JASON REED/REUTERS

George Bush greets Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the White House on November 24, 2008.

AS 2008 ended, and as the Israeli bombardment of Gaza intensified, the Libyan Ambassador to the United Nations, Giadalla Ettalhi, drafted a statement for the 22-member Arab League. The statement called for an “immediate ceasefire and for its full respect by both sides” but put the onus on Israel for its “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force”. The statement went to the U.N. Security Council. The discussion in the Council was fraught with tensions, as were the consultations in the corridors. The British asked for a more “balanced” draft, while the United States and Israel felt that the two parties should come to an agreement without pressure from the U.N.

All this frustrated Ettalhi, a geologist by training and a career bureaucrat, who is not given to inflamed rhetoric. On Israel, however, Ettalhi has been very outspoken. In early 2008, he compared the Israeli stranglehold on the 1.5 million Gazans (who live on a strip of land with a total area of 360 square kilometres) to the Nazi holocaust; and this time, he pointed out that the Israeli blockade and bombardment “in their own way represent a crime of genocide”. Evoking the U.N. failures of the 1990s, Ettalhi urged the Security Council to act “so that we do not add another Srebrenica (Bosnia) or Rwanda to the history of this Council”. In other words, to borrow from the lexicon of the post-holocaust era, Never Again.

The U.S. squelched the discussion and the statement, saying that the draft was “unbalanced” and “one-sided”. Later the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Zalmay Khalilzad, clarified that the U.S. would only agree to a ceasefire if it came with a surety that Hamas would end its rocket attacks. The Council continued to attempt a statement. France’s Ambassador to the U.N., Jean-Maurice Ripert, said that the 15 members of the Council had a “strong convergence”, but others pointed out that the U.S. refused to budge.

The U.S. Deputy Ambassador, Alejandro Wolff, told the press that the U.S. would not allow any toothless statement. “The important point to focus on here is establishing the understanding of what type of ceasefire we’re talking about and to ensure that it is lasting, and to ensure that we don’t return to a situation that led to the current situation.” Not to return to the “situation that led to the current situation” could mean any number of things. The bar is raised to such an extent that it will be impossible for the Security Council to release anything but a milquetoast statement, despite the sentiments of the other members.

On January 2, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after a meeting with President George W. Bush, told the press: “We are working toward a ceasefire that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo ante where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza. We need a ceasefire that is durable and sustainable.” She had used that phrase (“durable and sustainable” ceasefire) in the summer of 2006 as Israel pounded Lebanon. She had also said that Israel’s actions then were the “birth-pangs of a new Middle East”.

The broad analysis that motivated the 2006 policy and governs the current refusal to countenance a ceasefire is to allow Israel to break the backs of two groups that the U.S. sees as Iranian proxies, Hizbollah (2006) and Hamas (2009). The Bush regime sees the demise of these groups as a blow to Iran’s ambitions in West Asia, a position in sync with that of Israel. Tamar Cofman Wittes of the liberal Brookings Institution divides the regimes of West Asia into two camps: the status quo states (Egypt and Jordan, with their ally, the U.S.) who want to maintain the balance of forces in the region and the revisionist states (Iran in the main) who want to transform the balance. Wittes argues that the Gaza attacks are part of this long-standing tussle between these two camps, an analysis that explains the behaviour not only of the U.S. but also of Egypt and Jordan.

The U.N. fiasco reveals the role played by the U.S. in this current conflict. Since 1949, the U.S. has funnelled hundreds of billions of dollars into Israel, a considerable portion of which is in military aid. Military relations between Israel and the U.S. are close, as are diplomatic ties. Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. State Department official, called the U.S. “Israel’s attorney, catering and coordinating with the Israelis at the expense of successful peace negotiations”. When Israeli troops moved into Gaza, CNN’s Barbara Starr reported that the U.S. military brass was informed in advance about Israel’s plans for Operation Cast Lead. Vice-President Dick Cheney told CBS News (January 4) that the Israelis “didn’t seek clearance or approval from us, certainly”. This followed the revelation in the Israeli website Debkafiles that Bush had given the Israelis the green light to act and promised to veto any Security Council resolution.

When asked about the prior exchanges between Tel Aviv and Washington, Noam Chomsky pointed out: “It’s obviously a green light, but that’s almost redundant if Israel is doing it. There’s little that Israel can do without authorisation from what they call ‘the boss-man called “partner”’, particularly when they are destroying Gaza with U.S.-supplied jet bombers and helicopters.”

Naseer Aruri, head of the Trans-Arab Research Institute, concurs. “There is no doubt that Bush has given Israel the green light to launch this onslaught in order to create a new strategic landscape not only in Gaza but in all of Palestine and fulfil pending objectives.” Washington and Tel Aviv, he points out, have been trying to undo the Palestinian elections of January 2006. The blockade of Gaza, the refusal to engage Hamas diplomatically, the military assault on Hamas (including the targeted assassination of its leaders), the attempt to break all ties between Hamas and Fatah, all this, Aruri argues, demonstrates Israel’s attempt to reconsolidate its strategic dominance over the region. To use Wittes’ terms, Israel is engaged against any revision of the balance of power.

