The end of settlements?

I intended to wait longer before responding to Marc Lynch's newest offering on settlements, in part because it wasn't bringing much to the discussion that we don't already know, and -- I have to admit -- in part because some of it annoyed me. (At the very least it's in poor taste to suggest that his writing on Israel might earn Lynch “special attention” at Ben Gurion – I know of no instances of Israeli authorities harassing journalists because of their writing, and unless Lynch can point to a case it's an irresponsible assertion.)

At the very least, however, Lynch was right to interpret the Netanyahu government's announcement of additional settlements as a challenge to President Obama's stated desires for the region, though in my opinion it falls well short of “brazen.” (I struggle even to imagine how the government could have more timidly challenged the issue than its chosen path of a low-key bureaucratic notice of continued construction. Anything less would fail to constitute a challenge at all.)

But then this came up, and now the story has transformed from mundane accusations and theories into something real. We should hesitate to declare settlement expansion over in any permanent sense. But this is the kind of leak – immediately prior to a high-level meeting between Defense Minister Barak and Envoy Mitchell – that generally heralds a real change in attitude. I have spent all morning wondering what, precisely, was said to Netanyahu by the Obama administration behind closed doors. I honestly have no idea; but I suppose it must have been persuasive.

In Israel, Netanyahu is famous for his (forgive the phrase) “flip-flopping,” and I imagine that, had Bush not ended his term as one of the most hated presidents in US history, last winter's candidates in Israel's election might have employed the same Rove-speak in their campaigns against the current Prime Minister. (Israeli politicians, like those in much of the rest of the world, tend to take their cues from American campaigns; Netanyahu himself built a campaign website that was nearly identical to Obama's.)

This newest development represents a characteristic Netanyahu flip-flop: he begins by taking a hard line in a situation in which many observers think it untenable; and at the first sign of real pressure, he folds, often sloppily. He has and has always had a genius for pleasing no one, even beyond his cohorts in the rudderless Israeli political scene, and today will count as no exception. I say this in part as a way of explaining my lack of alarm at Netanyahu's “major address” a few weeks ago, during which he rejected a settlement freeze – provided that Obama was serious, it was only a matter of time before he came around.

Now we have arrived at the threshold, what supporters of Israel can only hope is the beginning of the end of the settlement project. Good riddance to it; and should it bring down the Netanyahu coalition in the process, good riddance to that, as well, and to the man himself. I can take a bitter sort of pleasure in the repudiation of those who blindly support what has certainly been the costliest, deadliest, and most dangerous boondoggle in Israeli history.

If I'm not yet excited, it's because I see coming around the corner a rude awakening for analysts like Mr. Lynch, who have built up elaborate fantasies in which Israeli settlements are somehow the lynchpin of the entire peace process. What will these writers say when, as the settlements are coming down, Palestinians still cannot reach a unity government? What new single issue will suddenly ,become the totality of the conflict when Israelis and Gazans continue to trade fire?

It is no contradiction to recognize the tremendous moral and logistical problems of the settlement project while simultaneously acknowledging that it is far from the biggest obstacle in the peace process. Yet Lynch, for all his experience in the Middle East, falls into exactly such false distinctions: only in an imaginary world can Obama see “his administration's credibility on Israeli-Palestinian issues shattered forever” simply out of failure to act on the settlements. What of developing a functioning Palestinian political process? Or coordinating an effective regional response to Iran and its terrorist proxies? In short: how is it possible that a region fraught with such tremendous problems can see its defining moment come in the form of Israeli settlements?

Lynch and I both want to see the same thing happen, so perhaps this is just splitting hairs. But now that we may be on the way to seeing the real end of settlements, it seems that everyone could do with a healthy dose of skepticism, if only to keep us focused on the tremendous number of problems that lie ahead.

Update: Lynch's fellow traveler Brian Katulis brings a refreshing sense of proportion of precisely the sort I was hoping to see with a post on Salam Fayyad's role (or lack thereof) in the Palestinian negotiations.