"The problem with the idea of a freeze is that nobody can take it seriously. PA leaders (involved in Geneva), for example, have already acknowledged that Gush Etzion will be a part of Israel: it will continue to build no matter what. Do we really want to distract ourselves over whether it should be allowed to?"

The point I was trying to raise is not that I agree with everything in the Washington Post editorial, but rather that Obama's demand for an absolute freeze has, at least at this point, not brought the expected benefits from either side. In particular, he has allowed Netanyahu to rally the majority of Israelis - even those who oppose the settlements instead of isolating the truly radical religious nationalists most Israelis oppose. For such a gifted communicator, Obama has thus far seemed somewhat tone deaf when it comes to Israel.

But the issue raised in the WaPo editorial seems to me less about the goal of rolling back the settlements than about the wisdom and execution of Obama's insistence on an absolute freeze and public confrontation with Netanyahu on that issue. The Post is not alone in this respect. Indeed, several left-wing commentators including (as TPC notes above) Bernard Avishai here at TPM, Aluf Benn, Bradley Burson and others, have made similar points.

By failing to engage the Israeli public, by treating all settlement construction as the same in contravention of what at least most Israelis believed were previous understandings on the limits of construction, by denying the existence of those understanding outright rather than explaining why they were ineffective or outmoded, by singling out Israel on this issue as the primary obstacle to peace without any reciprocal demands of the Arabs, allowing Abu Mazen to insist on this as a precondition to talks, Obama has failed to generate support among the vast majority in Israel, even those on the Israeli left who detest the settlements. Instead of isolating Netanyahu as I believe he expected, Obama has allowed the Israeli leader to cast himself as the defender not of the rabid nationalists setting up outposts in the West Bank, but of families seeking to build kindergartens in settlements that everyone agrees would become part of Israel in a final agreement.

Because I agree with his goals, I'm willing to cut Obama a lot of slack on this, but I can't imagine this is what he foresaw. It seems cooler heads may just prevail as Israeli news is now reporting that Netanyahu agreed to freeze construction of 900 units in E. Jerusalem and the parties appear close to an agreement on a "freeze."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1104040.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1103690.html

But one also has to view this in the context of how best to bring the parties closer to an agreement. For the reasons explained above, I don't think Obama's insistence on a total freeze as the focal point has worked out as planned. Instead of isolating the more fanatical settlers, as Bernard points out, and bringing the Israeli left and center-left along to his side, Obama's policy has had the reverse effect, strenthening Netanyahu's hand. Meanwhile, the Palestinians and Arab countries are waiting on the sideline. There's plenty of time to see how this plays out, but at the end of the day this could prove to be a huge distraction that delays progress still further.

It seems pretty clear to me that Obama's call for a total settlement freeze was intended to "reset" the situation and regain some credibility for the US as an honest broker after the debacle of the Bush years. On the political side, the call for a freeze would benefit the PA and Abbas whose legitimacy was severely undermined by continuing negotiations while settlements continue - fostering his image (deserved?) as an ineffectual leader. Perhaps the Obama team also believed it was placing the Netanyahu government in a lose-lose scenario. Either agree to the freeze, in which case his coalition falls apart, or reject the freeze, in which case the Israeli center-left turns against him, also potentially bringing down his government.

While I see the merit in Obama's approach and in fact support his call for a total freeze (recognizing that Avishai's eminently sensible solution is beyond the capabilities of the parties at this point), his policy has not, at least at this point, gone according to plan. To the contrary, Netanyahu has cannily turned the situation to his advantage, casting himself as the defender, not of the far flung outposts in the West Bank, but of the families living in the "mainstream" settlements that Israel would keep in a final agreement. Abbas has, under US cover, refused to negotiate, and the Arab world has remained silent.

As Michael Doran explains:

Obama is now on the horns of a dilemma. If he backs down on natural growth, he lays himself open to Arab claims that he is a hypocrite. On the other hand, if he sticks to his guns, he will become Israel’s senior city planner, rejecting building permits for a school one day, and a new home addition the next. The president can certainly win the fight over building permits, but he must already be asking himself whether it is really worth the prize. Victory will eat up at least a year of precious time, and it will not have a strategic impact.

If Obama found Netanyahu difficult to coerce, he failed to charm the Israeli Left. Israeli pundits have noted the conspicuous absence of a pro-Obama coalition on the Israeli political scene—this, despite the fact that the Israeli Left detests the settlements as much as or more than Obama himself. Many Israelis simply do not understand how the country’s security dilemmas fit into Obama’s larger scheme. With respect to the issue of gravest concern, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Obama’s strategy remains worryingly opaque. And with respect to the Palestinian question, many Israelis are skeptical about the power of any American president to overcome the Hamas-Fatah split, and to create conditions on the Palestinian side that will achieve a two-state solution capable of guaranteeing Israeli security. In a context fraught with uncertainty, Obama is inviting the Israeli Left to join with him in a fight against Netanyahu in order to achieve… well, what precisely?

