13. OBAMA’S PALESTINE LEGACY

0.     See Ali Abunimah, “How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel,” The Electronic Intifada, March 4, 2007, https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-barack-obama-learned-love-israel/6786.

0.     For Obama’s quote (“my own blind spots”), see Peter Wallsten, “Allies of Palestinians See a Friend in Obama,” The Los Angeles Times, April 10, 2008. For Obama’s words of encouragement, see Ali Abunimah, “How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel.”

0.     For Rice’s comparison of Israeli practices in the West Bank to segregated Alabama, see Abrams, Tested by Zion, pp. 244–45. For Obama’s replacement of Churchill’s bust with one of Martin Luther King, Jr., see Michael D. Shear, “No Need for Holmes. Obama Sheds Light on a Winston Churchill Mystery,” The New York Times, April 24, 2016.

0.     For one of the first phone calls to a foreign leader, see comments by Abbas’s spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudeina, who quoted Obama as having told Abbas, “This is my first phone call to a foreign leader and I’m making it only hours after I took office.” The White House has confirmed that Obama made four calls to foreign leaders on his first morning in office, and one of these was to Abbas, but it has refused to say who was called first. Of the four, only Abbas claims to have been told that he was called first. For the quotes from the pleased Abbas adviser, see “Obama Plunges Straight into Middle East Conflict,” The Sydney Morning Herald, January 22, 2009.

0.     For Mitchell’s appointment and background, see “George Mitchell Named Special Envoy for the Middle East,” CNN, January 22, 2009. For the administration’s call for a complete freeze in settlement building and the vow to use tougher language, see Mark Landler and Isabel Kershner, “Israeli Settlement Growth Must Stop, Clinton Says,” The New York Times, May 27, 2009; Helene Cooper, “Obama Calls for Swift Move Toward Mideast Peace Talks,” The New York Times, May 28, 2009; Scott Wilson, “Obama Searches for Middle East Peace,” The Washington Post, July 14, 2012. (While the Obama administration began using the stronger word “illegitimate” when referring to Israeli settlements, it refrained from calling settlements “illegal,” as the United States had done decades earlier.) For the quote from a senior official traveling with Clinton (“it was apartheid”), see Peter Beinart, “Obama Betrayed Ideals on Israel,” Newsweek, March 12, 2012.

0.     For the observations from visitors to the White House, see Beinart, “Obama Betrayed.” For the quotes from Obama’s speech (“intolerable”), see “Remarks by the President at Cairo University, 6-04-09,” White House, Office of the Press Secretary, June 4, 2009.

0.     For Obama’s quote (“what did we get”), see Scott Wilson, “Obama Searches for Middle East Peace,” The Washington Post, July 14, 2012.

0.     For the framework peace agreement obtained by Carter, see chapter 1, section i; “The Camp David Accords: The Framework for Peace in the Middle East,” Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, September 17, 1978. For Reagan’s opening of a dialogue with the PLO, see “Text of Reagan Statement,” The New York Times, December 15, 1988. For Bush’s support of Palestinian statehood and Sharon’s endorsement, see chapter 1, section ii; Abrams, Tested by Zion, pp. 16–17, 32.

0.     For the US view that Palestinians would be acting in “bad faith,” see statement by George Mitchell in “The Palestine Papers: Meeting Minutes: Saeb Erekat and George Mitchell,” Al Jazeera, October 21, 2009.

0.   For the 2013 boom in settlement construction starts, greater than at any time since 2000, see Jodi Rudoren and Jeremy Ashkenas, “Netanyahu and the Settlements,” The New York Times, March 12, 2015. For US complicity and Kerry’s acceptance of settlement expansion as a necessary payoff to secure the right-wing government’s acquiescence in the talks, see chapter 12; “Kerry: Israeli Settlements Move Was Expected,” BBC, August 13, 2013. For Obama’s sole veto of a UN Security Council resolution, see “Security Council Fails to Adopt Text Demanding That Israel Halt Settlement Activity as Permanent Member Casts Negative Vote,” United Nations, February 18, 2011; “Security Council—Veto List,” Dag Hammarskjöld Library, United Nations, accessed August 16, 2016. For figures on US military assistance and the United States having given more to Israel under Obama than under any other president, see chapter 12; Eli Lake, “Obama Wants to Stop Subsidizing Israel’s Defense Industry,” Bloomberg View, June 22, 2016. See also Colin H. Kahl, “Obama Has Been Great for Israel,” Foreign Policy, August 16, 2012; Mitch Ginsburg, “Obama Is Best-ever U.S. President for Israel, Says Former Intel Chief,” The Times of Israel, March 6, 2012. For the new aid package, see “Fact Sheet: Memorandum of Understanding Reached with Israel,” the White House, Office of the Press Secretary, September 14, 2016.

