Yesterday Pres. Obama gave the first clear indication of exactly where he stands in disputes embroiling the administration on how to go forward with Middle East peace in the context of the standoff with PM Netanyahu over settlements in Jerusalem. The President said that resolving the conflict is a “vital national interest of the United States,” and, echoing points made with varying degrees of emphasis by Gen. Petraeus, Adm. Mullen and Sec. Gates, very significantly added that such conflicts are “costing us significantly in terms of blood and treasure.” These are unprecedented comments from this or any other US president, and reflect the shift in the context of US-Israel relations and the new way in which Israeli policies are perceived in Washington, about which I have been writing for many months.

Please note that neither the President nor any of his aides are saying, as is sometimes wrongly suggested, that Israel or Israeli policies are threatening American security or American lives. But what they are saying is that the lack of peace, the continuation of the conflict and the occupation are serious strategic problems for the United States throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, including in Afghanistan and Iraq and with regard to Iran. The bottom line is that Israeli policies are no longer viewed primarily as either simply a matter of bilateral relations between Israel and the United States or functions of domestic American political considerations, as they sometimes have been in the past. Instead, they are increasingly being placed in a much broader context that gives them a very different significance and implication.

The long-standing debate over “linkage” is over: not only is linkage firmly established as a real and crucial phenomenon in the eyes of Washington, linkage is not simply being identified between one or two strategic issues, but many. Because of its symbolic resonance and political significance, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the occupation are rightly seen by the administration as linked to almost everything the United States wants to achieve in the Arab and Islamic worlds. This has created a new and extremely significant dilemma for Netanyahu, and is the context of the present standoff between the two governments.

The President’s message is unambiguous but multivalent. It is aimed at multiple audiences for multiple purposes.

First, obviously it’s a message to Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states that the United States is absolutely determined to achieve a peace agreement because it does not consider this optional, but regard it as essential to “vital” US national security concerns. The more the stonewalling from the parties continues, the more the Obama administration seems determined to express the depth of its commitment to doing something about this, not for moral or even political reasons, but for essential and unavoidable strategic considerations.

The President’s reference to “blood and treasure” is aimed, I think mainly, at the Congress. On Saturday I wrote that the name of the game in Washington now is the President keeping hold of his support in Congress, especially among well-placed pro-Israel Jewish Democrats. Thus far, he has been successful, which is one of the main reasons Netanyahu ducked out of the nuclear terrorism conference this week. I think the message is being sent to members of Congress who might be tempted to waver in their support for Obama is that the President is unequivocal that this is an issue of vital national security interests. It involves, ultimately, the lives of US soldiers. It is not a matter for political games, grandstanding or pandering. He’s drawing a line in the sand and saying: we need this as a country, now stick with me. And, of course, he’s right.

The final target audience are the factions within his own administration who have been feuding, in some cases publicly, as well as seriously debating how to move forward in the context of recalcitrance by all the parties — Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states — as well as the current standoff with the Netanyahu cabinet. No one now need wonder where the President stands. He has made that abundantly clear.

Of all of these, Congress is probably the most important audience at the moment. It comes in the context of the first glimmers of real pushback from the legislative branch, most notably a letter sent two days ago from most senators to Sec. Clinton that was essentially boilerplate, but which seemed to put the onus for resolving the standoff on the administration. In and of itself, it doesn’t signify much of anything, and I don’t think it greatly annoyed the administration, but I do think that it — along with several other efforts by pro-Israel organizations, most recently a letter from World Jewish Congress chief Ronald Lauder questioning US commitment to Israel’s security — helped prompt these extremely strong comments from the President. His remarks were buttressed by an exceptionally robust statement of US commitment to pursuing a negotiated agreement from the US deputy permanent representative to the United Nations before the Security Council also on Wednesday. Obviously, the administration’s present purpose is clarity, and making sure everybody understands this is not business as usual, that Washington is not backing down, and that it does not feel it has the option of walking away.

I have been writing and speaking about this shift of context for US-Israel relations and the peace process given the new conceptualization of regional dynamics and networked linkage for many months now, employing the analogy of a kaleidoscope in which, when one piece of the puzzle moves, the entire pattern rearranges itself. It’s becoming clearer that this is indeed a widespread perspective shared by the administration at the highest possible levels, as well as a consensus in the foreign policy establishment. It’s also clear that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally perceived to be at the center of that pattern of interdependent strategic dynamics, because of its tremendous political resonance. In other words, what happens in Palestine can affect what happens in Iraq, but not so much vice versa. What happens in Palestine can affect what happens even in Afghanistan, but not so much vice versa. What happens in Palestine has much more impact on what happens in Iran than the reverse, unless of course there was some kind of regime change via the green movement or some other force. Even then, it might still be the case that what happens in Palestine has, in general, more impact in Iran than vice versa. And, it’s also important to note, that more even than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the problem of Iran and its nuclear weapons program that dominates administration concerns in the Middle East at the present time.

But none of this should be overstated. The American commitment to Israel’s security is unshaken and unshakable. The special relationship, which has this commitment at its center, operates at a level beyond such political disputes. This doesn’t and indeed cannot change that. In addition, it’s important to state again that the administration’s concern is the lack of peace, which it blames on the parties generally and not just Israel. Arabs or any others who are enjoying some kind of schadenfreude at Israel’s, or at least Netanyahu’s, expense should be bracing themselves for their own dose of tough love, or possibly even just toughness, from the administration as soon as the standoff with Netanyahu is resolved, and possibly even before that.

Many supporters of Israel are understandably concerned about the new way of looking at these issues in Washington and within the administration, the confrontation over settlements in Jerusalem, and the implications of the President’s statement and those of other administration officials. But they should understand that Administration attention is focused on this issue now in large part because of its concern about Iran and its efforts to craft a workable policy on that issue, which is also the central concern for the Israelis. Moreover, a negotiated peace agreement is not only a vital American interest for Israel and the Palestinians to reach a negotiated peace agreement at the soonest possible date, it’s also indispensable for Israel’s interests. In fact, although the present Israeli government doesn’t act like it, it’s even more important for Israel than it is for the Americans. Whatever the settlers and their supporters, and the rest of the extreme Israeli ultra-right, might think, Obama is advancing, not threatening, Israel’s most vital national interests. Until now he has retained strong support in the Jewish community and among the most important Jewish members of Congress. It’s important for everyone that he retains this support, and he’s just given the strongest possible argument to the lawmakers for that: the lack of a peace agreement is costing the United States not only treasure, but blood.

A few days ago a David Ignatius column in the Washington Post introduced a new Obama administration concept in the standoff with PM Netanyahu: the idea that the United States might develop and begin promoting its own specified plan for a Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. In effect, this plays on Israel’s deep concern about a settlement that is “imposed” by outside powers rather than one that is negotiated with the Palestinians. They fear this would deprive them of the leverage that comes from the asymmetry of power between the occupier and the occupied, and mean in effect negotiating with the United States rather than the Palestinians and suddenly being the weaker party in a new asymmetry of power. Ignatius accurately recounted that at the most recent of a series of meetings National Security Advisor James Jones has been holding with six of his predecessors, Pres. Obama dropped by for 10 minutes and asked directly about the prospects of such a move. Apparently first Brent Scowcroft and then Zbigniew Brzezinski strongly endorsed the idea, followed by others, and no one objected. The President apparently did not either welcome or dismiss this response, but listened and left. Ignatius quoted two unnamed senior administration officials endorsing the idea, creating the impression that this is a real and imminent possibility.

I think it’s impossible to read this as, at this stage at least, anything other than a trial balloon largely designed to pressure Netanyahu and his colleagues. Translated into English, the rhetoric first floated in the Ignatius column says to Bibi: “we haven’t heard back from you since the Shepherd Hotel fiasco and the insult to the President, and you have to come up with something quickly. The special relationship does not give you license to push us around, and you need to know we are going to be the winners in this confrontation. We are not going to accept a stalemate, and if you don’t come up with something acceptable, you’re going to force us to begin to move in this direction eventually. We have options. Don’t make us use them.” One should quickly point out that anyone rejoicing that the United States is seriously considering drafting its own peace plan and then trying to impose it on the parties should drink a big glass of water and breathe deeply. No doubt it’s true that there are many people in the foreign policy establishment who think it would be a good idea, and a faction within the administration that is pushing for it, obviously led by Gen. Jones. However, for many reasons it’s also obvious that the administration is quite a long way off from doing this, if it ever would.

At some point the United States will clearly have to fight with both Israel and the Palestinians, and possibly the Arab states as well, over substantive issues in order to midwife a workable negotiated peace agreement. This might involve a comprehensive American plan rather than bridging proposals. But for this to be productive, the fight needs to come at a time when it has a real chance of producing serious diplomatic benefits. It’s important to understand that this administration wasn’t looking for a fight with Israel now. Netanyahu, and much more specifically whoever decided to announce the Ramat Shlomo settlement expansion during the Biden visit and then the Shepherd Hotel expansion on the same day as Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, have forced the issue in a reckless and bizarre manner. The administration is rightly determined not to be seen as backing down, and not to take these slights and defiance with equanimity. But the administration’s goal is to get the two parties back into talks, with the hope that negotiations will begin to produce their own dynamic that can move away from bilateral US-Israel discussions about settlements in Jerusalem to Palestinian-Israel discussions about final status issues.

The problem is, of course, it’s not evident that the administration has either a clear sense of what to do once the negotiations begin, or a plan b if they continue to be frustrated by the recalcitrance of one or both of the parties. This is where the Jones-Ignatius trial balloon comes in. It serves two purposes. First, for the faction within the administration that wants the United States to intervene forcefully with its own proposals, it advances their idea in the context of a breakdown in political relations with the Israeli government. It offers a critique of “incrementalism” in this context and proposes a solution of bold gestures on the biggest issues. For the administration in general, and Pres. Obama in particular, this trial balloon more immediately and importantly serves the purpose of turning up the heat under Netanyahu, and sending the message I outlined above. Whether or not it’s the subject of any serious consideration within the administration, it underscores American determination and frustration with Israeli ambiguity on peace and defiance of reasonable US demands.

So, at the moment, this idea really operates at the level of a threat to Netanyahu, and an idea about having an idea if all else fails. Yesterday, Gen. Jones told reporters that “no decision” has been made about whether to begin drafting a plan or not, which is both clearly true and also not intended to be reassuring to Netanyahu (reassurance would have been in the form of “no intention” or “no plans” to do any such thing, which is certainly nothing like what he said). However, it is possible to imagine a scenario in the coming months and years in which mounting American frustration with the parties, especially Israel, transforms this trial balloon into a real strategic program for want of any better options. Israeli media have been expressing considerable anxiety about an “imposed” settlement, and that anxiety is not entirely misplaced. The reality is that, for reasons I’ve been explaining on the Ibishblog and in over 25 university lectures in the past few weeks, the Obama administration and more broadly the foreign policy establishment in Washington now sees an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement as a strategic imperative for the United States. So, this is more than just a squabble between politicians, or even a policy dispute, it’s about a newly perceived and fundamental contradiction between the vital national interests of the United States and policies to which the right-wing Israeli government are committed. If Israel simply will not play ball, they might leave the United States only two options: walk away, with disastrous consequences for US interests throughout the Arab and Islamic worlds, or choose the right time and method to actually try to coerce or impose a settlement on all parties, including Israel.

The substance of such a plan is easy to anticipate, since there isn’t much wiggle room within the minimum national requirements for both Israelis and Palestinians. As Helene Cooper outlined in the New York Times, it’s going look a lot like the Clinton parameters and other familiar formulae. What’s more difficult to conceptualize is what it would take to drive an administration to actually place such a high-stakes wager, and how they could keep support of Congress in the process. And, what is almost impossible to imagine is how precisely the United States could “impose” such an agreement on the parties, especially an Israeli government right wing enough (as the current one seems to be) to be opposed to key elements of any reasonable agreement, especially regarding Jerusalem. Because it’s the kind of thing that’s easy to talk about in theory and very difficult to imagine working well in practice, it’s the sort of idea that’s well-suited for a trial balloon but less attractive as a policy.

