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With Obama Trip Looming, New Realism Limits Options

(New York Jewish Week) James D. Besser - Ahead of President Obama's first official visit to Israel, a dramatically altered Middle East climate may relieve much of the international pressure that past presidents felt to become involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. At home, the subject of U.S. involvement has become so toxic that few politicians of either party see much point in actively supporting it. Supporters of a more active U.S. role do not get much help from a Palestinian Authority with weak, vacillating leaders and no realistic plan for dealing with the split that has left Gaza in the hands of Hamas. Under the Obama administration, a new realism has crept into U.S. foreign policy that seems to eschew grand but inevitably futile and costly gestures. The Washington foreign policy establishment is weary after years of fruitless peacemaking, and is increasingly refocused on dramatic changes in other parts of the Middle East and around the world. Support for Israel remains strong across the Washington political spectrum, but interest in helping Israel reach a peace agreement with its neighbors has gone deep underground. In a dramatically changed world, "linkage" is more historical relic than current reality. Fanciful notions that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be the key to solving all the region's problems, and that Washington is the only force capable of doing it, have all but evaporated. European leaders continue to express sympathy for the Palestinians and anger about Israeli policies, and have threatened to fill with their own initiatives what they see as the vacuum caused by the U.S. retreat from active involvement. But few analysts see that as much more than posturing by leaders dealing with their own crises.
2013-02-15 00:00:00
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