On a slow Hillary-Saturday, and I cannot think of a Hillary-Saturday more deserving to be slow than this one following her longest trip topped off by her marathon meeting on Thursday with Benjamin Netanyahu, the question is what to post. Well, it is not much of a question since clearly a lengthy meeting is likely to have an equally long wake.
Depending on whom you listen to, the meeting yielded more of the same (my original take) or perhaps some kind of a breakthrough. I found these articles offering different but not necessarily conflicting views on the exhaustive and exhausting meeting between Secretary Clinton and PM Netanyahu in NYC on Thursday. The Zogby item, the more pessimistic of the two, offers historical depth. The Rogin article tends to be more predictive. All emphasis and editing are mine.
James Zogby, on Huffington Post, speaks to anybody who thinks Obama is soft on Islam as well as to the fundamentalist Christian types who want all of Jerusalem for Israel. The settlement Zogby refers to extends to Bethlehem where it is largely Christian Arabs who have been displaced. Every time Middle East issues intensify as we approach the holidays, I think of how often I hear "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and how removed we are as a people from the fact that the descendants of the little shepherds who made their way to the manger that first Christmas night are among the displaced ... from lands their stock had grazed for millennia.
He offers an instructive chronology of the Har Homa settlement dating back more than 15 years to when, in his words, it was "Jabal Abul Ghnaim was a lovely green hill on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem." The strategy involved is clear. Keep building and expanding around Jerusalem until no Palestinian land claim is possible.
President of the Arab American Institute, Author of "Arab Voices" (Palgrave Macmillan 10/10)
Posted: November 13, 2010 10:24 AMIsrael's announcement, last week, of a radical expansion of Har Homa (an already massive settlement community between Jerusalem and Bethlehem) makes a mockery of the so-called "peace process".
The episode has further served to reinforce the belief that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no interest in reaching a just peace with the Palestinians. This leopard has not changed his spots. Netanyahu remains a wily (and not always honest) manipulator, who at his core is a hard-line ideologue. At the same time, the Har Homa announcement serves as an uncomfortable reminder of U.S. impotence and the role this weakness has historically played in enabling Israel's bad behavior.
Secretary Clinton, under the umbrella of Obama administration policy and therefore tied to the mantra of agreed land swaps, comes out short on praise by Zogby, and at face values, the joint statement issued by her and Netanyahu appeared anticlimactic enough to me when I posted it on Thursday.
At the time, I had the impression that Mme. Secretary had labored unrelenting for all of those hours only to emerge with the same old positions in place, but perhaps not so! Josh Rogin at The Cable offers what he dubs an inside glimpse at the substance and outcomes the meeting produced.
Inside the seven-hour Clinton-Netanyahu marathon meeting
Posted By Josh Rogin
Friday, November 12, 2010 - 6:55 PM
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's seven-hour marathon meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday in New York could signal a turning point in the effort to revive the stalled Middle East peace talks, as the administration works to resolve the dispute over Israeli settlement building by turning the focus to borders and security.
The Obama administration's latest strategy seems to have two main elements, according to a senior official's read out of the meeting and analysis by current and former officials on both sides. First, the Obama administration is offering Netanyahu as many security guarantees as possible in order to give the Israeli government increased confidence to move to a discussion of the borders that would delineate the two future states. Second, the administration wants to work toward an understanding on borders so that both sides can know where they can and can't build for the duration of the peace process.
"If there in fact is progress in the next several months, I'm confident people will look back at this meeting between Secretary Clinton and Prime Minister Netanyahu as the foundation of the progress. It was that important," former Congressman Robert Wexler, now the president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, told The Cable.
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Wexler said that by virtue of the fact that the meeting was seven hours, it's reasonable to assume that significant progress was made. "I think we're very close to creating that magic formula that satisfies both the Israelis and the Palestinians to come back to the table."
The head of the PLO mission in Washington, Maen Rashid Areikat, wasn't so sure. He pointed to the boilerplate statement that Clinton and Netanyahu issued after the meeting as evidence that no real breakthrough was achieved.
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But Areikat endorsed the idea of discussing borders ahead of the settlements issue, saying that's what the Palestinian side has been advocating all along.
I am in no way call a Mid-East buff who knows all sorts of nuances. The conflicts there have been going on my whole life, however, and if our hard-working Secretary of State has managed to open-sesame the magic door, I will be joyful. Maybe this Christmas I will not feel so jaded even if settlements encroach on Bethlehem. Perhaps people who have been pushed and shoved around can begin to have some hope of a permanent place and a nation. Maybe, maybe there can be peace. If it comes on the wings of a beautiful archangel with long blonde hair, all the better. I always thought she could do it.