There is also an important contextual contradiction between what might prompt the United States to publicly issue its own plan and the conditions that might make it an effective gesture. Frustration with the parties, especially Israel, is what really drives this idea, and has given it its present momentum. However, that frustration is produced by the kind of recalcitrance that would ensure maximal resistance to key elements of the plan by Israel and possibly others as well. In other words, the conditions that would give rise to it are the very same ones that would probably kill it. An administration facing an Israeli government willing to play ball on peace enough to make a plan workable would probably not feel the need to take this drastic step.

And, timing is everything. An American proposal issued at the wrong moment, such as the present one for example, might well prompt an even deeper bilateral crisis with the Israelis, but it would probably be rejected with such unanimity that it would die an epic death. Obviously, that might do far more harm to the cause of peace than good. And ill-chosen timing would also risk the administration losing support in Congress, which is crucial. At present, the Obama administration has very much the upper hand with Netanyahu because it has held key support in Congress, including from a number of extremely well-placed pro-Israel Jewish Democrats. It’s obvious that the Israelis were counting on countering administration pressure with congressional support, but for once they have not been able to muster it, at least so far. It’s obvious they didn’t have a plan b either.

If Netanyahu thought he might be the recipient of some serious congressional support, he might have braved the trip to Washington that he canceled mere hours after the Ignatius piece was published. But it’s clear Washington at the moment is largely hostile territory for him because he hasn’t been able to produce anything to defuse the crisis with the Americans. The idea that he suddenly realized that Muslims might make an issue out of Israel’s nuclear arsenal or, in the other explanation the Israeli government has offered, that they suddenly remembered the prime minister has to be around for Holocaust Memorial Day are both completely absurd. The Ignatius article and other administration comments both on and off the record about considering a US peace plan were the last straw, and he canceled his trip because he has nothing constructive to tell Americans both in the administration and in Congress who are expecting a reasonable response.

So to a very large extent the name of the game at this point is for the President to keep hold of congressional support. As long as he has it, the onus is very much on Netanyahu who is simply going to have to come up with something sooner rather than later because he is dealing with a united US government and has been unable to play off one branch against another. Any gesture to issue a US peace plan would have to be done and, crucially, timed in a manner that ensures congressional support, or at least non-opposition. For that to happen, either the atmospherics regarding the likelihood of an agreement would have to be very different than they are at present, or the level of frustration with Israel in Congress has to be a lot deeper than it is now, and in either case a considerable amount of political groundwork that has not been done would be required.

In spite of all of these serious pitfalls, the present line of thinking contains a great many positive elements. It continues the ongoing process of distinguishing between US and Israeli positions and interests in a very healthy way when too often for the past 20 years the default has simply been for the United States to support Israel in all things, no matter what. It reflects salutary administration determination and an unwillingness to be stymied by Israeli stonewalling or strategic ambiguity. And it shows the administration is seriously examining what its options might be. All of these are important developments that need to be encouraged.

Moreover, it really is important for the United States to have a clear understanding of exactly where it wants to go with the peace process. Right now, the US is committed to a negotiated agreement that involves the creation of a viable, sovereign Palestinian state and a resolution of the other final status issues, and that leads to normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab states. This is incredibly vague. The only deeper specificity thus far from the Obama administration has been some clarity on what the permanent status issues are — borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem — and an insistence that they all must be on the table in either direct or proximity talks. Again, that leaves far too much up to two parties that are defined by an extraordinary asymmetry of power and who have demonstrated for a long time that left to their own devices they are not capable of reaching a reasonable agreement. Therefore, it is actually important for the administration to seriously work on formulating a more detailed outline of what it thinks a workable agreement would look like, in order to ensure that everyone in the administration is really working for the same goals and in order to craft policies that advance the realization of such an agenda.

How you actually get to such a desired outcome is less important. In other words, it doesn’t matter if it’s the result of an announced US overall peace plan that is “imposed” in some very difficult to imagine manner, or if it is the product of another process such as negotiations between the parties aided by US bridging proposals, assurances, inducements and so forth. But it is important to know precisely where you want to go. So, rather than having this idea remain simply a trial balloon designed to send a strong message to the Israelis, or having it all just go away and returning to approaches that have not yet yielded significant results, a measured way forward might involve seriously working on more specific outlines of what precisely the United States believes would constitute a workable and achievable agreement that would advance its interests in the region but not making this public or presenting it to the parties for the foreseeable future. This would allow the United States to operate with greater clarity and focus, but would avoid the pitfalls of a premature and ill-timed announcement of a US agenda that under the present circumstances would probably be rejected by Israel out of hand and possibly even also by the Palestinians and/or the Arab states, and might break key Congressional support for Pres. Obama.

This would ensure that the United States is ready with a proposal if it comes to feel it has no other choice but to present one, or otherwise finds it an attractive prospect. And, it might help end or at least reduce public squabbling between administration factions and personalities. The question is: could one really keep it off the public radar? I suppose a disciplined administration might be able to, and there is always the ability to simply deny any leaks emphatically even if they’re accurate. It’s well worth the risk in my view. Whether the trial balloon dies or grows into a real agenda, and whether or not the United States ever feels the need to publicly issue a comprehensive Middle East peace plan, a clearer sense within the administration of what precisely our country is trying to promote and achieve between Israel and the Palestinians is an extremely good idea.

Anyone who went to see the Shakespeare Theater Company’s production of Richard II, which is wrapping up this weekend, and who knows their Shakespeare, was in for quite a nasty surprise at its outset. The first several scenes, running more than 20 minutes into the production, are not Richard II at all, they’re not even Shakespeare. They are from an incomplete manuscript usually referred to as Thomas of Woodstock that is contemporaneous with early Shakespeare, but possibly slightly earlier. Though some people have tried to attribute authorship of the play to Shakespeare, I think there’s almost no possibility that Shakespeare wrote it even though it shares many themes and characters that appear in several of his plays, especially Richard II, because the quality of the poetry simply doesn’t hold up to even his earliest and crudest work. If anyone ever doubted that, the STC production, in which the language suddenly and spectacularly soars when the dialogue switches from Woodstock to Richard, should firmly convince them. I have no idea how much of the audience throughout its run was aware of what was going on (I had no idea until the play started, and my companion was shocked when I told her, “wtf, this isn’t Shakespeare, it’s from a crappy play called Woodstock,” and later when I had to reassure her, “I’ll tell you when the Shakespeare starts”), but my guess is it’s quite a large number.

Now, all things being equal, conflating plays really isn’t a bad thing at all… if it works. Unfortunately, in this case it’s really a disaster. My negative evaluation is not being colored by my short-lived feud with the STC that seems to have been thankfully resolved. The bad blood had to do with my strong objections to some of their recent ghastly productions, especially The Alchemist, which was utterly ruined, and As You Like It, which I most certainly did not. Both were just awful, and there is no other word for it. They represented what is really objectionable about the current STC approach, which is a relentless tendency to dumb everything down in an insulting manner that also seriously degrades the plays themselves. The STC suffers from several endemic problems, the most serious of which are that it is self-satisfied, complacent and committed to gaining the largest possible audiences through pandering to what it imagines are the public’s limitations. This sometimes produces dire consequences, as with the two productions cited above. But not everything they do is awful by any means. The recent Balkan war-themed King Lear starring a Saddam-like Stacy Keach, both of which just received Helen Hayes Awards, was really very good. Twelfth Night was charming and funny and also quite well done. There was some dumbing-down in both of them, but other qualities carried the day, especially Keach’s brilliant performance.

The winding-down production of Richard II falls somewhere in between the two. It’s not a complete and total disaster, but the decision to conflate big chunks of Woodstock into its opening was an absolutely terrible idea that again reflects this unfortunate tendency to underestimate the capacity of the audience to deal with complexity. I can imagine the conversation that led to this atrocious decision quite easily. Richard II is shot through with what can only be described as a conspiracy theory, or a set of conspiracy theories, surrounding the looming political question of “who killed Gloucester?” It haunts much of the play like “who killed JFK?” or maybe even “who killed Laura Palmer?” Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, was one of Richard’s uncles, and Richard II’s first scene depicts an enraged argument between Mowbray and Bolingbroke over the latter’s accusations that the former was responsible for his murder. The play is riddled with accusations and counter-accusations about the killing, and when Bolingbroke finally deposes Richard, a dizzying free-for-all of threats and blame over the murder again erupts in the court like the return of the repressed with a vengeance. But Shakespeare is never clear about who did, in fact, kill Gloucester.

Some scholars like to argue that in his audience “everyone knew” the received wisdom that the chroniclers of the day, especially Holinshed, held that Mowbray had organized the killing on behalf of Richard because of Gloucester’s outspoken criticism of his mismanagement and cronyism. I’m not sure I find this terribly convincing, and besides, if Shakespeare wanted to establish with certainty that this was the case, there are dozens of ways he could have done it. In fact, Shakespeare goes to great lengths to ensure that the question of Gloucester’s death is a zone of almost occult instability that emphasizes the eerie way in which the murder haunts not only Richard’s rule, but Bolingbroke’s as well (until Richard’s own murder supplants it), not to mention the play itself. Here’s where the STC’s dumbing-down impulse takes over. I’m sure Kahn and company were greatly worried that the audience would be confused by this deliberate and careful ambiguity about the actual circumstances of Gloucester’s murder, and all of these obscure implications and vague conspiracy theories. And then somebody had a brilliant idea: import parts of Woodstock that clearly depict Mowbray arranging for Gloucester’s murder on behalf of Richard, and then we will have clarity and the audience will not be confused anymore. Indeed, but at what price?

I would argue that this “clarity” does considerable damage to Richard II on several levels. For one thing, it undermines the finely wrought tension in the play between political legitimacy as embodied in Richard’s divine right versus political merit as embodied in Bolingbroke’s skills and effectiveness. Establishing Richard’s culpability clearly makes Bolingbroke’s case a little too strong to sustain the level of tension Shakespeare chose to craft and which the STC chucks away.

Similarly, we lose the extremely interesting interplay of the first three scenes of Shakespeare’s actual text. In the first scene, Richard appears impartial and judicious, almost wise, in remaining studiously neutral between his cousin Bolingbroke and Mowbray. However, in the second scene, another of his uncles, John of Gaunt, strongly implies to Gloucester’s outraged widow that nothing can be done about the murder because the King is ultimately responsible and must be dealt with only by God. This of course offers the potential for a completely different reinterpretation of Richard’s apparent judiciousness in the first scene, suggesting it may well have been a cynical and politically expedient means of hanging Mowbray out to dry. It also brings into sharper relief the question of Bolingbroke’s motivations for the accusation: is he merely pursuing a personal vendetta against Mowbray, or is he launching a long-term strategy aimed at Richard’s power by attacking its weakest point, the murder of Gloucester? There is a distinct and carefully crafted ambiguity about all of these questions, greatly adding to the richness of the play.

In addition, because the first and second scenes combine to create a belated sense of Richard’s own possible culpability in Gloucester’s death, this creates a potential ambiguous dual reading of the third scene, the trial in which Mowbray and Bolingbroke are going to duel to establish the veracity of their competing claims. After a tremendous buildup to the joust, at the last second Richard intervenes and banishes both men, Mowbray for life and Bolingbrook for first 10 and then, on reconsideration, six years. The reasons for this decision are not readily apparent, although Richard claims it is to preserve calm in the kingdom and apparently even Bolingbroke’s father, John of Gaunt, reluctantly agrees with this logic. However, given Richard’s evident attachment to and deep belief in the system that has made him King by divine right, a divinely-guided and accurate test of the competing claims at stake may have seemed too dangerous if he was indeed responsible for the killing. If Bolingbroke can establish Mowbray’s culpability through defeating him in the duel, assuming one believes God defends the right, then the finger of blame begins to point squarely in Richard’s direction. So the last-minute intervention and banishment, especially making sure Mowbray, who could betray him, is gone forever, could be read as a cynical effort on Richard’s part to avoid the conspiracy theory developing any further — what Nixon termed “the hangout route” during the Watergate scandal.

