NIEUWS NEDERLANDS PALESTINA KOMITEE

John J. Mearsheimer

Each of the main contenders emphatically favors giving Israel extraordinary
material and diplomatic support ­ continuing the more than $3 billion in
foreign aid each year to a country whose per capita income is now 29th in
the world. They also believe that this aid should be given unconditionally.
None of them criticizes Israel's conduct, even when its actions threaten
U.S. interests, are at odds with American values or even when they are
harmful to Israel itself. In short, the candidates believe that the U.S.
should support Israel no matter what it does.

Such pandering is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office
routinely court special interest groups, and Israel's staunchest supporters
­ the Israel lobby, as we have termed it ­ expect it. Politicians do not
want to offend Jewish Americans or "Christian Zionists," two groups that
are deeply engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some
justification, that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel's policies
may lead these groups to back their opponents instead.

If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel's friends in
the media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from
pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere.
Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes,
which increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in
2000?), and a candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would
lose some of their support. And no Republican would want to alienate the
pro-Israel subset of the Christian evangelical movement, which is a
significant part of the GOP base.

Indeed, even suggesting that the U.S. adopt a more impartial stance toward
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can get a candidate into serious trouble.

These candidates, however, are no friends of Israel. They are facilitating
its pursuit of self-destructive policies that no true friend would favor.

The key issue here is the future of Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel
conquered in 1967 and still controls. Israel faces a stark choice regarding
these territories, which are home to roughly 3.8 million Palestinians. It
can opt for a two-state solution, turning over almost all of the West Bank
and Gaza to the Palestinians and allowing them to create a viable state on
those lands in return for a comprehensive peace agreement designed to allow
Israel to live securely within its pre-1967 borders (with some minor
modifications). Or it can retain control of the territories it occupies or
surrounds, building more settlements and bypass roads and confining the
Palestinians to a handful of impoverished enclaves in Gaza and the West
Bank. Israel would control the borders around those enclaves and the air
above them, thus severely restricting the Palestinians' freedom of movement.

But if Israel chooses this second option, it will lead to an apartheid
state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said as much when he recently proclaimed
that if "the two-state solution collapses," Israel will "face a South
African-style struggle." He went so far as to argue that "as soon as that
happens, the state of Israel is finished." Other Israelis, as well as Jimmy
Carter and Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have warned that continuing
the occupation will turn Israel into an apartheid state. Nevertheless,
Israel continues to expand its settlements on the West Bank while the
plight of the Palestinians worsens.

Given this grim situation, one would expect the presidential candidates,
who claim to care deeply about Israel, to be sounding the alarm and
energetically championing a two-state solution. One would expect them to
have encouraged President Bush to put significant pressure on both the
Israelis and the Palestinians at the recent Annapolis conference and to
keep the pressure on during last week's visit to the region.

Hillary Clinton could be expected to be leading the charge here. After all,
she wisely and bravely called for establishing a Palestinian state "that is
on the same footing as other states" in 1998, when it was still politically
incorrect to use the words "Palestinian state" openly. Moreover, her
husband not only championed a two-state solution as president but in
December 2000 he laid out the famous "Clinton parameters," which outline
the only realistic deal for ending the conflict.

But what is Hillary Clinton saying now that she is a candidate? She said
hardly anything about pushing the peace process forward at Annapolis. More
important, both she and GOP aspirant Rudy Giuliani recently proclaimed that
Jerusalem must remain undivided, a position that is at odds with the
Clinton parameters and virtually guarantees that there will be no
Palestinian state.

Sen. Clinton's behavior is hardly unusual among the candidates for
president. Barack Obama, who expressed some sympathy for the Palestinians
before he set his sights on the White House, now has little to say about
their plight, and he, too, said little about what should have been done at
Annapolis to facilitate peace. The other major contenders are ardent in
their declarations of support for Israel.

As Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser and now a
senior adviser to Obama, noted, "The presidential candidates don't see any
payoff in addressing the Israel-Palestinian issue." But they do see a
significant political payoff in backing Israel to the hilt, even when it is
pursuing a policy ­ colonizing the West Bank ­ that is morally and
strategically bankrupt.

In short, the presidential candidates are no friends of Israel. They are
like most U.S. politicians, who reflexively mouth pro-Israel platitudes
while continuing to endorse and subsidize policies that are in fact harmful
to the Jewish state. A genuine friend would tell Israel that it was acting
foolishly and would do whatever possible to get Israel to change its
misguided behavior. And that will require challenging the special interest
groups whose hard-line views have been obstacles to peace for many years.

As former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami argued in 2006, the
American presidents who have made the greatest contribution to peace ­
Carter and George H.W. Bush ­ succeeded because they were "ready to
confront Israel head on and overlook the sensibilities of her friends in
America." If the Democratic and Republican contenders were true friends of
Israel, they would be warning it about the danger of becoming an apartheid
state, just as Carter did.

Moreover, they would be calling for an end to the occupation and the
creation of a viable Palestinian state. And they would be calling for the
United States to act as an honest broker between Israel and the
Palestinians so that Washington could pressure both sides to accept a
solution based on the Clinton parameters.

But Israel's false friends cannot say any of these things, or even discuss
the issue honestly. Why? Because they fear that speaking the truth would
incur the wrath of the hard-liners who dominate the main organizations in
the Israel lobby. So Israel will end up controlling Gaza and the West Bank
for the foreseeable future, turning itself into an apartheid state in the
process. And all of this will be done with the backing of its so-called
friends, including the current presidential candidates.

With friends like them, who needs enemies?

John J. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University
of Chicago. Stephen M. Walt is a professor of international affairs at
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. They are the authors of
"<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0374177724?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0374177724&adid=0Y1Z4RKJP15R9Y4V7NZ7&>The
Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," published last year by Farrar,
Straus and Giroux.