Obama acolytes Gordon and Malley, Middle East plans and fantasies - by Jerold S. Auerbach

Coexistence with Israel under any circumstances, even including assurance of massive American economic investment, would not be worth relinquishing the decades of hostility that are embedded in Palestinian identity. Their rigid reluctance to engage in negotiations with Israel long ago doomed any peace prospects.

Jerold S Auerbach..
JNS.org..
11 May '20..

In a New York Post article to May 4, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman challenged the assumptions and conclusions of President Barack Obama’s acolytes Philip Gordon and Robert Malley that recently appeared in Foreign Policy. Gordon served as Obama’s White House coordinator for the Middle East, and Malley was Obama’s special assistant for the Middle East.

Gordon and Malley, worried lest the new Israeli coalition government (with its huge Knesset majority led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) will soon annex major portions of Judea and Samaria, the biblical homeland of the Jewish people, where 400,000 Jews already live, urged former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to speak out in opposition to the plan. They shuddered over the pronouncement by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that it is “Israel’s decision to make.”

Gordon and Malley cited multiple reasons for rejecting the annexation plan. It “would jeopardize Israel’s future as a democratic, Jewish state”; “damage Israel’s relations with Jordan”; “violate international law”; ignore “the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people”; and “could be a harbinger of greater regional instability and possibly violence.” It might even lead to demands “in the United States and elsewhere” for a “single state solution” with Palestinians granted “equal civil and political rights.”

It is hardly surprising that Gordon and Malley staunchly oppose the Israeli annexation plan. Obama, whom they loyally served, was arguably Israel’s least friendly president since its Proclamation of Independence in 1948. Nearing the end of his term in the White House, having already opposed Israeli action against Iran’s nuclear-weapon development, Obama had refused to veto U.N. resolution 2334 that supported boycotts and sanctions against Israel, and declared settlements to be violations of international law. There is no evidence that Biden objected. With “friends” like Obama, Israel hardly needs his loyal acolyte Joe Biden in the White House.

Friedman’s response to the Gordon-Malley article was appropriately lacerating. Labeling the Obama administration’s response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as “often wrong, never in doubt,”...

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Jerold S. Auerbach is the author of Fit to Print: The New York Times, Zionism and Israel, 1896-2016, chosen by Ruth Wisse and Martin Kramer for Mosaic as a Best Book for 2019.