The point is that in Shakespeare’s text, both of these readings and indeed others, are plausible given the ambiguity about the actual circumstances of Gloucester’s murder. All of this is lost in the STC production because of the misguided decision to “clarify” this ambiguity by introducing large chunks of an infinitely inferior play by an infinitely inferior poet. I would argue that Shakespeare knew exactly what he was doing, since he was an artist more than capable of shaping clarity and ambiguity to fit his own dramatic purposes. In fact, it’s one aspect of storytelling at which he is an almost unrivaled master. It’s possible that Kahn and the others thought that because in Shakespeare’s own audience “everyone knew” that Mowbray killed Gloucester at Richard’s behest, the modern audience needed a little help. First of all, I’m not at all convinced that “everybody knew” anything of the kind. This assumes a level of detailed knowledge of English history on the part of a lot of illiterate and semiliterate people in Elizabethan London that strikes me as somewhat implausible. But, for the sake of argument let’s say they did. More importantly, everybody really did “know” lots of things that Shakespeare makes crystal clear in his histories for narrative and other artistic purposes, so the question is: why does he go to such elaborate lengths to produce, layer and delicately cultivate this kind of ambiguity in Richard II? Obviously, the answer is because it is a crucial part of the dramatic purpose of the work and I think the STC production makes it extremely clear why that is important because of what is lost when this rich, complex ambiguity is replaced by crude, flattening clarity.

They don’t stop, unbelievably enough, at importing chunks of Woodstock. The STC production actually completely rearranges the structure of the first three scenes I described above, with the John of Gaunt/Duchess of Gloucester (Woodstock’s widow) scene that is the second in Shakespeare’s play coming before the other two, and the first and third scenes of Shakespeare’s text — the argument in the court and the duel scene respectively — incongruously and clumsily conflated. In the process, all of the carefully and delicately constructed ambiguity, tension, conspiracy and conspiracy theory about Richard’s relationship to Gloucester’s murder is completely lost. Of course, it’s every director’s and every company’s right to rearrange scenes however they want in any production, but the audience has a right to ask: does this work? In this case, unambiguously not.

And it gets even worse than that. In Shakespeare’s first scene, the argument at court, Mowbray angrily claims:
“For Gloucester’s death,
I slew him not, but to my own disgrace
Neglected my sworn duty in that case.”
What this “neglected duty” refers to is entirely obscure, and Shakespeare deliberately leaves it so. If Mowbray was implicated in the murder at Richard’s behest, since Gloucester died how did he neglect any duty? If he was not, what duty did he then neglect? According to Holinshed, Shakespeare’s main source, Mowbray wanted to spare Gloucester but was compelled by Richard to organize the killing. So, is Mowbray denying any connection to the murder? Is he appealing to Richard for protection? Is he disclaiming responsibility on the grounds of compulsion? Is he quibbling that he slew him not because he ordered other people to do it for him? Is this the line that sets up Mowbray for banishment because it implies that he might spill the beans? All of these readings and many more are opened up in Shakespeare’s text because of the carefully crafted ambiguity about the circumstances of the murder and in Mowbray’s oblique comment. In their lamentable drive to replace rich Shakespearean ambiguity with their own version of “clarity,” STC obliterates all these questions by going so far as to invent a new line for Mowbray following “Neglected my sworn duty in that case,” continuing the sentence with “by not apprehending the culprits” or something like that (obviously, I didn’t bother to write it down, but it leapt out at me like a giant wad of spit from the mouth of a hooligan).

Well, they certainly added clarity. They inserted it in the play with a bulldozer in the opening sequences jerryrigged from Woodstock, and with a scalpel in this little sliver of text deftly inserted in Mowbray’s speech like a bamboo shoot under the fingernail. With blunt force and surgical skill, STC got rid of one of the most intriguing and multivalent aspects of Richard II, largely I think because they just didn’t believe that we, the poor stupid audience, could possibly handle Shakespearean ambiguity and complexity. They’re wrong of course. I think any audience carefully paying attention, whether Renaissance or contemporary, is more than able to handle Shakespearean ambiguity and rich complexity, texts and plots that are open to a wild proliferation of signification and interpretation. Otherwise the plays wouldn’t have had the hegemonic cultural power they have wielded for so many years and in so many cultures and countries, far beyond the English-speaking world. This impulse the STC are gripped by to dumb everything down like this is the Achilles’ heel of what ought to be the most important theater company in Washington. Instead, one tends to look to productions of the Folger or even by the upstart Taffety Punk Company for genuine inspiration. What a shame.

Richard II is my favorite of Shakespeare’s early plays, and I think it’s obviously the one he spent most time and care on, in many ways. Not only does that mean I was greatly displeased by this extremely misguided adaptation because I think so much richness was lost, but it also means I have a great deal more to say about Richard II, and I’ll do so in an upcoming posting that puts the STC production aside and looks again at this astonishing masterpiece on its own terms.

For anyone with the least doubts about exactly why there is a political crisis between the United States government and the Netanyahu Cabinet in Israel — although not a strategic crisis between the two countries — or why this crisis may deepen dramatically in the coming months and years, Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe (Boogie) Ya’alon has been kind enough to clarify everything in today’s issue of Yedioth Ahronoth in Hebrew. In an interview with reporter Yuval Karni, Boogie laid out the “thinking” of the extreme right wing of the current Israeli cabinet with breathtaking shamelessness and astonishing frankness. Everyone in the White House and Congress, and all Americans for that matter, should take careful note of what this gentleman has to say about what is almost universally recognized to be a core American national security priority, and take the measure of precisely how delusional and dangerous this kind of thinking truly is and what it implies for both American interests and US-Israel relations.

First off, Boogie is quite clear that all dealings with the United States on peace and the whole thrust of Israeli diplomacy regarding negotiations is a conscious deception, at least from his point of view: “Some of what we have to do is maneuver with the American administration and the European establishment, which are also nourished by Israeli elements, which create the illusion that an agreement can be reached.” So, the stupid Americans have to be manipulated into accepting the illusion that the Israeli government, or at least his wing of it, has the least interest or belief in peace. In other words, they have to be successfully lied to. A good example of this kind of “maneuver” in his eyes is the so-called settlement freeze: “We had to do a diplomatic maneuver, and we went with the lesser of the evils.? And all of this deception is required because, “I say out of knowledge, nobody in the forum of seven [the inner Netanyahu cabinet] thinks that we can reach an agreement with the Palestinians.” So much for American national security priorities and interests!

In his eyes, the American and international consensus regarding the need for a two-state peace agreement and other land-for-peace deals is absurd and not to be considered for a second: “Why is it taken for granted that in order to obtain peace, we must withdraw? As far as I am concerned, there is no discussion of this at all. No discussion.” Asked about the prospect of annexing occupied territory, Boogie says blandly, “We will get to that. At least in the settlement blocs.”

For Ya’alon, the problem between the two governments is entirely due to the Americans and their idiotic misperceptions: ?There are people in America [i.e., the Obama administration and much of the foreign policy establishment] who see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the main cause of instability in the Middle East, and this perspective has support in the administration, but what can we do?” In other words, Israel has no responsibility, its policies are irrelevant to regional stability or politics, and there is nothing Israel can do one way or the other to influence the Middle Eastern scene.

In Boogie’s eyes, the biggest reason for the political confrontation is, again, American stupidity, most specifically in not recognizing the invalidity and “failure” of the land-for-peace formula: “…the idea of land for peace has failed. We got land for terror in Judea and Samaria and land for rockets in Gaza. What, the Americans do not see it?” What a bunch of idiots! It’s very clear that Boogie, the Minister for Strategic Affairs no less, is among those Israelis who feel very strongly that Palestinians do not and cannot pose any kind of strategic threat to Israel and that an agreement with them is neither possible nor desirable, let alone necessary. However, “delegitimization [in the eyes of the international community] is a strategic threat.? Needless to say, he does not recognize the glaringly obvious and intimate connection between the policies to which he is committed, and that are so shocking and obnoxious to the international community, and the international “delegitimization” that concerns him so much.

As for the American public, Boogie actually seems to think there is a possibility that most Americans might side with him and Netanyahu, and not President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary Clinton: “There is sweeping support for Israel in the United States. I am not sure where the American public stands on this crisis, whom it supports more.” It’s quite clear that this individual has no appreciation whatsoever for the depth of anger among the US government and public regarding the repeated insults delivered first to Biden and then to Obama himself. This is not surprising perhaps, given that he believes that it is all simply the result of American stupidity. And, if anyone was questioning where the impulse was coming from to deliberately announce settlement activities in occupied East Jerusalem strategically timed to embarrass and insult senior American leaders, or what type of mentality would consider that in any sense a good idea, I think they now have their answer quite clearly.

It’s hard to know which is Boogie’s most impressive delusion, but it might be his hilarious protestation that “I come with clean hands.” Or, it might be his insistence that everything is just peachy keen with Israel: “Why do you say that everything is stuck? The country is being built up, the economy is thriving, there are investments in infrastructure and in education, settlement, water projects, alternative energy. What is stuck here? The country is blossoming.” The captain of the Titanic couldn’t have put it any better. Iceberg? What iceberg?

The obvious temptations are to dismissively say either:
1) this guy is cuckoo for cocoa puffs, and not to be taken seriously
or
2) this is just strategic political pandering to the extreme right, and also not to be taken seriously.

And to be sure, one of the most salient features of this second Netanyahu premiership has been a careful tacking between measures designed to placate the Americans on the one hand and the settlers on the other hand. This Prime Minister has even been careful to always balance statements pleasing to the settlers with every statement pleasing to the Obama administration. So, this could well be an effort on Netanyahu’s part to unleash Boogie in all his unhinged glory to hurl as much red meat as possible in the direction of the extreme right in preparation for the steps that are going to be required to mend fences with the Americans. It is definitely possible to read this as a not-so-subtle message to the Israeli extremist community not to get too upset about what is going have to be done vis-à-vis the United States in the coming days in order to restore relations. In other words, these comments certainly demonstrate why there is a crisis between the American and Israeli governments, but they don’t necessarily reveal the deepest strategy of the current prime minister. It could all be read as part of an extremely elaborate series of strategic ploys to balance irreconcilable constituencies domestically and internationally. That’s a distinct possibility.

But what if Boogie really does reflect, if not Netanyahu’s fundamental personal attitudes, at least the genuine positions of the Cabinet as a whole, or at very least of the “seven?” First of all, that guarantees an almost limitless series of confrontations with the Obama administration that would be very difficult to contain and would either lead to the forced dissolution of this coalition due to outside pressure or a political deterioration so grave with the United States that it begins to become a real strategic issue between the countries. If the United States regards it as a strategic imperative to have a peace agreement and Israel regards it as a strategic imperative not to, then the confrontations will inevitably shift from the political to the strategic register over time. How far it can go depends on too many variables to decisively evaluate, and it seems unlikely that the Israeli public would sit back and let it go that far, but with outlandish comments such as this made so breezily and so publicly, one certainly has to wonder.

One also has to wonder what that wing of the Israeli national security establishment, especially in and around the military, which may be skeptical about the mechanism for achieving it but certainly recognizes the strategic need for an agreement with the Palestinians, must be thinking when they read this from their Minister of Strategic Affairs in Israel’s most widely-circulated Hebrew daily. Only a few weeks ago at the Washington Institute, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, “A successful peace process ? especially with the Palestinians… is a compelling imperative for the state of Israel.” He called this, “the uppermost responsibility of any Israeli government.” I think it’s pretty clear that not only does he mean this, but that he speaks for and represents that wing of the government that is closest to much of the uniformed defense establishment in Israel.