In addition to the vagueness of his goals, Obama’s body language has dealt the Israeli Left a weak hand. The Cairo speech cast Israel as a bit player in a U.S.-Muslim drama. The President, stressing his Muslim ancestry, did not take the time to fly to Jerusalem, where he might have reasoned with the Israeli public about the value to it of abandoning the Bush-Sharon agreement. Instead, his advisers denied flatly (and falsely) that such an agreement had ever existed. As a consequence of this disingenuousness, many Israelis fear that the administration aims to buy goodwill from the Muslim world by distancing itself from Israel, and they wonder whether settlements are not simply the first of many concessions that will be demanded. With such doubts swirling in the air, it is difficult for the Israeli Left to trumpet the Obama agenda.

****

The President’s advisers promised him that taking a principled stand on settlements would generate goodwill in the Arab world. There is no doubt that the Cairo speech struck a chord with many Arabs. But goodwill of that sort is not a strategic commodity. Even a popular honest broker cannot reshape the iron interests of the parties on the ground, none of whom see much benefit in taking risks to achieve a goal that they do not really believe in. Many Western diplomats tell themselves that peace is nearly at hand, but the parties on the ground—Arab and Jewish alike—are highly skeptical. And for good reason. The power of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syria, supported by Iran, looms in the background. It is highly unlikely that, in the next four years, a major breakthrough will take place. In order to maintain good relations with Washington, the leaders in the region will certainly play along with the Obama administration. But the name of their game is not “Peacemaking” but, rather, “Shift the Blame.” Its object is to take positions that paint one’s rivals as the real obstructionists in the eyes of Washington.

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2009/07/obamas-opening-gambit/

Actually, I didn't think he was talking about me specifically, but looking back, he probably was since the "A" in armchair is capitalized. Given MJ's scattershot approach to dissing, however, one can never be too sure.

Funny thing is, my politics on this issue are around the same place as MJ professes to be - or at least the same place as the organization that employs him. Where I frequently take offense is what I consider the reflexive and constant casting of blame on Israel that, IMHO, is intended to show that Israel is, for lack of a better word, a bad place, and that often reflect an agenda that is not simply critical of Israeli policies, but aimed at delegitimizing its very existence.

Just wanted to say that I've enjoyed your website very much.

You seem to be confirming what Brad has said, except your version applies its own racial typecasting. You justify the unique focus on Israeli human rights violations (setting aside the fact that Israel, alone among the nations of the region, at least seems to care about human rights) on the ground that the Arab states are "undemocratic with a totally different culture based on the East." Of course! Why should we care about their human rights records? It's just not in their culture!?! Silly me. I thought those principles were universal?

I believe GDR's comment does explain part of the story. But I can't help but believe that anti-semitism (there, I've used the term twice in the last two days after avoiding it all these years - GDR seems to bring it out in me) accounts for some. Paul Berman explains it well in this interview (http://www.z-word.com/z-word-essays/gaza-and-after%253A-an-interview-with-paul-berman.html):

From the standpoint of the venerable idea, Israel's problems with its borders and its neighbors do not resemble the difficulties that other states have with their own borders and neighbors. There is no point in making statistical comparisons - the comparisons that might show how many people have been killed in Israel's wars, or how many people have been displaced from their homes by Israel, compared to the number of people killed and displaced by other wars and other states around the world. The statistics, if you looked at them, would reflect the fact that Israel is a small place, and its borders none too large, and its wars and disasters are not among the hugest that have taken place in the last sixty years, or even the last six years.

But the statistics, as I say, are irrelevant, given the peculiar philosophical light that people shine on Israel. Israel's struggle puts it at odds with the entire principle of universal justice and happiness, as people imagine it - no matter how they choose to define the principle. Other countries commit relative crimes, which can be measured and compared. But Israel commits an absolute crime. In the end, it is the grand accusation against the Jews, in ever newer versions: the Jews as cosmic enemy of the universal good.

Of course, the dire prediction that Israel's policies and actions are likely to spark another world war is of a piece with the rest.

Moreover, I am not unwilling to criticize Israel where I find reason to criticize. Indeed, I believe the settlement enterprise to be both immoral and counterproductive; I vehemently oppose Netanyahu's position on the settlements; I believed the Gaza operation, if justified at its inception, to be excessive and ultimately inhumane. Where I do take issue, however, is the type of one-sided analysis that portrays Palestinians as innocent victims of Israeli aggression, particularly where, as here, the not-so-subtle agenda of the author is to de-legitimize Israel. My view of the situation is that Palestinian intransigence, not the settlements (which I oppose, as noted) is and has been the primary obstacle to peace.

Finally, I can assure you that I am not affiliated with the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry and oppose the Likud government. I'm just a humble public defender from Brooklyn.

I find this obsession itself to be malicious. At a minimum, it reflects a profound oversimplification of a complex and painful issue in which blame can fairly be spread around. I would go further, though, in my belief that it is hateful and implicitly anti-semitic (there, I said it, let the criticisms rain down). My rejoinder was to snarkily point out other, more explicitly anti-semitic tropes in which Israel or the Jews have been unfairly blamed for catastrophic world events. GD River, in part, obliged by drawing the line at the Iraq war, which he apparently would lay at Israel's doorstep.

Does this clarify?