Why Obama Hit Pause

by Joe Klein,

An Iran deal may be possible. Getting Israelis and Palestinians to make peace may not be.

We know what a reasonable middle East peace would look like. In December 2000, Bill Clinton laid out the formula. There would be a return to the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed-upon land swaps so that the bulk–perhaps 80%–of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands could become part of Israel. Jerusalem would be the capital of both countries. An international commission would control the religious sites in Jerusalem’s Old City. Palestinian refugees would have the right to return to Palestine but not to Israel. Israel’s sovereignty and security as a Jewish state would be accepted by the Arabs.
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There have been other iterations of a framework agreement in the past 14 years, but they’re all based on Clinton’s plan, as Clinton’s was on previous plans. For those who actually want to see a Middle East peace negotiated, this is the consensus solution. In principle, it is favored by a majority of the Israeli and Palestinian publics and by the Saudis and the Arab League. In practice, who knows? The Israelis are always litigious about the details; the Palestinians always walk away at the last minute. But leading American strategists like Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski have said the way to negotiate the impasse is for the U.S. to present an updated version of the framework and allow international pressure to push the Israelis and the Palestinians toward peace.

John Kerry seemed intent on doing that too. But his version of the framework has never been announced.

Why hasn’t Kerry published a framework for the talks as promised? In my interviews with current and former diplomats, a prevailing theme emerged: a reiteration of the Clinton framework would activate the Sheldon Adelson neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, plus many Christian evangelicals who see the annexation of the West Bank territories as biblical prophesy, and this is a fight that Obama doesn’t particularly want at this point. Why not? The President may want to keep his powder dry, in part to keep Jewish voters on the reservation in the 2014 midterms but also because another, more promising fight is looming with the neoconservatives–over the Iran nuclear talks.

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