The always-impressive Shai Feldman of Brandeis University said at a panel on which we were both speaking the other day at Boston College that there are three separate governments in the present Israeli cabinet: a Barak government aligned with the military and the defense establishment that understands the strategic need for an agreement with the Palestinians; a Lieberman government aligned with the settlers and the ultra-right that does not think any such agreement is either possible or desirable; and a Netanyahu government that likes to play the referee and has constructed an aura of ambiguity on the question of peace. Boogie is reportedly very close with Bibi, so given Feldman’s analysis, the question would be: is he part of the Lieberman/ultra-right camp that has its own perspective but does not really dominate or define the thinking of the Prime Minister or the Cabinet as a whole; or is he part of the Netanyahu camp and these words are a roundabout way of the Prime Minister himself expressing his views and explaining, in Hebrew, to his Israeli audience why there is suddenly a crisis with the moronic gringos? I think the answer to that question will determine a very great deal about where not only peace, but US-Israel relations, go in the coming months and years.

By now, everyone who thinks the present confrontation between Pres. Obama and his administration and Prime Minister Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition allies is meaningless, a "charade," or even more ridiculously, a "joke," should be feeling pretty silly. It’s become obvious that not only is this not "no big deal," this is, as one eminent American statesman might put it, "a big fucking deal." It’s still a political crisis between politicians and governments, and not a strategic crisis between countries, and the foundations of the US-Israel special relationship and commitment to Israel’s security are unshaken. But the depth, let alone the reality, of the Obama-Netanyahu crisis of policy and of trust has degenerated very significantly since it erupted during VP Biden’s trip to the region. It is extraordinary that, having been invited to the White House, Netanyahu would need to leave the first, lengthy, meeting, then consult with his entourage, request a second meeting which was also long, and leave without a single word of substance from either side to the public. It’s absolutely obvious that the meetings were tense and unpleasant, and that no agreement was reached.

The outstanding Laura Rozen of Politico today reports: “’Apparently Bibi is very nervous, frantically calling his ‘seven,’ trying to figure out what to do,” one Washington Middle East hand said Wednesday. ‘The word I heard most today was ‘panic.’" This rings exactly true. What other reaction is he supposed to have to being suddenly confronted with an American president who is simply not going to take it anymore and is laying down some very firm conditions? Nathan Gutmann in The Forward lists the following demands supposedly placed before Netanyahu by Sec. Clinton during her apparently angry 45 minute phone call following the Biden fiasco:
• Cancel the Ramat Shlomo building plan for 1,600 units, which sparked the crisis.
• Expand Israel’s 10-month moratorium on settlements to include East Jerusalem.
• Offer the Palestinians a number of goodwill gestures to relieve the weight of the occupation in the West Bank.
• Agree to discuss core issues — not just procedural ones, as Netanyahu desired — in upcoming proximity talks arranged by Washington between Israel and the Palestinians.
According to Gutmann and many other sources, Netanyahu agreed to the two planks that don’t involve Jerusalem settlements, and, as I’ve been writing about recently, apparently caved in on permanent status issues which has been the most important point of contention in recent months.

It’s important to step back and recall the chronology leading up to the present confrontation: first there was the slap in the face to the administration during the Biden visit over the 1,600 settler housing units in occupied Arab East Jerusalem. This led to a firestorm of angry condemnations from various senior American officials. Netanyahu was required to issue a climbdown, which involved agreeing to gestures towards the Palestinians and the inclusion of all permanent status issues in proximity talks. This was communicated both verbally and in a letter to the President which remains unreleased. That seemed to satisfy the White House and both parties engaged in a ratcheting down tensions. Netanyahu was invited by Mitchell to meet with the President on Tuesday. When he arrived in the United States, Netanyahu gave a belligerent and defiant speech at AIPAC, including his ridiculous statement that "Jerusalem is not a settlement," as if anyone had ever claimed that Jerusalem is a settlement. The point the administration and everyone else is making is not that Jerusalem IS a settlement, but that there are settlements IN Jerusalem. It was a shameless performance of both defiance and demagoguery, in marked contrast to Sec. Clinton’s balanced, constructive approach at the same conference. The real turning point, however, was the announcement of 20 new settler housing units in occupied Arab East Jerusalem on the very day of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting. In other words, Pres. Obama was being treated to a slightly less dramatic version of the insult delivered to VP Biden only two weeks ago.

This was obviously too much for the administration, greatly strengthened by its recent victory on healthcare and the emergence of an Obama presidency not to be trifled with. By all indications, Netanyahu was treated to an unexpected and rather severe dressing down by Obama. Among other things, it would appear the President reiterated the American demands first issued by Sec. Clinton, and that Netanyahu was told in no uncertain terms that his written letter to Obama was unsatisfactory and required rewriting (also known as "clarification"). That the meeting was tense and unfortunate from the Israeli point of view is strongly indicated by the dead silence from the administration regarding it, with no gesture of warmth or friendship whatsoever, let alone a photo op. Probably even more extraordinary was the sequence of the first long meeting, followed by a confab within the Israeli delegation, a request for a second meeting, another long Netanyahu-Obama meeting which did not produce an agreement either, and then negotiations between senior officials that went on until at least 2 AM, also without resolution. Also extraordinary was Netanyahu’s cancellation of all his public events and meetings yesterday in order to deal with the crisis. Rozen’s quotation about "frantic calls" and "panic" therefore, as I say, rings true.

So, it would certainly appear that Netanyahu and his government have miscalculated dreadfully and now find themselves in an impossible situation. For many months now Netanyahu has been successfully triangulating between the demands of his right-wing coalition partners and the expectations of Washington, but the Biden fiasco followed by this second, obviously carefully calculated, rebuff to the administration on Jerusalem settlements has made that now impossible. Further confrontations are almost inevitable once this current row is resolved, as long as there is this fundamental contradiction between his political interests on the one hand and diplomatic requirements on the other hand. How Netanyahu is possibly going to deal with this, short of restructuring his coalition, I’m not sure at all. It seems clear that the administration is determined, buoyed by its recent success, and utterly fed up with the nonsense coming out of Tel Aviv.

So, as Aluf Benn put it in today’s Ha’aretz, Netanyahu leaves the US as a "disgraced, isolated and weaker" actor who, "instead of setting diplomatic agenda, has surrendered control of it." Never mind the panic at being confronted with an empowered, determined American president. Netanyahu even looks like a man who doesn’t control his own government, given his insistence that he had no knowledge of these repeated insulting announcements perfectly timed to coincide with diplomatic encounters with the most senior American officials. If he knew, he is culpable, but if he didn’t know, that’s even worse, as he looks incompetent and out of touch. Either way, it’s a disaster for him. He may have gotten political mileage up till now from demagoguery on Jerusalem among Jewish Israelis, but surely the diplomatic price has now become far too high, and must begin to translate into a political price as well. No one can pretend that Netanyahu has prevailed in this confrontation.

This means the Palestinians are in a very advantageous, but also very delicate situation themselves. They have a golden opportunity, indeed a very rare one, to deal with a politically difficult Israeli cabinet in a very effective manner with American and international support, and to advance their position considerably and get closer to the United States. But they need to know that following this confrontation with Israel, the administration will be more than willing to take on the Palestinians and the other Arabs as well. If they are prepared to confront Netanyahu, there won’t be much holding them back in confronting the PLO leadership or the Arab states. They need to remember that in Obama they are dealing with an ally and friend who is doing the heavy lifting now for their benefit, as well as in the US and enlightened Israeli interests as well. It’s therefore strategically wise on multiple registers for the Palestinians and the other Arabs to be as constructive and forthcoming as possible. If the United States does not believe you’re going to run with the ball, they will not pass it to you, and there is a grave danger that having encountered a recalcitrant, obdurate and belligerent Netanyahu and faced him down, if they feel they are going to encounter similar resistance on the Arab side, they may with great reluctance choose to walk away.

The depth of the opportunity is only emphasized by Sec. Gates repeating today recent statements by Gen. Petraeus and Adm. Mullen that emphasize Israel’s policies and, more importantly, the lack of a two state peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians negatively affects US strategic interests, and, either explicitly or implicitly, the safety of US forces in the Arab and Islamic world. There is a reconsideration of American strategic interests, with Palestine and an end to the occupation at its very center, in the present worldview dominating Washington discourse and administration policy. To not take advantage of this would be utter madness. Extremely unhelpful statements from some PLO officials and bizarre, almost insane, ideas floating around the Arab League about rescinding the Arab Peace Initiative, or any suggestion of not returning to proximity talks or putting up unworkable objections at this stage after all that has been done by the administration would be an unthinkable blunder. Through Netanyahu’s gross miscalculations and the administration’s firmness, determination and new level of authority, the Palestinians and the Arabs have a golden opportunity in the present circumstance that they must take advantage of or accept their share of the blame for the probably dire consequences.

In the week immediately following VP Biden?s visit to Israel and the firestorm of controversy over the announcement of 1600 new settler housing units in occupied East Jerusalem, tensions between the US and Israel bubbled over in a most unusual manner. Administration officials, including Sec. Clinton, used language normally reserved for the likes of Iran and North Korea in order to emphasize how appalled they were at the brazen defiance. Both sides quickly developed a strong interest in containing and then reducing tensions once the United States had made its point crystal clear, and both Pres. Obama and PM Netanyahu moved quickly to do so. However, Israel was required to provide what are apparently substantial and significant assurances to the United States in private and, it would seem, in an unpublished and unreleased written document as well. Since Special Envoy Mitchell has invited Netanyahu to meet with the President tomorrow during his trip to Washington, obviously the American side is satisfied with whatever climbdown it has received from the Israelis. This is worth considering in some detail, especially from a Palestinian point of view.

First of all, it seems clear that given the outrage and exceptionally strong language coming out of Washington that the Obama administration would not have simply let the matter pass. Israel was going to have to earn release from the rhetorical doghouse. So in spite of skepticism, both logic and the known facts indicate strongly that whatever assurances Israel has provided to Washington are substantial and significant. I think many people are somewhat confused about what exactly has been at stake, and therefore are misreading this development as some kind of victory or successful defiance by Netanyahu.

Settlements were indeed the central issue between the US and Israel for many months, especially in the early fall of 2009. However, after his meetings with both Netanyahu and Pres. Abbas at the UN in October, Pres. Obama made it clear that while the United States was not satisfied with Israel?s positions or the partial, temporary and, it is now clear, largely fraudulent settlement moratorium, nonetheless Washington wanted to move on to the reestablishment of permanent status negotiations rather than continuing to be mired in the settlement conundrum. What became clear as Washington attempted and failed to get Netanyahu to agree to a complete settlement freeze is that beyond his own personal and ideological inclinations, it is unlikely that his cabinet would survive any such step and therefore there is no chance under the present circumstances that he is going to take it. They were asking for something they really couldn?t get, and when they realized that they decided to keep the issue on the table but prioritize something else.

It was at this stage that Palestinian reluctance to return to permanent status negotiations for a complex set of diplomatic, practical and political reasons became a defining feature of international perceptions and began to really harm Palestinian standing in the United States and the rest of the West. Netanyahu was able to skillfully deploy this reluctance in order to paint himself as ?the one who made positive gestures and who wants to get back into talks right away,? and the Palestinians as ?the ones who say no.? The political problem for the Palestinians was that they really didn?t have anything substantial and meaningful to show their public to justify a return to negotiations in spite of the lack of a settlement freeze. Hence the idea of proximity talks, Arab League permission and other indecorous measures designed to ease the PLO back into talks in spite of the attendant grave political difficulties. But there were other more practical and serious diplomatic problems with the idea of getting back into permanent status negotiations, even proximity talks, without any preconditions. The obvious, rational and legitimate Palestinian fear is getting back into a peace process that is all process and no peace, and that drags on indefinitely without any significant progress while settlement construction continues apace and the borders of Palestine become increasingly difficult to conceptualize, let alone determine.

