Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa | Analysis

MIDEAST: The Political Roads Lead to Tehran

Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Mar 5 2009 (IPS) - The obvious objective of the first visit to the Middle East by the Obama administration’s U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to contain the still potentially explosive situation in Gaza following January’s Israeli offensive against Hamas, and to rescue the two-state solution policy in face of the emergence of a far-right administration in Jerusalem.

But on everyone’s minds and lips was the spectre of Iran going nuclear.

Meeting in Cairo to follow up international commitments to rebuild Gaza, concerned Arab foreign ministers, led by Saudi Arabia, were in fact busy trying to sway Syria away from its alliance with Iran. That clearly was also the motive for the breakaway from Bush policy when Clinton announced from Jerusalem that she would be dispatching two envoys to Damascus to begin a new dialogue with President Bashar Al-Assad.

Responding to Israeli concerns about Iran, Clinton said that a nuclear Iran was not only alarming to Jerusalem, but had also been central to her discussions with Arab leaders at the Sharm el-Sheikh “salvage Gaza” summit. Israeli sources quote her as saying that the U.S. goal is to form a regional security umbrella to counter an Iranian “nuclear threat” and that she’d promised Washington would consult and coordinate its activities with Israel regarding a future dialogue with Iran. Dialogue, she reportedly emphasised, does not mean accepting a nuclear Iran.

Iran, for its part, sought to galvanise all regional forces to commit themselves to supporting Palestinians in their need to “continue confronting Israel.” While Hamas warmly welcomed the backing, on the West Bank Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, alongside the Secretary of State during her visit to Ramallah, took a strong stance against what he called “Iranian attempts to intervene in Palestine.” Instead of helping, this could actually harm the Palestinian cause, Abbas charged. Iran, he said, was trying to deepen the Palestinian divide – precisely at a time when Hamas and his Fatah movement were talking towards reconciling into a national unity government.

Although in Jerusalem Clinton had restated “unshakeable” U.S. support for Israel whatever type of government emerges from current coalition talks, not surprisingly, she seemed to feel more at home in Ramallah with the two- state solution commitment projected by the Palestinian leadership than the staunch refusal by Israel’s prime minister designate, Benjamin Netanyahu to commit to a Palestinian state.

Still, for all the declared necessity of both Israelis and Palestinians, and internally Palestinians and Palestinians, reconciling with one another, the constant drumming up of the two-state solution by the U.S. looks increasingly more a vision, less like applicable policy. Some are even dismissing it as “lip-service”.

“The Secretary of State is coming with the same mantra,” wrote the veteran Haaretz columnist Yoel Marcus. “But, for now, it’s not working, neither with us nor the Palestinians. Don’t you have anything new to offer, Hillary?”

Actually, a new U.S. attitude seems very much to be in the offing.

Beyond customary U.S. commitment both to the security of Israel and its Arab allies in the region, as well as to the creation of a Palestinian state, there’s a palpable sense that Washington is developing a series of unilateral positions that stem from, but go further than, its “Road Map to Peace” as enshrined in the 2007 Annapolis summit.

The initiatives in respect of the Arab-Israeli conflict appear to be all about making sure that their allies do not disrupt the evolving new approach on how they mean to go about containing Iran. Former U.S. president George W. Bush adopted what was perceived by the international community to be a confrontational unilateral approach towards Iran. Under Barack Obama, with the endorsement of the international community, the U.S. is set on adopting a bilateral approach by seeking dialogue with Iran while engaging in a transitional unilateral approach on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

Regarding Palestine, the U.S. is signalling strongly to the next Israeli leader that its policies will no longer depend on whether Israel consents to the essence of its policy – to work for the creation of the foundations and a real economic and security framework of a Palestinian state, even without a full peace agreement with Israel. Clinton firmly endorsed “the Palestinian Authority as the only legitimate government of the Palestinian people,” a statement geared as much against Hamas as constituting a rebuff to right- wing scepticism in Jerusalem that “Israel has no Palestinian partner.”

That was only one pointed indication of an emerging U.S. unilateralism aimed at Netanyahu: Clinton not only said adamantly that “the inevitability of working towards a two-state solution is inescapable,” but struck a strident note against Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and in condemning demolition of Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem.

Whether or not this unwillingness to continuing previous de facto U.S. acquiescence in the violations by Israel of its commitments in terms of the peace process leads to a more substantial shift vis-à-vis Israel, Washington certainly seems intent on ensuring that continued Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem do not hamper a grand regional strategy of how most effectively to contain Iran.