Why did Israel begin its war on December 27? Some speculate that the timing is related to the Israeli elections, slated for February. Others, such as Princeton professor Richard Falk, agree, but point out that there is another calendar. “The evidence seems overwhelming that the combination of President Bush’s waning days and the transition to [Barack] Obama was a factor in the timing,” says Falk. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, agrees with this assessment. “This attack was definitely meant to create facts on the ground before the Obama administration takes office [on January 20], to face them with a fait accompli,” he says, “and to make their stated objective of prioritising negotiations more difficult”. Condoleezza Rice’s comment about no return to the status quo ante is proof that Washington is pleased to see Israel extend its reach before Bush’s departure. Obama will have to take things as they are given to him.

DAVID SILVERMAN/AFP

Barack Obama at a police station displaying the remains of Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip. He visited the station in the southern Israeli town of Sderot in July 2008.

During his election campaign, Obama travelled to Israel. He visited Sderot, a town on the border with Gaza that has been hit by Hamas’ Qassam rockets. Obama visited a police station where the authorities have built a shrine of rockets. He met Osher, a child who lost his leg in one attack, and accepted an “I Love Sderot” T-shirt from the town’s Mayor. Then he said, “If missiles were falling where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything in order to stop that.” Obama did not travel to Gaza, or any part of Palestine, making no statement on the blockade or the condition of Palestinian children. In 2007, Obama visited the Israeli border with Lebanon and made similar gestures about Hizbollah’s rockets but said nothing about the Israeli war on Lebanon. As David Lloyd, a professor at the University of Southern California who drafted a statement for the Teachers Against Occupation, put it, Obama’s remarks on his Israel visit “are appalling in their wide-eyed naivety”.

When Israel began its war, Obama’s adviser, David Axelrod, told CBS News (December 28) that Obama sympathised with Israel’s need to “respond” to Hamas and that “this situation has become even more complicated in the last couple of days and weeks as Hamas began its shelling [and] Israel responded”. There was no mention of Israel’s attempt over the past three years to strangle Gaza or of Israeli policy over this last decade against Palestinians in general.

Ali Abunimah, of Electronic Intifada, sees Obama’s positions as “almost indistinguishable from the Bush administration’s”, a position that is taken further by Chomsky who evaluates Obama’s positions as “arguably worse than Bush’s, and his policies are likely to be a continuation of the second Bush term”.

Obama’s two main advisers on West Asia are Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer, both veterans of the Clinton years (Kurtzer was also Ambassador to Israel during the Bush administration). There is a blurry-eyed realism in the kind of statements made by Ross and Kurtzer, although both of them have a tendency to sympathise with Israel’s “needs” and to begrudge Palestine’s “wants”. In his Columbia University PhD thesis, Kurtzer blamed the Israeli armed response to terror attacks for the “radicalisation of those Palestinians to violence”. No longer, however, does this framework drive his work. Additionally, Kurtzer and Ross will work with Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli Army veteran, whose own views on Israel give no comfort to the Palestinians.

As Aruri said, “Obama’s appointments so far have exceeded the expectations of the Israel lobby.”

Others remain hopeful. Professor Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University said Obama need not accept the fait accompli and that he should make some adjustments to U.S. policy. “This would be more in sync with his campaign message of change. Pursuing a pro-Israeli stand would only mean that Obama would endorse the murder and killing of Palestinians we’re witnessing on TV screens all over the world.”

Falk agrees: “Obama may be more prepared to stress the humanitarian crisis confronting Gaza, and the Palestinians generally. Israel is losing domestic support in the U.S., and this could begin to give a popular new American President some increased political space to take a somewhat altered approach to the conflict, and the fact that his main foreign policy appointments to date are pro-Israeli could make such a subtle shift more politically feasible.” Rashid Khalidi believes that regardless of Obama’s intentions, the current Israeli offensive has reinforced any feeling in the U.S. against justice for Palestinians. This might have been one of the attack’s “ulterior motives”.

Electronic Intifada’s Abunimah does not discount the possibility of the shifts. Rather, he offers a concrete set of changes that Obama would have to enact to live up to his hopeful rhetoric. For example, Abunimah asks that the U.S. make its vast financial outlay to Israel (about $3 billion a year) “conditional on compliance with international law and signed agreements”, that Israel cease to interfere with Palestinian domestic politics, and that Israel lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip. This is a tall order, and with the Israel lobby intact in Washington, Obama might not be able to manoeuvre this far.

Tamara Wittes says that the Israeli assault on Gaza has created a public relations boon for the revisionists. The “Arab Street” has now rallied not only to the Palestinians but also to Hamas, and against its own leaderships as much as the U.S. and Israel. As Abunimah puts it, “Hamas is now more popular than ever in Palestine and across the region. U.S./Israeli allies in the region, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are more exposed than ever to their people as collaborators and will likely face for the first time in decades real threats to their regimes. Arab people are more outraged than ever at Israel and the U.S.’ support for it.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas knows this, as he is often counted as one of the status quo leaders. Coming to the U.N. on January 6, he fulminated over the “massacre of Palestinians” and asked the Council to save Palestine from “the Israeli machine of destruction”. The Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, joined the fray, complaining about the “deafening silence” from the Council, which will likely release a very timid statement.

Israeli demographer Arnon Soffer predicts that by 2010 there will be more Palestinians than Israeli Jews. The Palestinians, in other words, are not going to go anywhere. A political solution in the region is necessary, but neither Washington nor Tel Aviv seems willing to recognise this, caught up as they are in the preservation of the status quo.