Therefore, the biggest sticking point from a practical and diplomatic point of view to a resumption of negotiations in recent months has been the lack of adequate terms of reference for the negotiations that would define exactly what Israelis and Palestinians are talking about. On this point too, as with a settlement freeze, the Obama administration basically sided with the Palestinians in theory and the Israelis in practice, in that they have been pushing for terms of reference, assurances and other structures that would give the negotiations substantive meaning, but urging the parties to return to talks even if the topics were not clearly defined because Israel preferred keeping everything as vague as possible. One can understand this politically from Netanyahu?s point of view: getting into a negotiation with the Palestinians about the future of Jerusalem is probably more politically dangerous for him than any notion of a settlement freeze. On the other hand, any negotiation that doesn?t include core permanent status issues like Jerusalem are unlikely to be meaningful. And, there is a grave danger for him that should talks restart and the Palestinians prove forthcoming, constructive and clever, the colossal distance between his position and that of the Obama administration, and what may be a fundamental incompatibility between the two, will become increasingly clear. There is a real and extremely dangerous possibility for him to emerge as being perceived by all parties as the main problem once permanent status talks really get going. Demagoguery on Jerusalem might be good politics in Israel, but it?s potentially disastrous diplomacy, if the Palestinians and the other Arabs don?t provide endless ways of avoiding the topic.

It seems pretty clear that whatever the Israelis have agreed to involves, if not detailed and constructive terms of reference as such, at least putting all permanent status issues, including Jerusalem, on the table for upcoming proximity talks. This is, and should be seen as, a huge gain for both the Obama administration and the Palestinians and an eventuality that Netanyahu was trying very assiduously to avoid. In some sports this sort of thing is called an ?unforced error,? in which the blunder of one side strengthens the position of the other without the advantaged party actually having to do anything. The bottom line is this: before the Biden-settlements fiasco, the Palestinians were willing although extremely reluctant to go back into proximity talks without a clear agenda or terms of reference. Now, it?s clear that they will be able to go into them with much more satisfactory arrangements from their perspective. It seems to me one of the few ways to badly mishandle this would be to sulk and refuse to reengage the talks they had already agreed to. Clearly this is a gain to be pocketed and built upon, not squandered.

Other aspects of the US-Israel understanding reached last week appear to include some kind of easing of the blockade of Gaza, which is morally urgent and which should politically benefit the PA, which will have achieved it, rather than Hamas. In any event, the siege plainly benefits Hamas politically, and is the principal factor in the slow evolution of what is increasingly looking like a totalitarian theocracy in the Strip. Almost any opening to the outside world should weaken or slow that lamentable process. So, that?s also a good thing, and without this confrontation, it probably wouldn?t have happened either.

The most difficult subject, of course, is the problem of the settlements themselves. It?s especially tricky because on this issue the politics and diplomacy are particularly murky, as is the nature of the understanding arrived at last week. Clearly as long as he is working with this group of coalition partners, and possibly under any circumstances, Netanyahu is not going to countenance a meaningful and thorough settlement freeze, and certainly not in Jerusalem. But it?s also clear that the Obama administration is serious about its categorical opposition to increased settlement construction, including in Jerusalem, especially in Arab neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem. Therefore, it?s extremely difficult to read the reputed ?don?t ask, don?t tell? arrangement on Jerusalem settlements. Will it in practice mean that Israel reserves the right to colonize East Jerusalem, and may even plan settlement activity, but in reality not conduct any, unless specifically approved by Washington? Or will it mean that settlement activity in East Jerusalem goes ahead as planned, but remains unannounced? My guess is that the reality is something in between the two, that Netanyahu publicly insists colonization will continue in East Jerusalem, but assures the Obama administration that it will be very limited and close to zero in practice. However, if this is true, I?m sure he and his bureaucrats will try to ?cheat? as much as they can within this framework. I?m also very skeptical that any aspect of this understanding made it into the reputed written document.

Of course this is not satisfactory from the American, international and especially Palestinian perspective. However, it too is useful in that it places Israel settlement activity, especially in East Jerusalem under an even more powerful microscope than it already has been. And, it increases sensitivity in Washington to the problem. In other words, Israeli colonization of East Jerusalem is not just a Palestinian or Arab problem now, it?s become an American problem as well, and that is a serious complication for any Israelis who want to preserve political relationships with the Obama administration. So I think all in all this has been exceptionally useful from a Palestinian perspective, for the following reasons:

1) the proximity talks are now structured in the way Palestinians have wanted, not on Israeli terms;

2) any easing of the siege on Gaza is a good thing morally and politically;

3) settlement activity, especially in East Jerusalem is going to be more politically difficult and costly for Israel after this.

Obviously, this is far short of a settlement freeze, and serious progress on peace is really going to require that. However, I don?t think anyone should fail to note the gains, albeit limited, the Palestinians have been able to extract from this US-Israel confrontation. The main thing now is to build on and not squander them.

The controversy and confrontation sparked by Israel’s announcement of 1,600 new settler housing units in occupied East Jerusalem during VP Biden’s trip to the region was probably inevitable. The Obama Administration and the Netanyahu Cabinet, especially its right wing including Interior Minister Yishai of Shas who made the decision and the announcement, have been on a collision course for many months. Their visions of long-term peace and short-term negotiation strategy are totally incompatible, and as I’ve noted in the past, we now find ourselves in a most unusual situation in which the American position is closer to the Palestinian perspective on both of these registers than to the Israeli view. The added complication is that because of domestic political considerations, the United States is still politically much closer and provides much more support to the side in the Middle East conflict it now disagrees with more. In other words, yet again, there is a fairly radical gap between policy and politics that is rendering the quest for a reasonable peace agreement, and even reasonable terms for the resumption of negotiations, dysfunctional.

For the Palestinians in this situation, obviously less is more. The controversy has had a life of its own, and the less Palestinians did and do to stoke the flames, at least in any obvious way, the more traction it will have for them. When other people (in this case the Israeli government) are doing your heavy lifting for you, sit back and let it happen. For the most part, Palestinians have done and said what they should have: very little. For those who are wondering why the Ibishblog has been silent on this controversy until now, consider the usefulness sometimes of saying little to nothing, and the silliness of a knee-jerk and adolescent impulse to always want to comment on everything right away, when sometimes judicious silence can be the most effective commentary of all. Netanyahu has managed to dig himself a remarkably deep hole, and it is imperative that Palestinians do not, as they have so many times in the past, pull him out of it through their own miscalculations. This can be done by incautious words as well as ill-considered deeds.

What has happened that is so useful for the Palestinians is that American and international perceptions, especially in Washington, have now been reoriented in an extremely healthy manner. In the last six months of 2009 and into the new year, Netanyahu skillfully managed to tack between the demands of his right-wing coalition partners (and probably his own ideological inclinations) on the one hand and the expectations of the Obama administration on the other hand. He gave enough, but just barely enough, such as his Bar Ilan speech tepidly endorsing a two state outcome and a largely fraudulent “settlement freeze,” to convince many in Washington, and especially in Congress, that he was actually making significant gestures and concessions. The Palestinians found themselves painted as “the ones who say no,” because of their reluctance to return to talks after the settlement freeze and Goldstone fiascoes, and without acceptable assurances and terms of reference and with no timetable.

For perfectly rational domestic political reasons given the series of body blows they endured in the last half of last year, for many months the Palestinian leadership maintained that they simply could not return to permanent status negotiations under the prevailing political conditions. For months they begged for something substantial or even symbolic, no matter how small, that they could present to their public as a rationalization for returning to talks, even though such a return was strongly in their national interest. Again, politics interferes with policy and national strategy. They didn’t get much. Nonetheless, they came under very heavy pressure not only from the United States, but also from the Europeans, to return to negotiations, and it became an imperative for many reasons, not least to shift the appearance of being “the ones who say no,” by finding a politically viable formula to reengage Israel in some manner. The idea of “proximity talks” became more appealing given that they would be attenuated by being indirect, and at the very least not involve any photo opportunities, and the Palestinians felt compelled to seek approval from the Arab League, which they received. This is a measure of the extreme discomfort of the PLO leadership with the situation they found themselves in, since proximity talks and asking Arab permission and cover for what should be strictly a Palestinian decision both hearken back to even-worse-old-days than the present unfortunate circumstances.

Just as the Palestinians have so frequently bailed out the Israelis through colossal blunders, just when things seemed darkest politically for the PLO, Netanyahu and his colleagues charged to the rescue by grossly insulting the Vice President and the United States and by creating the appearance of a wild-eyed determination to continue settlement activity at all costs. The perception that the main problem is the Palestinians saying “no” instantaneously evaporated, replaced by a new international perception that intransigence and extremism on the part of the present Israeli government is, in fact, the main obstacle to serious progress. The delicate balancing act Netanyahu had performed for so many months appeasing both settler-supporting right-wing Israelis and Obama-supporting American Democrats came crashing down in a most dramatic manner. This has been compounded by outrageous statements from Netanyahu’s brother-in-law calling Pres. Obama an “anti-Semite,” and from the journal of his coalition partners in Shas calling the President a “Muslim,” an “Islamic extremist,” and a “stone-throwing Palestinian.” The main Israeli pushback, which has been to focus on the youth wing of Fatah (not the PA as is frequently claimed) naming a square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi gained no traction whatsoever, especially given the kind of people some Israeli streets and squares have been named after throughout the country. This does not, of course, mean that now everyone believes that the Palestinians have performed in an admirable manner or are blameless for the diplomatic stalemate. But it does mean that perceptions of the nature of the diplomatic and political problem have shifted very much in the direction of Israeli responsibility and greatly strengthened the Palestinian position and hand internationally.

Therefore, the most urgent requirement from a Palestinian point of view is not to do or say anything foolish or reckless to shift international attention back to problems emanating from Palestinian positions and to keep the focus on the extent to which the present Israeli government is pursuing policies that are incompatible with long-term peace and even serious progress in negotiations. It is strongly in their interests not to put up any serious resistance towards resumption of proximity talks, which they were already prepared to enter into under much less advantageous circumstances. They should continue to press as hard as possible for terms of reference and assurances that would make negotiations meaningful, but they should not throw up conditions that shift the blame back to them or cast them once again in the untenable position of “the ones who say no.”

It’s important to recognize also that the nature of this US-Israeli confrontation is a political crisis between governments but not a strategic crisis between states. The US-Israel relationship on core matters such as Israeli security is not affected by such political disputes, and it will not be. Therefore, it is extremely important for Palestinians and their allies in the United States to understand the difference between a political and a strategic crisis, and what opportunities actually are presented here and what are misleading fantasies. On the other hand, Israel’s supporters in the United States need to disabuse themselves immediately of the delusion or at least the pretense that this is fundamentally no big deal. It is indeed a crisis, and it pits the US government against a foreign government on an issue of core American national interests.

Many pro-Israel organizations in the United States have, in my estimation, overreached and miscalculated in their reaction to the controversy, most obviously the ADL’s extremely unwise attack on Gen. David Petraeus. But beyond that truly foolish mistake, many pro-Israel organizations essentially sought to shift the blame for the confrontation to Obama and Biden rather than Netanyahu and Yishai. This was never going to wash, since it is distinctly unbecoming for otherwise patriotic American organizations to side with a foreign government in a dispute involving the core national interests of the United States. What makes things more difficult is that most of the well-placed senior foreign policy Jewish Democrats in Congress strongly sided with Obama and Biden, for obvious reasons. First, their inclination is to agree with the United States in a fundamental argument with any foreign power, including Israel, but also significantly they feel strongly tied politically to the Obama administration, and recognize that their own standing in Washington would be adversely affected by a further weakening of the administration’s position. Therefore, the pro-Israel organizations that essentially sought to shift the blame to the United States not only managed to annoy mainstream American society, they were left without their most important allies on the Hill. It is unlikely that this will do lasting and permanent damage to their standing in the United States, but it is also unlikely that everyone will simply forget this incident and pretend it never happened. This has entailed a significant political cost to many of the pro-Israel organizations, although how much can only be calculated as events continue to play out.

The attack on Petraeus was prompted by his comments at a congressional hearing that questioned the effect Israel’s policies and the failure to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement are having on the US strategic position in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world. Several reports have suggested that in less public settings Petraeus, Adm. Mike Mullen and others have been even more forthright about an emerging understanding in the US military that Israel’s policies actually endanger American troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. This doesn’t make them anti-Israel, but it does mean that Israel’s behavior is now seen in a very different, and broader light, and is no longer regarded merely as a function of bilateral US-Israel relations. It also means that strategic interests are pushing back against domestic political forces in a novel and, again, very healthy manner.

