Dammit, why won’t this bell stop ringing?

Peter Beinart:

On Wednesday, I asked a senior Obama administration official whether there was anything Benjamin Netanyahu could do to repair the damage done by his comments late in his reelection campaign. The official’s answer: “You can’t unring the bell.” Other officials, off the record, put it far, far more harshly than that.

You may not be able to unring that bell, but boy is Bibi trying:

NETANYAHU:  Well, neither one is— the premises in your question are wrong.  I haven’t changed my policy.  I never changed my speech in Bar Ilan University six years ago calling for a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state. What has changed is the reality.  Abu Mazen, the Palestinian leader, refuses to recognize the Jewish state, has made a pact with Hamas that calls for destruction of Jewish state.  And every territory that is vacated in the Middle East is taken up by Islamist forces.

Netanyahu is saying, in other words, that he wasn’t abandoning in-principle support for a Palestinian state — he just doesn’t think the Palestinians are interested and capable of setting up a peaceful one anytime soon. It remains to be seen as to whether the White House will buy that.

Mmmm-hmmm. “I still want them to have a state, but only when they’re ready for it” is a gloriously imprecise standard for rejoining the peace process, one that lets Netanyahu justify permanent occupation. After all, it’s not like the threat of radical Islam is going away anytime soon. Hell, arguably, that threat won’t fully go away until the occupation is ended. Meanwhile the settlements can keep growing, keep hoovering up all the best land in the West Bank and driving Palestinians into unsustainable Bantustans, and every incidence of resistance on the part of the Palestinians can be used as evidence that they’re “not interested” in establishing a peaceful state. Bibi will rely on the credulity of future US administrations to protect this little shell game he’s playing.

It’s possible, however, that the current administration is done being credulous. The rest of Beinart’s piece is behind a paywall, but he’s suggesting that maybe the Obama administration is finally at the point where it’s going to rethink its Israel policy. Not the part that really matters (the military aid), mind you, but possibly including the routine use of America’s UNSC veto to protect Israel from anti-settlements UN resolutions (this is apparently serious enough that AIPAC flacks are already actively trying to lobby the administration against going this route). Other possibilities include introducing a peace plan at the UN against Israeli objections and/or allowing the Palestinian Authority to collapse. The latter is a possibility because it’s been international aid, drummed up by the US, that’s been keeping the PA afloat since Netanyahu decided to start withholding tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the PA (to punish the PA from taking a case against Israel to the International Criminal Court). Letting the PA fall apart would almost certainly worsen the security situation on the West Bank, which would be painful to Netanyahu but probably more painful to most of the Palestinians living there, so it doesn’t seem like the best idea.

According to Beinart, Obama was particularly outraged at Netanyahu’s “OMG THE ARABS ARE VOTING” appeal to right-wing voters just before the election, for reasons that should be obvious (luckily Netanyahu isn’t a racist, because, um, he said so), but the official denial of any interest in a two-state solution is the real metaphorical ringing bell. Absolutely nobody is buying Netanyahu’s effort to walk back or modify what he said before the election, which puts the US in a tough position even before you factor in the personal animosity between Obama and Netanyahu. The US has predicated its whole approach to the Israel-Palestine issue, including the use of the UN veto to block any action that would favor the Palestinians or rebuke the Israelis, on the idea (fiction?) that Israel genuinely wanted a negotiated two-state agreement. Now that Netanyahu has let the cat out of the bag, it’s impossible to keep making that case to the rest of the world.

Still, as always where the US-Israel relationship is concerned, you should believe there will be a change only when you see it, and not a second earlier.