While all the world’s eyes were on Iran, I spent the last week or so with Brian Katulis (of the Center for American Progress) in Jersualem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Tel Aviv. We met with more than three dozen people, including Palestinian, Israeli, American, British and UN officials and ex-officials, civil society activists, journalists, and politicos. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it down to Gaza on this trip, but we did talk to key people coordinating and struggling to implement the humanitarian response for the US, the UK, and the UN. As per my usual approach to such trips, I didn't blog about it while I was there, partly because there wasn't a lot of free time and partly because I wanted to digest everything first. (And, in this case, partly so that the always-delightful "special" attention at Ben Gurion airport wouldn't have to be any more "special.")
We will soon be producing a more formal set of observations and recommendations, and I will also be blogging over the next few days about some key parts of the trip. We'll have a lot to say about the status of Palestinian institutional capacity, the security sector, the overarching context of the occupation, Gaza, and more. And it's going to take a few days to get back up to speed on the thousands upon thousands of emails, blog posts on my RSS feed, and backlogged work from the trip. But for now I just wanted to react to the Netanyahu government's decision to brazenly challenge Obama by authorizing new settlement construction north of Ramallah. The bottom line is that Obama needs to stand tough in the face of this first real challenge, or his strategy will likely fail comprehensively.
Rightly or wrongly, Obama has made the settlement issue a test of his credibility, and if he backs down then all the progress he has made will wash away instantly. That makes this a pivotal moment, whether or not an Obama administration focused on Iran wants it to be one. Most Palestinians, with their well-earned skepticism of American policy, expect Obama to back down. Most Israelis probably do as well. And that would be tragic, because without much publicity Obama's pressure has already started generating some important results on the ground -- not just Netanyahu's carefully hedged uttering of an emasculated two state formula, but the significant easing of checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank, the lifting of some of the more ludicrous parts of the blockade of Gaza, the release of Hamas prisoners (including its Parliamentarians) by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and reports that the Egyptians are planning an unveiling of a Hamas-Fatah unity government agreement on July 7.
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