Long time observers of the Middle East were not surprised by the events that transpired during Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel earlier this week. It is well known that Israeli politics is a multifaceted conglomerate of opinions ranging from the far- right supporters of armed conflict with the Palestinians to the Far- Left supporters of abdicating the Jewish State altogether and instead establishing a one-state multi-national solution.
The far-right controls the ministry of housing at the moment, and in fact has controlled it in the past as well. The Israeli Far-Right’s motives are simple, they do not believe in the peace process, instead they would like to see a Jewish State in the “Greater Israel”, which is Gaza and the West Bank as well as Israel Proper. Therefore they have no interest in negotiating a two-state solution and gaining peace by such negotiations. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet were somewhat taken by surprise by the Ministry of Housing’s announcement of settlement plans during Biden’s visit. This testifies to the fact that Netanyahu’s government has been run in an incompetent manner, where he is not able to control his ministers in the realm of foreign-relations. However, it does not testify to the fact that Israelis do not desire a just and fair settlement to the conflict, that they want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians or even that the current government is not willing and able to negotiate at this time. This is simply a matter of inside politics, whereby a minority in power has manipulated its way to a victory the majority does not desire or endorse.
However, Biden’s reaction to the settlement announcement did not serve any positive purpose. By expressing his outrage, he accomplished exactly what the Right-Wing groups in Israel desire, which is contrary to the desire of most Israelis namely, suspension of negotiations and the continuing of the conflict. Instead of dealing with such announcements as his predecessors James Baker and Condoleeza Rice have, by diffusing the situation and condemning such announcement without actually jeapordizing negotiations, Biden fanned the flames and walked away from the trip empty-handed, as negotiations were suspended by the Arab League.
In the words of the Washington Post:
But Biden shouldn’t have been surprised by the announcement, which was delivered by a ministry under the control of a right-wing religious party in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s fractious coalition. The ambushing of high-level American visitors to Jerusalem via the announcement of new settlements is a tried-and-true tactic of Israeli hard-liners seeking to derail peace negotiations. It dates to at least the early 1990s, when Secretary of State James A. Baker III complained that he was greeted with a new settlement every time he landed in Israel.
Over the years U.S. envoys from Baker to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have learned that the trick is to sidestep such broadsides, expressing disapproval without allowing the toxic settlement issue to take center stage and derail peace negotiations. After all, most Israeli settlement announcements, including this one, are pure symbolism: No ground will be broken anytime soon, and even if the homes are eventually constructed they won’t stand in the way of a Palestinian state.