0.   For the more lenient terms that Israel sought (in particular on retaining its unique ability to spend a large share of US aid on non-US weapons), see Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “U.S. Offers to Increase Military Aid to Israel,” The New York Times, July 1, 2016; Barak Ravid, “U.S. Seeks to Increase Aid to Israel—With More of It to Be Spent on American Equipment,” Haaretz, July 3, 2016. For the trap Israel sensed, see comments by Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States (and later a deputy minister in the Israeli government), who urged Netanyahu not to accept the package because, among other reasons, the deal could decrease Israeli leverage to oppose any peace initiatives that Obama might put forward in his final months. Gil Hoffman, “Michael Oren Advises Netanyahu Not to Sign U.S. Aid Deal,” The Jerusalem Post, June 21, 2016. See also comments by Elliott Abrams: “If you do it this year, you will give Obama a talking point for why he is the best person for Israeli security, ever,” he told Bloomberg View. “And Obama will misuse that in his last months in office to produce his parameters for the peace talks.” Eli Lake, “Obama Wants to Stop Subsidizing Israel’s Defense Industry,” Bloomberg View, June 22, 2016.

0.   See “Consulate General Staff,” Government of Sweden, accessed July 15, 2016. Parliaments of the United Kingdom, France, and Spain also voted in favor of recognizing Palestine.

0.   A “parameters resolution” had become the common shorthand for this option, even though the word “parameters” connotes something longer and more detailed than the short list of “principles”—similar in level of detail to Resolution 242—that the United States had in mind.

0.   For the text of Netanyahu’s speech, see “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech at the AIPAC Policy Conference 2016,” Israel Government Press Office, March 22, 2016. For similar statements by Netanyahu when Palestinians circulated draft resolutions in fall 2014 (“We will never agree to unilateral diktats.… He does not understand that they will result in a Hamas takeover in Judea and Samaria”), see “PM Netanyahu: ‘Abu Mazen Thinks He Can Threaten Us with Unilateral Steps,’” press release, Israel Prime Minister’s Office, December 18, 2014. In May 2016, Netanyahu tried to start a new, Egyptian-led peace process, an effort that, according to several Israeli cabinet ministers, was aimed at blocking the United States from introducing parameters, since Israel could have portrayed such a step as an attempt to interfere with the talks and quash a historical chance at peace. Shlomo Cesana, Daniel Siryoti, and Israel Hayom staff, “Report: Netanyahu Willing to Meet Abbas at Cairo Summit,” Israel Hayom, July 12, 2016.

0.   For quotes from George Ball’s article, see George W. Ball, “How to Save Israel in Spite of Herself,” Foreign Affairs 55, no. 3 (April 1977): 453–71.

0.   Following the collapse of the Camp David summit, President Clinton presented both sides with the nonnegotiable “Clinton Parameters,” but said the offer would disappear as soon as he left office less than one month later. At the end of the 2007–2008 Annapolis negotiations, Condoleezza Rice recalled in her memoir, the White House attempted to invite both sides to “accept the parameters” of an agreement, but, as with Clinton, it was during a US president’s final months in office, and again based on the proposal of an outgoing Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. And following Kerry’s failure in 2014, Obama administration officials deliberated over whether to present an American framework for resolving the conflict, this time perhaps in a binding resolution at the UN Security Council. Rice, No Higher Honor, p. 723–24; Helene Cooper and Michael D. Shear, “Obama May Find It Impossible to Mend Frayed Ties to Netanyahu,” The New York Times, March 18, 2015.

0.   On the potential difficulty of obtaining a consensus in the Security Council, one senior US official said that the United States had received assurances from other members of the Security Council and Arab states that on the specific language of a resolution they would be flexible. Whether the United States could trust those assurances, particularly from the Arab states, who typically defer to the Palestinians, was another question. Phone interview by the author with a senior US official, September 2016.

