Jul 20, 2013

A well-known American bureau chief in Israel of a major US newspaper always prided himself with knowing the key to getting Israel to politically move in the peace process. You must use invisible hands to hurt them, he told me shortly after the first intifada broke out. The Israelis must feel the pain without being able to clearly identify or expose the source of the pain, he said.

A look at the workings of the Obama administration in the last few weeks clearly points to the fact that they seem to have adopted this advice. Speaking during her confirmation hearing at the US Congress, the next US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, reversed a statement she had made years earlier. In 2002, Power proposed imposing a peace deal on Israelis and Palestinians militarily, even if such a policy alienated wealthy pro-Israel American Jews. Power totally recanted her statement. “I gave a long, rambling and remarkably incoherent response to a hypothetical question that I should never have answered," she said.

The reversal of the position of the nominated UN ambassador is not simply an act of self survival. It reflects clearly the tactics of the Obama-Kerry administration of trying to convince Israel without leaving any marks of pressure. This policy seems very close to one articulated two decades earlier in the lead up to the Madrid Peace talks by former US Secretary of State James Baker. In a statement regarding how the US plans to get Israel to change its policies, Baker rejected the idea of pressure. He pledged to "reason, to cajole, to plead," but not to pressure Israel into making peace with Arab nations.

Learning from earlier experiences, John Kerry has chosen to keep all talks behind a wall of secrecy. In announcing his mini-breakthrough in the Jordanian capital Amman, Kerry confirmed that the details will not be made public at present and warned that even if information is made public, he is the only party authorized by both Israelis and Palestinians to announce any particulars that have been agreed upon.

While the slight changes of policy on the Israeli side appear to have been connected to the Palestinians' agreement to not challenge Israel in various UN agencies, the real pressure on Israel came from a different source.