lost to Israel in a war they provoked in 1967. The Arab cause against Israel and Zionism is not about "settlements," it is about the very existence of Israel. It is a centurylong war based on the conviction that all land governed by the Jews in Palestine, including Israel within its pre-1967 boundaries, is Arab land, and thus no Jewish state can achieve legitimacy in Arab eyes.

When Obama says that the Palestinians have suffered, surely he should understand that they have suffered because they have unsuccessfully pursued the destruction of the Jewish homeland. The Palestinians were not displaced by Israel's founding; they were displaced by a war that they originated in 1948 to destroy Israel in embryo.

Think of what Israel is facing even today. At a recent Fatah conference, the first in 20 years, the Palestinian organization's feuding old guard and young guard were united in their refusal to reach an accommodation with Israel. Both old and young endorsed terrorism. Both embraced the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorist group as a full-fledged Fatah organization. Both approved building a strategic alliance with Iran. Both called for establishing a sovereign state "on the entire Palestinian territory." In other words, Fatah retains the armed struggle not as a way of settling individual Palestinian grievances but as a strategy in order to destroy Israel and form a state in the whole of Palestine, or, as the conference put it, "the elimination of the state of the Zionist occupation economically, politically, militarily, and culturally."