0.   There are precedents for backlashes against peace proposals: the discussion of sovereignty over the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount at the Camp David summit led directly to Ariel Sharon’s controversial demonstration of Israeli control over the site, solidifying his support on the right and paving the path to the prime minister’s office. Similarly, the Right of Return movement and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, both precursors of the BDS movement, grew in reaction to the unofficial 2003 Geneva Accord. And the Camp David proposal of land swaps in the Halutza sands near Gaza led Sharon as prime minister to attempt to foreclose the possibility by building new towns in those areas. Clyde Haberman, “Israeli Cabinet Rules Out Idea of Exchange of Territory,” The New York Times, July 16, 2001. For the possibility of formal Israeli annexations, see “Knesset Speaker Calls for Annexation of Ma’ale Adumim,” The Times of Israel, July 19, 2016. In 2016, the Land of Israel lobby in the Knesset proposed a draft law that would formally annex the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and commissioned a poll that found that 78 percent of Israeli Jews favor it. For the proposal to require a supermajority to authorize negotiations over Jerusalem, see Aeyal Gross, “Should We Worry About Bill Requiring Knesset Supermajority to Negotiate on Jerusalem?” Haaretz, October 21, 2013. In March 2014, Israel passed a basic law requiring a two-thirds supermajority (and a national referendum if the share of votes were to fall between one-half and two-thirds) to approve any cession of land in which Israeli law applies; this includes East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but not Gaza or the West Bank. Unlike a separate draft law that failed to pass in 2013, the 2014 Basic Law requires a supermajority to approve a completed peace treaty, rather than to approve the mere holding of negotiations over a possible cession. Lahav Harkov, “Knesset Passes First Basic Law in 22 Years: Referendum on Land Concessions,” The Jerusalem Post, March 12, 2014.

0.   For Bush’s April 2004 letter, see “Exchange of Letters Between PM Sharon and President Bush,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, April 14, 2004.

0.   For the quoted portion of the Republican Party platform, see “Republican Platform 2016,” Republican National Committee, 2016, p. 46; Tal Kopan, “GOP Moves to the Right on Israel,” CNN, July 11, 2016, http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/11/politics/gop-platform-republican-convention-israel. For the letter from Republican and Democratic members of Congress to Obama, see Carol E. Lee, “Don’t Back U.N. Council on Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Lawmakers Urge Obama,” The Wall Street Journal (online), April 14, 2016. For the letter from a bipartisan group of 88 senators (which also stated: “Any such resolution … will ultimately make it more difficult for Israelis and Palestinians to resolve the conflict.… Even well-intentioned initiatives at the United Nations (UN) risk locking the parties into positions that will make it more difficult to return to the negotiating table and make the compromises necessary for peace”), see “88 Senators Urge Obama to Veto ‘One-Sided’ Security Council Resolutions on Israel,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 20, 2016.

0.   For J Street’s attempts to build ties to Likud ministers and help Netanyahu’s government combat BDS, see Barak Ravid, “Israel Engaging with J Street in Bid to Counter BDS on U.S. Campuses,” Haaretz, June 20, 2016. A regional cochair of J Street’s student wing, which is reputed to be more critical of Israel than the parent organization, issued a plea for Ron Dermer, a close Netanyahu adviser who became ambassador to the United States in 2013, to engage with the group. Sonia Brinn, “Ron Dermer, Meet with America’s Pro-Israel Progressives, Not Only Its Hawks,” Haaretz, June 22, 2016.

0.   For Palestinian requests for the United States to present parameters after the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000 and on other occasions in subsequent years, see Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace, p. 724; “Meeting Minutes: Saeb Erekat and George Mitchell, The Palestine Papers,” Al Jazeera, October 21, 2009.

0.   For EU declarations, see, for example, “Council Conclusions on the Middle East Peace Process,” Council of the European Union, December 13, 2010. For the Arab Peace Initiative being welcomed by the Quartet and the Security Council, see “A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, April 30, 2003; S/RES/1397 (2002), United Nations, March 12, 2002; S/RES/1515 (2003), United Nations, November 19, 2003.

0.   The UN Partition Plan of 1947, adopted in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, described the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, but it did so as a matter of describing the demographic majority in each state, not in an effort to recognize the character of either state, both of which were to provide full and equal rights to all citizens. “General Assembly Resolution 181,” United Nations, November 29, 1947.

0.   During past negotiations, a distinction has been made between the Western Wall—the entire western retaining wall of the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount—the majority of which is located underground in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, and the Wailing Wall, which is the section of the Western Wall that is exposed and faces the plaza in which Jews pray.

0.   One of the points of dispute in discussions of security during the Kerry talks was if the determination of whether Palestinians had satisfied the security performance criteria stipulated in the agreement would be subject to Israeli veto. Interviews by the author with a Palestinian negotiator, an Israeli negotiator, US officials, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Washington, DC, September 2014, March 2015. For discussion of this issue, see “Advancing the Dialogue: A Security System for the Two-State Solution,” Center for a New American Security, May 2016.