Little did I know when I wrote the Sonnet to God titled 'MACRO BE' on our Sonnet blog that another had also written about God's trump card.
"It was following a frosty summit at the White House, however, that Netanyahu played his trump card. "We in congress stand by Israel. In congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel," declared Speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi on March 23 as she stood next to Netanyahu before yielding the podium to minority leader John Boehner, who dutifully proclaimed: "We have no stronger ally anywhere in the world than Israel."
For Barack Obama, the warning was clear. Even in a time of war when the costs of Israeli intransigence could not have been more apparent, he would find no support from congress in a confrontation with Israel.
With mid-term elections looming and a sullen peace movement refusing to forgive him for the Afghan troop surge, the isolated President took the only course open to him.
Grinning fixedly with Netanyahu sitting smugly beside him, he denied any rift in relations and stated that he expected an imminent resumption of direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. When pressed on the issue of settlements, he warned the Palestinians not to use them as "excuses for incitement" or "opportunities to embarrass Israel".
For all of his efforts to renew it, Obama has come full circle back to the Clinton-Bush paradigm of a peace process as a public relations exercise based on an indifference to history and improbable proclamations of the conflict's imminent resolution
Who now recalls that the Oslo Accords were to bring peace to Israel-Palestine by 1999? Or the Roadmap by 2005? Or Annapolis by the end of 2008? Or that these accords provided an illusion of progress against the backdrop of a surge in settlement construction?
The secret of those accords' illusions of progress lies in the fact that so many parties have an interest in maintaining it. The Democrats can now count on the free flow of campaign funding from their Jewish patrons. The Republicans can revitalise their connection with their evangelical base, whose ideas concerning Israel owe more to the Old Testament than the New.
The Europeans can salve their consciences for the fate of the Jews in the 1940s and that of the Palestinians today by supporting the peace process while providing humanitarian aid to its victims. Even the Palestinian leadership can be bribed with titles, salaries and VIP passes to facilitate travel through checkpoints.
Even so, Obama's surrender places Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in an unenviable position. Last week, the Israeli NGO B'Tselem reported that Israel's settlements were being intentionally built to stifle Palestinian development.
Should Abbas resume direct negotiations in return for the glass beads and mirrors held out to him, he will certainly be reviled by his people as a partner in their dispossession. Should he "embarrass" Israel by continuing to insist upon a settlement freeze as a precondition to negotiations, he risks following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, and being sidelined as an "obstacle to peace".
Michael Shaik is Australians for Palestine's public advocate. [1]
Go with the soul Netanyahu, go with the soul.....
Your name means 'Gift of God'.
Your name means 'Gift of God'.
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