Historic Change or Rhetoric?

BEIRUT -- The important relationship between the United States and Israel is evolving in unpredictable ways. Their recent tensions are important for what they reveal about a more sophisticated and integrated American view of its Middle East policies, one which balances a firm commitment to Israel's security against the problems Washington suffers from its excessive pro-Israel tilt and continued Zionist colonialism in occupied Arab lands.

The most significant recent development is the qualitative rather than merely the procedural nature of Washington's criticisms of Israel. This is reflected in two ways. First, top American officials repeatedly and publicly accuse Israel of insulting the United States and hindering its foreign policy objectives in the Arab-Asian region. Israel has shifted from being merely the actor that carries out actions that are "unhelpful" to peace-making, to the actor whose policies hurt American strategic interests. This is the diplomatic equivalent of playing hardball.

Israeli policies have transcended personal affront or embarrassment to American officials and are causing the United States real pain beyond the Arab-Israeli arena. This is something new, and therefore the US is reacting with unusually strong, public and repeated criticisms of Israel's settlement policies and its general peace-negotiating posture. At the same time Washington repeats it ironclad commitment to Israel's basic security in its 1967 borders, suggesting that the US is finally clarifying that its support for Israel does not include unconditional support for Israel's colonization policies.

Second, the American military has openly criticized Israel, saying (as Centcom commander David Petraeus told Congress last week) that Israeli policies and the regional perceptions of Washington's pro-Israel bias make it difficult for the United States to achieve its foreign policy goals through military or diplomatic activity. The top military leadership speaking out in public with such clarity is about as serious as it gets in terms of credible criticisms in Washington.

These unusual American criticisms take place amidst a wider process of diplomatic condemnation of Israel in the past week by the European Union, the UN Secretary General, and the Quartet (US, EU,UN and Russia). This is also unusual and possibly significant, if it goes beyond the usual rhetorical wrist-slapping without substantive policy or punitive moves.

The third intriguing new element is the changing political environment in the United States, again for two reasons. The first is that the traditional operating system of pro-Israeli lobby groups is changing to some extent. No longer do groups like AIPAC, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and other such bastions of pro-Israeli zealotry operate in a near monopolistic situation, where their views on how the US should conduct its Middle East policies tended to define those policies. Other groups that speak for more reasonable Jewish sentiments in the US, like the more centrist J-Street, now have some impact. Combined with this is the fact that the whole "pro-Israel lobby" phenomenon is now openly debated in the US, reversing the situation in which such groups liked to operate in the shadows, without any public discussion of their methods, aims or impact.

The other important domestic change was President Barack Obama's victory in passing health care legislation a few days ago. He is now in a much stronger political position at home, and less vulnerable to the sort of electoral blackmail and intellectual terrorism and intimidation that are the hallmarks of some pro-Israel lobby groups in the United States. How Obama uses his political assets remains to be seen, given that the mid-term elections in the US in November may again constrain any serious discussion of Middle East policy.

The last important point to keep in mind is that the United States now seems to have clarified that which it did not reveal a few months ago: how it would react to the initial rebuffs it received from both Israelis (on freezing all settlements) and Arabs (on making gestures of normalization to Israel) when it launched its peace-making mediation effort a year ago. Now the United States seems to be pushing ahead with phase two if its diplomacy, in the form of direct, high-level engagement in the Palestinian-Israeli "proximity talks" being launched. As I had anticipated and written during the past year, Obama would not push more vigorously on the Arab-Israel front until he dealt with his more pressing priorities, including stabilizing the economy, passing health reform legislation, and moving ahead on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. He has made more progress on the domestic than the foreign fronts, but has made sufficient progress to be able to focus more sharply on Arab-Israeli issues. We remain, however, in the same place we were a year ago in not knowing what the Obama team will actually do -- beyond the more robust rhetoric and symbolic gestures -- to promote a negotiated Arab-Israeli peace and protect its strategic national interests in the region.