The relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, and the U.S. role in it, is unfinished business for the Obama administration.
The relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, and the U.S. role in it, is unfinished business for the Obama administration.
Obama’s team basically abandoned pursuit of peace between them, based on a rational division of land into two states, in the face of the unwillingness and inability of both sides to negotiate fruitfully. Israel is headed by an obdurate right-wing government with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu successfully clinging to power, with settler and Orthodox Jewish support. There is, in effect, no coherence on the potential Palestinian side of the table. Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas completed his term as president seven years ago and elections in the West Bank and Gaza have once again been pushed into the vague future, leaving the Palestinians hopelessly divided.
Obama is left with two unfruitful options. The first is to do nothing, accepting that during his presidency nothing useful was achieved for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
To the contrary, U.S. military aid to Israel was increased on his watch, putting his thumb even more heavily on that side of the scale, for presumably political reasons. In his legacy, particularly as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, that result cannot be considered a source of pride.
It is probably equally useless for Obama to try to do something about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict now. Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians would negotiate with the Americans with any confidence that whatever was agreed upon would survive the Trump administration.
As for what Donald Trump would do as president, his campaign stance was predictably pro-Israel.
On the other hand, if he is to fulfill his promise to those members of the electorate who considered him more likely to take their economic interests to heart than Hillary Clinton, he is going to need money in the budget to concentrate on infrastructure and job creation. That could easily come out of military aid to Israel as well as to NATO, Japan and South Korea, particularly if Trump sees the Israel-Palestine peace quest as a street without joy.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette