Barney Frank doesn’t go along with the crowd
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) liked most, but not all, of the AIPAC-backed letter to the president that 329 of his House colleagues signed last month. So instead of signing on, he wrote his own letter to the president.
"I agreed with everything in it with one exception, but I feel sufficiently strongly about that exception so that I did not sign it, but instead chose to send you this letter expressing my agreement with all but that one point," Frank wrote in the Tuesday letter -- that point being that the U.S. and Israel must work "closely and privately together" on areas of agreement and disagreement.
The AIPAC-backed letter called for "every effort" to be made to realize an Arab-Israeli peace while laying out certain "basic principles" to achieve it.
Frank said he did agree with the letter's insistance on an "absolute Palestinian commitment to end violence, terror and incitement" and its urging of a "far greater involvement and participation by the Arab states both in moving toward normal ties with Israel and in supporting moderate Palestinians."
"But I think that the assertion in point 2 that 'The proven best way forward is to work closely and privately (emphasis added) together both on areas of agreement and especially on areas of disagreement' is a mistake, both from the standpoint of the importance of the role of electorates in our two democracies, and in fact in promoting genuine cooperation," wrote Frank. He continued:
For example, I think it would be a mistake if the American people were not able to learn what the Israeli government thinks about our approaches to Iran. This is a very complex issue, and it is clear that there are strong opinions in the Israel government that the American approach has on occasion not been tough enough. I do not think that the American people should be denied the chance to know what the Israeli government thinks on this issue. Conversely, I believe it is very important for the Israeli public to know that there is strong disagreement within the United States -- not just within our government -- over exactly how to deal with the question of settlements in the West Bank. My view, as a strong supporter ofIsrael's right to remain a secure, democratic Jewish state is that the one area of vulnerability for Israel in terms of American support is in the area of settlements. Just as I believe the American public should know what the Israeli government thinks about our approach to Iran, I think it would be a denial of an important principle of democracy for the Israeli electorate not to know what the state of American opinion is regarding the settlements.
He adds that "I believe that the relationship between our two countries is so strong that a public discussion of disagreements in a civil and respectful tone holds no threat whatsoever to it," concluding that honestly discussing differences in a constructive way is often a means of containing any damage that might be done if they are treated as secrets and are thus open to distortion.
The AIPAC-backed letter also states that the "parties themselves must negotiate the details of any agreement," a point that Frank never addresses in his missive.
Frank was one of just two of the 31 Jewish members of the House who did not sign the letter, along with Rep. Bob Filner. (We have not yet received a separate letter from Filner.) Here's Frank's full letter:Read More >>>
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OU asks what happened to Obama’s nuance
The Orthodox Union says it is "deeply troubled" by President Obama's approach toward Israel's policy on settlements because the president's typical "nuanced approach has been "glaringly absent."
"To the contrary, this policy has, to date, reflected a blunderbuss, one-size-fits-all attitude toward everything from building a new house on an empty lot in the midst of the city of Ma'ale Adumim, to erecting new houses on an empty hilltop in Samaria," wrote the leadership of the Orthodox Uniion in a letter to the president.
They added that the current approach was "not only illogical, it is also counterproductive to your goals since it forces Israelis and their supporters into a defensive posture, as opposed to one open to negotiations and creative solutions."
The full letter can be seen here.
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Growth and narratives, natural and unnatural
That's my excuse anyway. I've been following the issue of "natural growth" in the settlements with mixed feelings: I know people who live in the settlements, and whatever one thinks of their politics (and not all of them necessarily hew to a rigid political view) squeezing them out because they want to add a room for a new baby seems unconscionable.
On the other hand, where does one draw the line? If settlements are truly a final status issue -- if it is true, as every Israeli leader has argued, that they can be dismantled as readily as they were built -- why do we allow ourselves to become more deeply entrenched?
This is the wrong paradigm, and I'm guilty once again of assessing this issue from where I sit, whom I know.
The real question is: What natural growth have we allowed the Palestinians?
Not a whole lot.
I chatted today with Danny Seidemann, who heads Ir Amim, a group that I like to call "pro-Jerusalem" -- it cares for the viability of the city and all its residents. I asked him about the notion of "natural growth" within the confines of the city (never mind the strictures on growth -- and movement -- in the West Bank).
The term, he said, is not "values neutral." There is natural growth, and there is natural growth when it is heavily funded and promoted by a government.
And so, in Jerusalem, Israel's government has, since 1967, played a role in the building of 50,000 units -- and Jewish growth in the eastern "new" sector now stands at 190,000.
In the Arab sector, the government has helped fund just 600 units -- the last of these three decades ago -- and yet Arab growth has ballooned from 70,000 in 1967 to 270,000 today. In 1967, Arabs constituted 25 percent of the city; today, they account for 35 percent of its population.
In other words, the Israeli government has unnaturally impeded the natural growth of the city's Arab population and has unnaturally spurred its Jewish growth.
"The mantra of all israeli policies in Jerusalem is to maintain the natural balance," Seidemann said. "Which means that the birth of an Israeli child is a simcha and the birth of a Palestinian child is a demographic threat."
Without massive government assistance, he says, Jewish growth would not have been so impressive. He notes the recent, private attempt to build Jewish homes in Jebel Mukaber, an Arab village adjacent to East Talpiot. It's going bust, Seidemann says; subject to purely market conditions, Jews are not interested in expanding their presence in Jerusalem.
(Full disclosure: I own an apartment in East Talpiot, one of Jerusalem's post-1967 "new" neighborhoods, one I purchased with a loan that had favorable terms for olim, or new immigrants. The loan would have applied wherever I settled in Israel. There were additional incentives at the time to settle in Ma'aleh Adumim and other West Bank settlements. The contractors who built my neighborhood in the 1970s would have benefited from government breaks; by the time I got to it, in 1986, I bought it from a private seller and paid market price.)
Here's another comparison: The Israeli government has not only permitted but has assisted in the construction of 50,000 new dwellings since 1968. It has permitted the construction of only 8,000 new dwellings in the Arab sector. (Arabs have built another 20,000 without permits.)
Anyone who's lived in Jerusalem knows this is the reality: Unless a neighbor complains, an illegal addition to a home in the Jewish part of the city goes unmolested. (My neighbor had the ugliest balcony, propped up on a cement block. Literally. But was I going to snitch? Never.) Add-ons built without permission in the Arab sector are tracked by the muncipal authorities and routinely destroyed. Clearly -- as the figures above show -- there's a good deal of looking the other way in the Arab sector. But the systematic attempt to inhibit "illegal" growth exists only in this sector.
Now you can decry the tracking of such figures, you can make the case that Seidemann is missing a larger point about Jews and Jerusalem (and that I am too) -- but that argument is the way of madness.
Not because I disagree about Jewish claims to Jerusalem and the case for Jewish sovereignty in the city. I believe in those claims. But because the argument -- while precious and vital to us, as Jews -- is meaningless in a larger context.
The best argument, in an international arena, for expanding the Jewish presence in Jerusalem is natural growth -- just as it is for adding an apartment or two in a settlement.
We can't make that argument if Israel inhibits Palestinian natural growth. Not because it is immoral or impolitic. Because it is insane.
I had coffee with a Western diplomat yesterday. This is a diplomat from a country with a pro-Israel government and who is, himself, pro-Israel, especially when it comes to dealing with the Iran threat. He laughed -- I mean, rocked back in his chair -- when we discussed Israeli plaints about natural growth in the settlements.
Why, he said, should anyone consider the needs of settler families in the West Bank if Israel refuses to deal with the needs of Palestinians?
Believe me, this is not the first time I've witnessed this reaction, and at all levels of western government. Yet no one among Israel and pro-Israel activists who defends natural growth accounts for this argument.
It is, as I said, a hypocrisy so massive that it almost defies explanation.
I'll try. I don't believe, by the way, it's a hypocrisy that Israelis enter with awareness. It is an insanity honestly come by.
It's what I call inner narrative versus outer narrative: The current Israeli government's case, for instance, for slow-going in the West Bank, when made in the international arena, raises legitimate concerns about security -- the outer narrative. The inner narrative has to do with ancient claims to Eretz Israel.
Usually, we get this: That our arguments, among mishpokhe, as Jews, don't have any relevance in the real world. That there are issues that are best explained in terms that are understandable in the international village common.
It's when we elide from the outer to the inner narratives that we lose it. When we start an argument "we need security and autonomy and sovereignty in our ancestral homeland" (makes sense in the real world) and end it "because when it comes to the land of Israel it is a right given only to the Jews" (makes no sense in the real world); when we start an argument "how can you order a Jewish family to uproot itself because the mother is pregnant?" and when we end it "the Palestinians are using population growth to threaten us."
We're not the only ones to succumb to this elision. I've seen it among the Pashtun, among the Irish, among Serbs and Croats -- and especially among Palestinians. Revisionist history notwithstanding, what scuttled the 2000 Camp David talks is that when the outer Palestinian narrative -- the longing for territory -- collapsed because its solution was within reach, Palestinians elided into the inner narrative of denying Israel's existence. Instead of embracing the prospect of Palestinian statehood made viable by Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton, Palestinians got stuck insisting on a "right of return" and denying any Jewish claim in Jerusalem.
And I know that sometimes these inner narratives have faint echoes outside of one's community -- in the case of the claim to the West Bank, among evangelical Christians. The same is true of the Palestinians who seek validation among nationalist and Islamist Arabs. The same was also true of Serbs, whose aggrieved honor resonated among other Eastern Orthodox peoples, including the Russians and the Greeks.
The problem with this is that until Evangelical Christians, or the Muslim Caliphate, or the Constantinople Patriarchate are once again running the known world, this kind of support runs shallow. If we want to play ball in the secularized, democratic West, we play by its rules -- especially if we're also accepting the protection and financial support of its major power.
If there is tension in the coming months between Israel and the United States, this elision will be at its core. For the Obama administration to take seriously Israeli claims to humanitarian treatment for settlers, the Netanyahu administration must take seriously the humanitarian treatment of Palestinians.
Any other formula defies sense.
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Why is the Obama team stressing settlements?
Ha'aretz has a new report about the U.S.-Israeli tensions over settlements that helps shed some light on why the Obama administration seems to be demonstrating zero flexibility on the issue:
...Mitchell said the administration was particularly unhappy about the Netanyahu government's unwillingness to recognize the principle of two states for two peoples.
Mitchell also emphasized that the U.S. does not accept the concept of "natural growth" for the settlements.
"We did not hear from the Bush administration about any of these so-called understandings with Israel on the settlements -- all of which were supposedly oral understandings between different people every time," said one senior American official.
"But we've never heard a thing about them -- they certainly weren't formal agreements between our governments. "The Israelis want us to commit to oral understandings we have never heard about, but at the same time they are not willing to commit to written agreements their government has signed, like the road map and commitment to the two-state solution."
The disagreement over the understandings concerning the settlements produced an embarrassing encounter in London last week during a meeting between Mitchell, Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor and a number of Netanyahu's advisers.
At the meeting, the Israelis claimed there was a letter between former president George W. Bush and former prime minister Ariel Sharon stating that the settlement blocs would remain in Israeli hands, so construction is permitted there. Mitchell showed the Israelis that one of the letter's sections discusses the principle of two states for two peoples. "That is also written in the letter -- do you agree to that?" he asked.
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Obama: Need to be ‘honest’ with Israel
In an interview with NPR, President Obama insisted that the United States will maintain a special relationship with Israel and expressed understanding for Israeli concerns about security. But the president also said it's time for Washington to be more "honest" with Jerusalem on certain issues.
"We do have to retain a constant belief in the possibilities of negotiations that will lead to peace," Obama said. "And that's going to require, from my view, a two-state solution."
It will also require, he said, a freeze on Israeli settlements, including expansion to accommodate successive generations of settlers, and for Palestinians to make progress on security and end "the incitement that understandably makes Israelis so concerned."
The president also suggested that the United States' special relationship with Israel requires some tough love. "Part of being a good friend is being honest," Obama said. "And I think there have been times where we are not as honest as we should be about the fact that the current direction, the current trajectory, in the region is profoundly negative, not only for Israeli interests but also U.S. interests. And that's part of a new dialogue that I'd like to see encouraged in the region."
Read the NPR report or listen to the full audio.
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