Biden Dreams of Peace

"Israel must work for a two-state solution...."
Vice President Joe Biden at the 2009 AIPAC National Conference

"You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,
Maybe someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one!"
"Imagine" by John Lennon (1971)

If Biden believes that a Palestinian state will live in peace alongside Israel, he is as much of a dreamer as the late John Lennon ever was. Even the United States Government, for which the Vice President speaks, is not powerful enough to make this particular dream a reality.

The main obstacle to peace is Hamas, which has held a iron-grip on Gaza since 2006. Hamas is adamantly opposed to any peace agreement with Israel, and has fired thousands of rockets over the border in the past few years to prove it. Iran supports this position, not only with words, but also with money and armaments. Given this backing, Hamas is about as likely to submit to rule by a Fatah government in Ramallah as Bangladesh is to rejoin Pakistan. (1) Therefore, there will be no peaceful border between Gaza and Israel in the foreseeable future, no matter what Israel or the US does. Of course, the Israelis know this, but American policymakers either do not know it, or pretend not to know it.

But why not establish a mini-Palestine in the West Bank alone?

To do so would require settling at least three intractable disputes: over settlements, Arab refugees, and borders (especially in the Jerusalem area). But even if these disputes could be resolved, the new state would be vulnerable to a takeover by Hamas, possibly in alliance with Islamic Jihad and the El-Aqsa Matyrs Brigade (2). If that happened, the West Bank could then be used to fire rockets into Israel, just as Gaza is now. This would mean war, in which case Israel would face rocket attacks from Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank all at once. Unfortunately, this nightmare scenario is more likely to occur than Biden's dream of a Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.

The summit meeting scheduled for May 18 between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is certain to be contentious. Obama will demand that Israel move ahead with the Palestinian state, and Netanyahu will seek covert US support for an attack on Iran. Those who think of Israel as a client-state of the United States will be surprised to learn that Netanyahu will insist on his country's freedom of action with respect to both the Palestinians and Iran. (3)

Of course the "Hate Obama" crowd (including its many Jewish members) will castigate the Obama Administration for pushing Israel into supporting the "two-state solution". But the fact is that the US Government has been advocating exactly that under both Presidents Bill Clinton (at Camp David in 2000) and George W Bush (at Annapolis in 2008). The United Nations devised the two-state plan in 1947, but did nothing to advance it during the period of Arab rule over Gaza and the West Bank (1948-67). The Government of Israel, under both Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, has agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Although Netanyahu has not publicly repudiated this position, I do not believe he has any intention of creating such an entity.

The US has no leverage at all over Gaza or Iran, but has some over the Palestine Authority, if only because of American aid. The US and Israel are strategic partners and co-operate in intelligence and development of defense systems, but their interests do not always coincide. The question that remains is how much political capital is President Obama willing to commit to pressure Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians. I do not believe that he is willing to face a full-scale confrontation with the Israel Lobby over these issues; more likely, he will say that the US did all it could to achieve an agreement, bu the two sides were just too far apart.

The Glazerbeam endorsed the Obama-Biden ticket in 2008, but if the Administration pushes Israel too hard to make unwise concessions, it will face an uphill battle for another term in 2012.
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(1) Bangladesh was East Pakistan until 1971, when it seceded with the help of India. The idea of a country in two parts, separated by a hostile nation, was poorly conceived for that subcontinent, and makes no more sense for Palestine now.

(2) See the Dec. 21, 2008, Glazerbeam entitled "Martyrs."

(3) Recall that in May, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson urged Israel to let the US and its allies deal with the Egyptian blockade of the Straits of Tiran. Johnson did not get his way. Nasser blamed the US anyway.

Amnesty for AIPAC Aides

On Friday, May 1, the US Justice Department announced that it would drop all charges against former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobbyists Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman. (1) In August of 2005, Rosen and Weissman had been indicted for "communicating national defense information to people not entitled to receive it," in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, 18 USC 793 (2). Former Defense Department analyst Lawrence Franklin was also indicted in the case; he was also charged with one count of passing classified information to an Israeli official.

Franklin, a former attache at the US Embassy in Israel, was one of the officials responsible for American defense policy regarding Iran. He provided a classified presidential directive and other documents about Iran policy to the AIPAC staffers, who then passed them on to Israel. Franklin negotiated a guilty plea in October, 2005, and was sentenced the following January to 12 years in prison and a fine of $10,000 by US Judge T S Ellis III. AIPAC fired Rosen and Weissman, but denied the organization was responsible for their alleged activities.

As a government employee with a high security clearance, Lawrence Franklin clearly betrayed the trust placed in him, and deserved his punishment. Former Navy civilian analyst Jonathan Pollard had been sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for transmitting even more damaging information to Israel. (3)

However, the two AIPAC staffers were the first people not employed by the US Government ever charged with this particular violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. (1) This unprecedented prosecution apparently opened the way for bringing similar charges against reporters who receive and use classified information they obtain from government employees . Sometimes this type of information is the only way to corroborate claims of corruption or subversion in government. Although no reporters were ever charged during the remaining three years of the Bush Administration, the prosecution of Rosen and Weissman may have had a chilling effect on the willingness of reporters to deal with classified information.

Judge Ellis made two pre-trial rulings that resulted in dropping the charges:
1. The defense could introduce the secrets themselves at the trial.
2. To obtain a conviction, the prosecutors would have to show that the defendants knew that disclosing this information would harm the United States.

Once the first of these rulings was upheld by the US Court of Appeals, the Government was placed into a "Catch 22" situation: if disclosing the secrets would harm US interests, the nation would be harmed by the Government in bringing the case to trial. ( Since the trial would receive massive publicity, the harm done by the Government would be even greater than that done by the defendants, who merely disclosed it to a friendly nation, which did not make it public. ) But if disclosing the info would not harm US interests, the second ruling meant that the defendants had done nothing wrong, and should be acquitted!

A similar conundrum occurred during the 1896 trial of French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was accused of passing military secrets to the German Army. But in that case. the judge ruled that the "borderaux" of secrets need not even be provided to the defense, let alone made public. The rest is history: Dreyfus was convicted and spent years on Devil's Island before finally being exonerated.

Fortunately for Rosen and Weissman, Judge Ellis was more fair than the one Dreyfus faced a century before. We may never know just what information Lawrence Franklin gave them, although it clearly concerned American policy toward Iran under President George W Bush. I would like to know what the Israelis found out, but I doubt that they will tell me.

AIPAC continues its highly-effective work of influencing US policy in a pro-Israel direction, although without the services of Mssrs. Rosen and Weissman.
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(1) Jerry Marion in the Washington Post, May 2, 2009.

(2) Wikipedia "Lawrence Franklin Espionage Scandal."

(3) See the Glazerbeam of Dec. 24, 2008, entitled "Parole for Pollard?"