Speculation has been rife for some time that President Barack Obama will use the presidential interregnum to make a legacy statement on Israel-Palestine. On the cards are a presidential speech that would lay out a suggested framework for a two-state solution, or, in what would be a diplomatic bombshell: using the UN Security Council to push a resolution that would either condemn settlements or even lay down guidelines and a timetable for a final-status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Over the past year, the Obama administration has ratcheted up the pressure with increasingly harsh criticism of settlement construction and comments questioning the future of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state.
Things came to a head in early October with a series of stinging statements following the approval of 98 new homes in the West Bank settlement of Shiloh. The construction was announced a month after Obama signed off on a ten-year $38 billion military aid package, two weeks after Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York and just days after the American president had made a lightning trip to Israel for the funeral of Shimon Peres.
“It is deeply troubling, in the wake of Israel and the US concluding an unprecedented agreement on military assistance designed to further strengthen Israel’s security, that Israel would take a decision so contrary to its long-term security interest in a peaceful resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner.
“Furthermore, it is disheartening that while Israel and the world mourned the passing of President Shimon Peres, and leaders from the US and other nations prepared to honor one of the great champions of peace, plans were advanced that would seriously undermine the prospects for a two-state solution that he so passionately supported.”
The White House too issued a notably caustic response. “We did receive public assurances from the Israeli government that contradict this announcement,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnst. “I guess when we’re talking about how good friends treat one another, that’s a source of serious concern.”
Martin Indyk, Obama’s former special envoy to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians told The New York Times in the wake of those statements that the administration has been escalating its rhetoric in opposition to West Bank settlement activity for more than a year, but Israel isn’t listening.
“At a certain point,” he said, “the administration may well decide that there need to be consequences for what it now sees as an effort to close off the two-state solution.”
A clue as to what those consequences may look like came in an October 6 editorial in The Times titled ‘At the Boiling Point with Israel.’ “The best idea under discussion now would be to have the United Nations Security Council, in an official resolution, lay down guidelines for a peace agreement covering such issues as Israel’s security, the future of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and borders for both states,” the editorial stated, adding that “another, though weaker, option is for Mr. Obama to act unilaterally and articulate this framework for the two parties.”