A Road Map to Nowhere

This week, Barack Obama's Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell met in New York with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to begin discussing a potential "compromise" regarding the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. Israel's continued settlement expansion has been at the top of America's Middle East agenda since Obama's Cairo speech in June, when he declared that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

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Obama's statement has been heralded (and criticized) as a striking departure from the policy of George W. Bush. In fact, the Cairo speech squandered Obama's best opportunity to revitalize U.S. policy in the Arab-Israeli arena by describing Israeli settlement activity not merely as violating previous agreements and undermining efforts to achieve peace, but as "illegal," because the settlement of Israeli civilians in occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention.

More broadly, Obama's rhetoric in Cairo strongly suggests that his Middle East diplomacy will extend America's decades-long record of ineffectual efforts at Arab-Israeli peacemaking -- a record that has its origins in the Reagan administration's 1981 decision to abandon the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations' characterization of Israeli settlements in occupied Arab territory as "illegal." While the European Union and most of the rest of the world have consistently done so, the last four U.S. administrations have not -- a position Obama is continuing.

By shrinking from declaring Israeli settlement activity illegal, Obama has guaranteed that, in substance, his Middle East policy cannot depart significantly from that of George W. Bush. Obama's insipidly favorable response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conditional "acceptance" of the two-state formula underscores an unfortunate continuity in America's Middle East policy. In the end, Obama's Middle East policy is rooted in his predecessor's profoundly flawed 2003 road map for a two-state solution and the feckless process that Bush's secretary of state, Condoleeza Rice launched at Annapolis in 2007. Worse, in contrast to other policy mistakes made early in his presidential tenure, Obama will be hard put to reverse the damage done by his lack of clarity and courage on the settlements issue by coming back at a later date and arguing that Israeli settlements in occupied territory are, in fact, illegal.

To appreciate the full significance of Obama's obfuscation of the legal status of Israeli settlements, it is necessary to understand the road map's fundamental weaknesses. Among its many deficiencies are two especially damaging flaws.

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