This new understanding is probably an inevitable consequence of the reassessment in Washington of how international relations in the Middle East and Islamic world actually function. During the Bush era, strategic concerns in the Arab and Islamic world were generally seen as discrete problems to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, separate from each other. In other words, there was an Iraq problem, an Iran problem, an Afghanistan problem, a Syria problem, a Palestine problem, etc. When they were linked, it was in an unrealistic and ham-handed manner as in the one-size-fits-all “Greater Middle East Initiative” for regional democratization that was dead on arrival and discarded before it was ever implemented. In the Obama era, the consensus has shifted to viewing events in the Arab and Islamic world as interdependent and interlocked in a much more realistic manner. Because of this holistic reassessment of regional strategic relations, and a correct evaluation that Palestine and the Israeli occupation are at the center of the Middle Eastern political kaleidoscope, the Obama administration took up the issue of Middle East peace at a very early stage and has not abandoned the project in spite of tremendous setbacks and false starts. This same evaluation has logically lead senior elements in the US military to contextualize Israeli policies and the failure to achieve a peace agreement, or even momentum on peace, in terms of broader US strategic interests. Once the holistic approach is adopted, the idea that this actually costs American lives becomes rather obvious and unavoidable.

However, Palestinians need to take a very sober and cautious approach to dealing with the ongoing US-Israel confrontation over settlements. If they overplay their hand, they will fail to reap any political or diplomatic benefits from what is an extraordinary opportunity. Not only do they have to not overreact, and instead cast themselves as helpful and constructive in contrast to the defiance and obduracy of the Israeli cabinet, they have to understand what is genuinely useful to them and what is not. Palestinians DO benefit from a measure of tension between Israeli and American positions that allows the United States to be more evenhanded and to use its leverage and special relationship with Israel to push Israeli policies in the right direction. However, Palestinians WILL NOT benefit from a boiling over of US-Israeli tensions that produces a level of mistrust that, while not affecting the broader strategic special relationship, prevents any serious US political influence on Israeli policies, and, worse, that might induce an administration to actually walk away from the issue and abandon peace efforts. There is no point in hoping for an end to the US-Israel special relationship, since there is no way of achieving this in the foreseeable future, and no need to achieve it in order to realize an end to the occupation. Palestinians can and should look for opportunities to leverage the special relationship and use it to pursue a goal that is in not only the Palestinian and American national interests, but in Israel’s as well, even if the present Netanyahu government does not fully understand this. That’s an achievable aim, and the present US-Israel confrontation offers a rare and extraordinary opportunity to push the ball towards that goal line.

[NOTE: I delivered this talk at a luncheon with Tal Becker as the other speaker at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, March 16, 2010.]

In my remarks today I want to look at the evolution of the concept of Israel as a national home for the Jewish people and a ?Jewish state? in international law, then at Israel’s character as a Jewish state, and finally at the way in which the occupation negates that character. My broadest point is that at every level Israel’s status as a national home for the Jewish people and as a Jewish state is dependent on the creation of a Palestinian state to live alongside Israel in peace and security.

I. Israel as a Jewish state in international law

The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 begins with the phrase, “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people?” There are at least two significant aspects to this language worth noting: the Declaration commits to “a national home for the Jewish people,” but not to “a Jewish state,” and to “a national home,” but not “the national home.” National home might be taken to imply state, but it might mean many other things as well. Many have noted the irony of no overt reference to the overwhelming majority of the population of Palestine, the Palestinian Arabs, in the Declaration, and the moral, political and legal difficulties attached to the United Kingdom making such a pledge regarding a territory over which it had, the time, no legal authority and in disregard of the wishes of its population. Nonetheless, the Declaration introduces the concept into international relations in a most decisive manner.

The text of the Mandate for Palestine adopted by the Council of the League of Nations on July 24, 1922 made the project a practical reality rather than simply a rhetorical position by holding that “the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting [The Balfour Declaration] into effect.” Article II repeats the language of the Declaration that, “The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.” Like the Declaration, the Mandate therefore set up a virtually impossible conundrum by pledging to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, without specifying whether or not this would involve a Jewish state, and more importantly without violating the civil and religious rights of the Palestinian majority. Probably the only way to parse this in a manner that makes the language of the Mandate and the Declaration intelligible is to distinguish between civil and religious rights to be afforded to non-Jews (that is to say Palestinians) in Palestine on the one hand, and national political rights which are only mentioned in connection with Jews on the other hand. In other words, there does seem to have been a time at which, guided by British policy and interests, the international community, such as it was, regarded the Jewish national project in Palestine as legitimate and simply refrained from commenting on the Palestinian national project, unless to damn it by silence.

However, given the increasing assertion of Palestinian national identity and ambitions during the mandatory period, this willful blindness could not extend itself into international decision-making about the end of the Mandate, as it had at its beginning. Several proposals from the late 1930s, most notably the 1937 Peel Commission Report, suggested partition of Palestine between Jewish and Arab states. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947 called for the establishment of, “Independent Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem.” This partition resolution, along with its own unilateral Declaration of Independence that defines it as “a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel,” is generally regarded as the birth certificate of the Israeli state. Indeed, Israel’s admittance as a member state of the United Nations by UN General Assembly Resolution 273 (III), adopted on May 11, 1949, specifically referenced “its resolutions of 29 November 1947 [181] and 11 December 1948,” and a commitment to the implementation of those provisions.

The irony, of course, is that if the 1947 partition resolution was the primary international birth certificate for Israel, it must also be so for the yet to be established Palestinian state as well. The logic of partition cannot cut in one direction only. Indeed, the “land-for-peace” formula of UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967 and its numerous legal progeny is simply a logical extension of the fundamental attitude towards balancing Jewish and Arab rights in Palestine through sharing of the land between two equally sovereign and ethnically-defined entities. Therefore, Israel’s legal status internationally as a Jewish state depends on the eventual creation of a Palestinian state to complete the logic of its own creation. International legality on this question has been formulated such that neither Israel nor Palestine makes sense as a standalone, but represent two mutually dependent functions of the same equation.

II. Israel as a Jewish state

Israel, in many important respects plainly IS a Jewish state. First of all, it is a sovereign member state of the United Nations and therefore defines its own character. In negotiations with the Palestinians, it is this power and prerogative of self-definition that leaves many wondering what is the point of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as, in his words, “the nation-state of the Jewish people.” While this issue is not new in Arab-Israeli negotiations, such formulations are both new and striking, and go far beyond mutual recognition of states and of rights of self-determination. From the Palestinian point of view, recognition of Israel and the realization of a conflict ending, two-state agreement that includes an end of all claims the parties may have on each other accomplishes everything substantive in this regard. Israel is free to define itself, just as Palestine will be. The question of the Jewish character of Israel was never raised and is not reflected in its peace treaties with Egypt or Jordan. It therefore seems odd and gratuitous to ask Palestinians to enter into the debate that rages, and will no doubt continue to rage, within Israel about the nature of the Israeli state and its “Jewish character.” It also raises the question of why Israel would cede to anyone else a role in defining its identity and character. It is extremely unusual, if not unprecedented, for states to demand and for other states to accept certain specific ethnic definitions or other characterizations in their diplomatic arrangements, which are almost always regarded as internal matters not subject to external approval or even comment.

When we speak of Israel as a Jewish state, what, after all, does this really mean? The most obvious and perhaps only consensus meaning is Israel has a majority ethnic group that considers itself, and is formally classified by the state, as Jewish, and that has the means of dominating state institutions and society. True enough there is a large Palestinian minority among Israel citizens, and they occupy a complicated relationship with Israel as a “Jewish state.” They enjoy many of the rights and prerogatives of citizenship, and yet are subject to some anomalous legalized discrimination that, while certainly not unique in the world today, is nonetheless unusual in its scope and severity, especially in the context of a minority large enough to comprise approximately 20% of the whole population. The role of the Palestinian citizens of Israel has been struggled with both by mainstream Jewish Israeli society on the one hand and by the Palestinian minority on the other hand since the founding of the state. However, in spite of a very problematic relationship between this large non-Jewish minority and the state itself, Israel’s status as a Jewish state I think plainly rests primarily on the fact that it has a substantial Jewish majority of more than 75 percent.

There are, of course, other ways in which Israel has expressed itself as a Jewish state. There are the various quasi-governmental entities that enjoy a cooperative relationship with the Israeli state, but that purport to act in the name of world Jewry. There are also numerous legal and administrative Israeli provisions that reflect a special relationship between the state and Jewish religious institutions, heritage and sentiments. It appears that only a minority of Jewish Israelis are interested in a systematic expansion of the role of religious institutions in state life, and Israel is likely to remain largely secular for the foreseeable future. However, as with many other Middle Eastern societies there has been a rise in religious sentiments and an increasingly empowered religious right in Israeli political life.

As I noted already, there is a robust debate within Israeli society over the nature and validity of the “Jewish and democratic character” of Israel, and the challenges that this identity poses for the country to become also “a state of all its citizens,” or at least a state that serves all of its citizens equally as opposed to one that reflects indefensible ethnic or religious privilege. Many similar issues are dealt with by states around the world that have to contend with majority sentiments versus minority rights and contentious relationships between religious and secular institutions. Any future Palestinian state would almost certainly face analogous challenges. Indeed, every state in the Middle East contends with them to some extent or another. Yet since many Jewish Israelis cannot agree on the nature of the “Jewish character” of the Israeli state, and because this question is entirely extraneous to the question of the establishment of peace and normal diplomatic relations between Israel and a Palestinian state, it seems difficult to understand the impulse to bring this issue into the negotiations.

What, precisely, would Palestinians be acknowledging if they formally recognized Israel as a “Jewish state” that would not be accomplished if they merely recognize it as presently constituted and self-defined? Indeed Palestinians have already done so on numerous occasions, most notably PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat’s September 9, 1993 letter to Prime Minister Rabin in which he unambiguously stated, “The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.” What can possibly be accomplished by this new and startling formulation about recognition of ?the nation-state of the Jewish people? other than adding yet another wrinkle of eminently avoidable complication?

Palestinians are concerned that if they were to explicitly recognize Israel as, in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s language, “the nation-state of the Jewish people,” they might be perceived as endorsing measures that discriminate against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. The Palestinian leadership sees these issues as an internal matter to be determined by Jewish and Arab Israelis through the political and civic processes within Israel, not as a matter of negotiations between Israel and the PLO. Moreover, Palestinians and many others view this demand as an effort to preempt the refugee issue, which is a core permanent status negotiating issue. Palestinian negotiators have long accepted that major compromises are required on their part regarding refugees and the right of return. This is probably the most politically complicated aspect of permanent status from the Palestinian point of view. Palestinians and peace require significant reciprocal Israeli steps on the most politically sensitive issues from the Israeli perspective, particularly regarding Jerusalem. When former Prime Minister Olmert first raised the issue in this manner around the time of the Annapolis meeting, many Palestinian and American officials viewed it as an effort to preemptively prejudice the refugee issue to the point that it loses its significance in bargaining and becomes, in effect, a settled matter before talks are resumed, let alone concluded. This is one reason why the demand has never been taken up or echoed by the United States.

Israel certainly has the rights to recognition and self-definition, as do all UN member states. Palestinians must have that right as well. An end of conflict agreement that establishes peace on the basis of an end to all claims upon each other would seem to put all these matters satisfactorily to rest. Some argue that Israelis continue to feel that Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular do not recognize the legitimacy of their national project. Palestinians and other Arabs certainly have the same suspicions about many Israelis. The demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish” state in some explicit but undefined manner seems to move closer to a scenario that requires an implausible reconciliation of national narratives rather than the more achievable goal of peace based on mutual recognition by two independent, sovereign states. I have argued many times in the past that one of the greatest advantages of a two-state peace agreement is precisely that it does not require a reconciliation of national narratives, but rather the coexistence of these narratives in bordering states through which each is individually expressed. Such an agreement hardly implies irredentism or a desire to resume conflict at some later stage. On the contrary, it puts a full stop to the conflict by creating an agreement that both sides will have a vested interest in making work.

