How Obama Became Netanyahu by Peter Beinart

[Douglas Carpenter]

Obama is essentially telling Palestinians to keep their heads down until an Israeli leader comes along who wants to create a viable Palestinian state. Or until ordinary Israelis stop worrying about the ultra-Orthodox and the price of cottage cheese and create another peace movement. Or until politics change in Washington. He’s telling Palestinians to relinquish every form of counterpressure they have and put themselves at Israel’s and America’s mercy, even though this trip itself is evidence that without Palestinian counterpressure, America and Israel will do little else except entrench the status quo.

By refusing to challenge Netanyahu’s approach to the Palestinians, Obama has made it his own. Like Netanyahu, he’s betting that he can take the Palestinians for granted while tending to his own domestic needs, and that they won’t be able to do anything about it but whine.

But that’s not right. The Palestinians can do something. They can throw Israel, and Barack Obama’s foreign policy, into chaos. For several years now, Israel has benefited enormously from the Palestinian Authority’s security cooperation. Today, instead of making its own 19-year-olds patrol Palestinian neighborhoods and towns, Israel largely leaves that to the Palestinian Authority. When Israeli security officials fear Hamas or Islamic Jihad is hatching a terrorist plot, they don’t always have to send soldiers to foil it themselves. They can just get on the phone to Abbas’s men.

Take the Palestinians for granted, however, and this relative quiet will eventually give way to something far more frightening. In the words of former Palestinian Authority adviser Ghaith al-Omari, Palestinian security cooperation “was predicated on a path leading to liberation and a new state. Soon, very soon, if it is clear that is not happening, they will feel like suckers enforcing the occupation, and this security regime—like the Palestinian Authority itself—could dissolve.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/20/how-obama-became-netanyahu0.html