III. Israel as not a Jewish state

Having asserted that Israel plainly is a Jewish state in one sense, I feel it necessary to assert that in another sense Israel is, at present, clearly NOT a Jewish state. It depends entirely on which version of Israel one is talking about. In other words, is this a 1948 or a 1967 problem? Israel proper, within its internationally recognized boundaries, is indeed a Jewish state as I explained above, although the nature of that Jewishness is contentious and unsettled. However, the de facto Israeli state as it now stands is neither Jewish nor democratic because of the nature of the occupation and the status of the millions of Palestinians who live under it, and who are not citizens of Israel or any other state. It seems clear that by most demographic measures that between the river and the sea already there are comparable numbers, if not more, Palestinians as there are Jewish Israelis, especially if one takes into consideration the hundreds of thousands of Israelis primarily residing outside of Israel and the occupied territories but who are still included in the statistics.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak speaking from this very podium at the Washington Institute just a few days ago told your audience, “A successful peace process ? especially with the Palestinians… is a compelling imperative for the state of Israel.” He called it, “the uppermost responsibility of any Israeli government.” As he put it, “Between the Jordan River to the east to the Mediterranean to the west, there live 11 million people: 7.5 million Israelis and 3.5 million Palestinians. And if there was only one sovereign entity on this area named Israel, it will become inevitably either non-Jewish or non- democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians… can vote, it?s a binational state par excellence. If they cannot vote, it?s not a democratic state. So it?s either non-Jewish if they can vote or non-democratic if they cannot and there is no way to bypass this simple and painful reality.” I would add that since 20 percent of those 7.5 million Israelis are themselves Palestinians, if we wish to think in these broader terms, the demographic reality is even starker than his remarks suggested. You do the math.

I think, in fairness, Mr. Barak was being both courageously forthright and slightly delicate in this formulation. He was describing a present and ongoing reality as if it were a future contingency. The reality is that if we conceive of Israel as comprising the territory under its de facto control, and has been for most of its existence up to the present day, then Israel is already neither Jewish nor democratic, and that is not a future contingency but the truth as it stands. This is not even go into the details of life under occupation, and the extraordinary disparities and dichotomies that exist in the fundamental realities defining the lives of Palestinians on the one hand and Israeli settlers on the other.

My point is that Israel de jure, without the occupied territories, assuming the creation of a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future, can certainly be considered both Jewish and democratic, although it is still struggling to afford equality to a large non-Jewish minority. However, Israel de facto, including the occupied territories, assuming no creation of a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future, cannot be considered either Jewish or democratic in any meaningful sense. I’d note that the new “Masbirim” website for citizen public diplomacy is only the latest example of an official Israeli government artifact that unambiguously incorporates all of the occupied territories into its portrayal of the Israeli state. The notion that Israel includes the occupied territories is be found in representations in numerous Israeli official government documents, and is also reflected in numerous policies, not least of them the settlement building project.

The reality is that Israelis face a clear choice: they can have a Jewish and democratic state, or they can have the occupation. They cannot have both. As it stands now Israel exists on two separate registers simultaneously. On one register it is Jewish and democratic, on the other register it is neither. The choice of whether Israel will be Jewish and democratic or not into the future is entirely dependent upon the achievement of a negotiated agreement that provides for the creation of a viable, sovereign and independent Palestine, as well as an end to the conflict.

Because of these realities, the Israeli government should do everything possible not only to negotiate seriously and in good faith toward such an agreement, but also facilitate the present Palestinian Authority state and institution building program adopted by the PA government last August. Led by Pres. Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, Palestinians are engaging in a paradigm shift about how to achieve independence, taking up the responsibilities of self-government as they continue to insist on the right of self-determination. And after all, as Fayyad has said, only Palestinians can build their state and institutions — no one is going to do it for them. Therefore, if there is to be a Palestinian state, this is an essential and unavoidable step in achieving it.

This program calls the bluff of Palestinians and Israelis alike: are either or both of them really prepared to develop a Palestinian state in the occupied territories to live alongside Israel in peace and security? For the Palestinians, it means channeling all their energies into constructive efforts designed to create the institutional, infrastructural, economic and, and above all, administrative framework of their future state under the occupation, in order to end the occupation. For the Israelis, it will mean ceding more and more attributes of sovereignty in greater and greater areas of the occupied territories to the PA as it develops these institutions, and it will mean getting out of the way of the Palestinians, both literally and figuratively, in an unprecedented manner. It asks both societies, do you mean what you have been saying for the past 20 years?

I would argue it is strongly in Israel’s interest to not prevent Palestinians from creating the essential framework of the Palestinian state that can allow Israel to keep hold of an essential nature that is both Jewish and democratic and divest itself of elements that categorically negate both of these characteristics. It could be seen as ironic, but it is also eminently logical, that a Jewish Israel requires an Arab Palestine alongside it in order to be itself and not something radically different.

Since Joseph Stack flew an airplane into the Austin headquarters of the IRS one of the main questions being asked about the incident is whether or not this should be considered an act of terrorism and Stack himself a terrorist. Many Arab and Muslim Americans, and their allies, have made the point that had Stack been of Arab or Muslim descent, there likely would not be much reticence to apply that label to him, but given his ethnicity there seems to be a much greater reluctance in many quarters to place him in that category. This is not, of course, merely a semantic argument. Especially for Arab and Muslim Americans, the question of the process by, and criteria for, which the terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” are applied to acts of violence in United States is laden with political and social significance.

Arab and Muslim Americans are concerned that all violent acts committed by individuals associated with their communities lead to unfair stigmatization because they are seen as reflective of a “threat” inherent in those communities. Even if it is understood that extremist sentiments reflect a minority, indeed a fringe, sentiment among Muslims worldwide, let alone in the United States, it is still very hard for many Americans not to assign some degree of collective blame or threat to Arabs and Muslims generally when such violent acts are committed. Majority communities, obviously, are by definition immune from this kind of stigmatization and since the white, male, Christian identity is a normative one in American society any distortions of personality or behavior are ascribed strictly to the individual and not the group. Many minorities are vulnerable to this kind of collective blame, as African-Americans and many others have been throughout American history. However, there is a particular stigma that attaches to the terms terrorist and terrorism, understood as an existential threat to our society, so the communities that have to bear this collective stigma are particularly hard hit.

The fear, of course, and a perfectly valid and natural one at that, is that the terms terrorist and terrorism have become ethnically defined, reserved largely for and casually applied to Arabs and Muslims, and only rarely applied to others, especially Christian, European Americans. Certainly in Israel, whose opinion makers, including the current prime minister, have had a huge impact on the way American society views the question of terrorism, this transformation of the terms terrorist and terrorism into simple ethnic pejoratives is well-established. Virtually any Palestinian who commits an act of violence against a Jewish Israeli, under almost any circumstances, is automatically labeled a “terrorist” by most of Israeli society, whereas the application of this term to Jews is generally reserved for only the most extreme and unavoidable cases, such as Baruch Goldstein who murdered 29 Palestinian worshipers at a mosque in Hebron in 1994. The disparity is striking and indefensible. It reflects a simplistic ethnic bias and eliminates any real hope for moral or political clarity. It is extremely troubling that the process by which terrorist and terrorism are virtually synonymous with Arab and Muslim, and only rarely and in extreme cases applied to others, is increasingly reflected in American discourse.

The generalized response of Arab and Muslim American organizations and commentators that have expressed an opinion in this instance has been to insist that Mr. Stack was indeed a terrorist, and that any reticence to label him as such is a reflection of double standards and ethnic bias. Fair enough. The very legitimate question is posed: if his name were Abdullah instead of Stack, would there be any doubt how his action would be perceived by both the society at large and the government? This is an important and reasonable question, but I’m not sure the answer is absolutely as obvious as people tend to think. In the case of the Fort Hood murderer, Maj. Hasan, there was in fact some reticence on the part of the government and some of the media to apply this label to him at first. In fact, there was a similar, although much less developed, conversation to the one we are having now about Stack about whether Hasan should be viewed primarily as a lone psycho or as a representative of a political movement. Of course there was a far greater ease and frequency with which the word terrorist was applied to Hasan and a striking reticence among many political and media figures to identify Stack in this manner. Therefore, the knee-jerk response has been to insist that Stack was as much a terrorist as Hasan, and that both should be considered and publicly labeled as such.

I’m not sure this is the wisest course of action. For purposes of combating discrimination and ensuring equity, two scenarios would serve the Arab and Muslim American objective: either all politically or socially (even in part) motivated acts of violence are to be considered “terrorism,” as in the FBI’s rather elastic definition, or we are going to reserve the term for the actions of organized conspiracies reflecting both political and operational leadership and individuals assigned to carry out the crime. But that doesn’t mean both are equally desirable objectives or that it is irrelevant which corrective to ethnic bias is accomplished.

Both Stack and Hasan seem to have been individuals with considerable emotional difficulties inflected through paranoid and extremist worldviews. Hassan was plainly influenced by “salafist-jihadist” rhetoric of the Al Qaeda variety, although he apparently had no connections to any extremist organization. That he was also mentally and emotionally unbalanced has also become very clear. In the case of Stack, his death-manifesto reflects the wave of popular outrage against the government, especially the IRS, and Wall Street, in this case mixed with strong denunciations of the Catholic Church. He was reportedly a member of the Austin “tea party” movement, although his statement incorporates both familiar tea bagger rhetoric and ultra-left sentiments. There is every indication that he too was mentally and emotionally unbalanced. Both men, then, allowed their mental and emotional difficulties to be refracted through extreme political sentiments resulting in violent actions reflecting both. It’s impossible to decide which element was determinative, and, in fact, I think impossible to really tease the two apart either, although most people with extreme sentiments don’t engage in spontaneous violence. This is the familiar pattern of the outraged lone wolf killer with social or political grievances, the psychological dynamic behind the old expression “going postal,” or that immortal euphemism, “disgruntled former employee.”

Does it make sense, however, to lump these kinds of actions into the same category as carefully planned, ideologically-motivated conspiracies by organizations, no matter how small, to carry out acts of violence and sabotage in order to pursue a broader strategy, no matter how implausible? I doubt it. It seems to me that in order to deal with both problems effectively, distinguishing between the two is essential, since while they appear to share similar characteristics because the nature of the acts seems identical and the rhetoric similarly coincidental, in fact they are produced by very different dynamics and processes. What I’m arguing is that when two different equations produce similar results it does not make sense to deal with them as if they were reflective of the same essential problem. Of course fundamental security measures that would deter or prevent any act of violence, no matter the source or motivation, are essential in combating both of these phenomena and violence by organized criminals, gangs and others. But if we are serious about dealing with the problem of political terrorism it strongly behooves us not to confuse strategic actions by ideologically motivated organizations with the intersection of emotional crisis and political extremism that seems to produce these lone wolf atrocities.

What I’m suggesting is that a case like the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was trained and equipped by organized Al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen, reflects a fundamentally different problem than the cases of Stack or Hasan. And I’m further arguing that our society has been prone to making the mistake, especially in the cases of Arabs and Muslims, of conflating lone wolf murders with operatives of terrorist political organizations. And finally, I’m arguing that Arab and Muslim Americans should think very carefully before, in their essential and urgent quest for fairness and clarity, seeking to expand the application of this term as in the FBI’s working definition to include almost any act of violence with any political or social context whatsoever, rather than to restrict the use of the term to reflect the actions of organized conspiracies with clear political motivations and strategic aims.

It wasn’t helpful when many voices and forces in our society rushed to apply the term terrorist to Maj. Hasan after the Fort Hood massacre as it mystified the complex witches’ brew of stresses and influences in his life that drove him to this monstrous deed. It’s an oversimplification and a reductive dodge that serves a number of obvious ideological purposes, including the promotion of generalized fear and hatred of Arabs and Muslims, and is a grave detriment to clear thinking and policies. And, similarly, I don’t think it’s helpful now to try to see Mr. Stack in the same light. It’s true that Hasan was influenced by Al Qaeda’s rhetoric, and Stack seems to have been influenced by tea party and other anti-establishment sentiments as well — his gesture of flying that plane into a federal building had much more of the Turner Diaries about it than any 9/11 redux. But I don’t think it’s reasonable or helpful to see them as expressions or logical conclusions of generalized sentiments shared by large numbers of people, and both of them were obviously not acting on behalf of any larger organization or conspiracy.

The words “terrorism” and “terrorist” are highly charged, overdetermined and politically explosive. Responsible forces in our society should be working towards building a consensus that make senses about what does and does not constitute terrorism. For their own clear and perfectly reasonable reasons the FBI, much of the political right, and now Arab and Muslim American organizations are all pulling for the broadest possible definition, but I don’t think this serves our discourse, security policy or national interests very well. We would be better served by a more precise definition that distinguishes between politically-motivated acts conducted by organizations or broader conspiracies, no matter how small, on the one hand, as opposed to violent outbursts by mentally unbalanced individuals acting spontaneously and solely on their own behalf on the other. As a friend of mine put it, this is the distinction between terrorism by design and terrorism by default.

Of course it’s true that Abdulmutallab and other operatives of broader conspiracies and organizations are frequently in the grip of emotional or mental instability. It’s one of the things that makes them easy to recruit and manipulate. But the fact that they’re acting in behalf of other people who are probably not subject to abnormal emotional or mental instability, but rather are unscrupulous fanatics is, I think, a decisive distinction. A more complicated case would be Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who was acting on his own but I think could still be considered a terrorist in this context because of the sustained nature of his actions. In other words, Kaczynski reflected a conspiracy of one because of the carefully calculated and ongoing nature of his neo-Luddite bombing spree. I would argue that the most useful way of thinking about terrorism is that it reflects some kind of essentially ideological rather than emotional motivation which can be detected from elements such as its origin in larger organizations or conspiracies, or its sustained, non-spontaneous nature. That is one kind of threat facing society. Violent outbursts by mentally and emotionally unstable individuals such as Stack or Hasan seems to me, quite clearly, to be essentially another kind of threat. Conflating them confuses an issue that demands the maximum achievable clarity, and its doesn’t serve Arab or Muslim Americans any better than our fellow citizens or our society as a whole.

I’ve given a lot of talks at universities and attended plenty of academic conferences over the years, and very few of them have had the emotional and political impact on me that the conference last weekend at Rutgers University, organized by Prof. Golbarg Bashi and her able students, on Iran and the Arab World: New Horizons seems to have caused. Normally I wouldn’t think twice about these things: just go in, give your talk, be nice and leave. All in a day’s work, and no big deal. Yet I find myself, days later, haunted by this experience in a most unusual way. I think I know why, and it’s worth discussing.

The quality of many of the presentations and the general level of sophistication in the audience were exceptionally impressive. I was blown away by the virtuosity of Said Amir Arjomand’s account of the social forces and cultural trends at work in the development of Iranian politics since the revolution. Both the clips from Shirin Neshat’s visually stunning new film, “Women without Men,” and Hamid Dabashi’s brilliant contextualization and preliminary reading of this mesmerizing piece of cinema art were also extraordinary. Negar Mottahedeh’s multimedia presentation on the role of social media in the green movement and information flow about it is the first thing, ever, to actually get me excited about Facebook and Twitter, which I have heretofore used without any enthusiasm. I was also impressed with Roozbeh Shirazi’s insightful research, and many other useful presentations. There were only a couple of things that struck me as discordant notes, and they were drowned in a sea of excellence.

But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all. The information, analysis and scholarship on offer was first rate, but it wasn’t anything I’d never experienced before; impressive, but not by any means unheard of. Upon reflection, I think what struck me deeply and what’s worth reflecting on was simply the spirit in the room, the ethos and attitude at work. The atmosphere was warm, welcoming, open, tolerant, curious and serious. There was room for the most rigorous scholarship and the most committed activism. People were not judging each other, and I detected few if any litmus tests. In spite of the outrage at the brutality of the Iranian government, behind it was not anger but hope. There was also a real effort to contextualize Iran in its Middle Eastern geopolitical position, and to link the green movement civil liberties campaign with the movement for Palestinian liberation, human and women’s rights movements in the Arab world, and efforts for the Iraqi and Afghan peoples to craft a better future for themselves beyond civil conflict and occupation.

The entire event was forward-looking, positive, bright and purposeful. It did not wallow in how bad things are, it looked forward, seriously, to how they are going to get better. And, in spite of the enthusiasm for the green movement, this hopefulness was not based on fantastical ideas to reshape the geo-political map, or even necessarily eliminate the Islamic Republic, but rather a serious and entirely plausible campaign to restore the civil rights and liberties of the Iranian people and lay the basis for the peaceful development over time of an open, democratic society in Iran. Another of the most striking qualities of the event and most of its participants was the deep commitment to nonviolence, and pride in the resolute refusal of the green movement in Iran to resort to any acts of violence, in contrast to the regime’s use of brutality, beatings, killings, torture and enforced show trial confessions. The moral compass of this conference was in good order, and pointing to true north.

But why should any of that have surprised me? This was, after all, in effect essentially a conference bringing together elements of the Iranian academic left in the United States and some of their allies. Aren’t all of these qualities one would expect from a healthy left-of-center orientation? The answer, of course is the key to my symptomatic surprise: I can’t imagine a similar experience, a similar ethos, a similar attitude coming out of a major meeting of the Arab academic left in the United States. I should know: this is been my natural habitat for the past couple of decades. It was precisely this contrast that was so striking to me. I was suddenly in the presence of American left academics of Middle Eastern origin who were more hopeful than angry, more purposeful than brooding, more forward-looking than backward-looking, more generous than judgmental, more serious than self-indulgent, sincerely committed to nonviolence, and interested in a political agenda tied directly to existing movements on the ground with realistic goals and attainable, limited ambitions along with a healthy appreciation of the pitfalls that may lie ahead.

This was new to me, or if it wasn’t new, it’s certainly been an extraordinarily long time, before the second intifada at least, since I had an experience even remotely similar in an Arab-American academic or activist environment. I’m not talking about Washington events hosted by organizations that perforce have to be, in a way, both more serious and more frivolous than academic or activist conferences. I’m talking about that intersection between scholars, students and grassroots activists in which I have spent so much of my time over the past two decades. I’m sure many of my readers are currently reacting with indignation to these words, feeling that I am giving well-meaning Arab events, activists and academics short shrift, being unfair, or that I simply wasn’t at thus and such uplifting, inspiring event or something like that. But it’s really not possible to argue that I don’t know what I’m talking about, given the degree of my immersion into precisely this world for so many years. Anyone who wasn’t at Rutgers is simply going to have to take my word for it, and I suppose it’s possible for people to have different experiences of the same event, but for me the contrast was not only striking, it’s proven haunting and extremely instructive.

One might say, “Oh, that’s all very well, but look at what these Iranian intellectuals and activists have to work with: the inspiring green movement. What do we have? Hamas versus Fatah, March 8 versus March 14, Qatar versus Saudi Arabia, Iraqi Shiite Islamists versus Iraqi Sunni Islamists, Mubarak versus the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.! Cut us some slack here. If we are angry, brooding and judgmental, we came by it honestly. You’re being too harsh.”

Obviously I don’t think this is a ridiculous response, or it wouldn’t have occurred to me in so much detail without a prompter. There is plainly some truth in it. But even before this event I’ve written many times in the past that I think too much of the Arab and Arab American left has lost its way both in terms of core left values (except nationalism, anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism, which can all be as much or more tribal than principled) and also in terms of the weird and unhealthy appetite to label any disagreement as treason and casually hurl terms like collaborator, neocon and Arab Zionist at all kinds of people who have proven their dedication to numerous Arab causes over many years and at a considerable cost. There seems to be an insatiable appetite to judge and divide rather than to search for common ground and agree to disagree where necessary. If someone wanted to accuse me of being part of that problem, I wouldn’t claim complete innocence, but I’m certainly happy to agree to disagree with lots of people, and to speak and work with almost anybody where we do agree on an important goal.

To me, the contrast is extremely striking insofar as these Iranian left academics and activists were precisely trying to link the green movement to other progressive and liberatory causes in the Middle East, especially in the Arab world, partly in response to the bewildering and dismaying tendency of big chunks of the Arab and Arab American left to side with the Iranian regime against the protesters. The logic no doubt is driven by what I described above, an Arab left attitude that boils down solely to nationalism, anti-Zionism and anti-imperialism, and the mistaken belief that the Iranian regime is an important force in confronting Israel and the United States on behalf of those causes. This is not only a grave error and completely incorrect, it’s a betrayal of core principles that must define any left position worth holding onto.

The contrast in attitudes is illustrated, for example, with regard to the question of Palestine. It would be entirely possible for Iranians, both in Iran and in the United States, opposed to the regime to look at its deep entanglement with the Palestinian question and therefore turn away from the Palestinian cause. At this conference, it was clear the very opposite was at work: they wanted to take the Palestinian cause back from the regime because it does not belong to them and they are only exploiting it for narrow domestic and international political purposes. By contrast, that part of the Arab left sympathetic to the Iranian regime is so in part because it buys into the idea that the regime is useful on the Palestinian issue and places that against and above the civil rights and liberties of the Iranian people. This is, essentially, the distinction between a generosity of spirit and a certain poverty of it, between a principled position and what is essentially and narrowly a selfish one.

Both before and, amazingly, in these mere few days after the conference, one keeps encountering voices from the Arab left publicly dismissive of the green movement and, in the most recent instance, dismissive of concerns raised yesterday by Sec. Clinton that Iran is becoming a military dictatorship in the hands of the Revolutionary Guards and the basij volunteer thugs. Yet the same idea, this fear and belief, is precisely what is animating the green movement and its supporters in the United States. For example, Arjomand’s entire analysis of the present political scene in Iran is predicated on the understanding that these are the forces that dominate the Iranian government, perpetrated the election fraud (a fact denied by way too many people in the Arab left), and now constitute the epicenter of power in Iran waving aside any claims by critics of the regime internal or external to the system. It is they who rigged the election (in Arjomand’s insightful analysis, a smart move by Ahmadinejad since it was the only way for him to stay in office, but a big mistake for Khamenei who created a crisis that could have been avoided by allowing a reformist candidate into office), beat and kill protesters in the street, torture dissidents, repress free speech and assembly and stage elaborate, bizarre show trials. That this regime has all the elements of not only a military dictatorship, but a fascist one at that, seemed, at the Rutgers conference, beyond reasonable debate, and so it is. Denying or dismissing these obvious facts in vain hope that the Iranian regime is actually interested in confronting Israel or ridiculous fear that the opposition represents a ?Western conspiracy? funded by ?Saudi money? or some such tomfoolery is simply unconscionable.

Obviously, there are significant segments of the Arab left that don?t fall into this trap, and they deserve credit. But far too much does. But we not only have to stop thinking about international relations in this narrow, ungenerous, narcissistic and solipsistic way, the real corrective begins much closer to home. The Arab left, and Arabs in general for that matter, have to learn to agree to disagree, to be open to debate and conversation, not to rush to judge the motivations and characters of people saying things we don?t agree with or that we don?t understand. We have to learn the crucial difference between challenging people?s ideas, even harshly, (perfectly okay) and challenging people?s motivations or personalities (unnecessary and counterproductive). Very often we treat these two very distinct behaviors as if they were synonymous, being annoyed by the first when in fact we need much more of it, and turning a blind eye to the second although it?s doing incalculable damage to our Arab-American conversation. We have to stop shunning each other, and even more importantly launching preposterous and dangerous accusations, above all labels of traitor, collaborator, Arab Zionist, or, for that matter, terrorist. From my experience at Rutgers at the weekend, the Iranians of the green movement and their supporters in the Iranian American left have a lot to teach us and we?d better start learning fast.