Washington Post trio on US-Israel clash mostly accurate

A news article, an editorial and an opinion column in The Washington Post’s March 16 edition got the U.S.-Israeli confrontation over housing construction in eastern Jerusalem mostly right.

“U.S. pushes Netanyahu to accept 3 demands,” by diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler, disclosed that the Obama administration is pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “reverse last week’s approval of 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem, make a substantial gesture [perhaps a prisoner release] toward the Palestinians, and publicly declare that all of the ‘core issues” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, be included in upcoming talks ….” The Post quotes an anonymous senior U.S. official as saying Israeli failure to concede would put the U.S.-Israel relationship in doubt.

“The quarrel with Israel; Will the administration’s attacks on the government of Binyamin Netanyahu advance the peace process?” editorializes that “President Obama’s Middle East diplomacy failed in his first year in part because he chose to engage in an unnecessary and unwinnable public confrontation with Israel over Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem …. So it has been startling — and a little puzzling — to see Mr. Obama deliberately plunge into another public brawl with the Jewish state.” It notes that “the president is perceived by many Israelis as making unprecedented demands on their government while overlooking the intransigence of Palestinian and Arab leaders,” elevating Arab claims and undermining diplomatic prospects.

“A square for a murderer,” by Post syndicated columnist Richard Cohen, contains numerous flaws. One is an unwarranted assumption about “the legitimacy of Palestinian aspiration.” Having repeatedly rejected offers of a West Bank and Gaza Strip state in exchange for peace, maybe such a state is not the “Palestinian aspiration.” A second is misunderstanding of “the calamity that befell Palestinians in 1948.” Arab leadership, including that of the Palestinian Arabs, imposed their 1948 calamity by choosing war over acceptance of the U.N. partition plan and losing. But Cohen hits the bull’s-eye on a central point: Palestinian leaders who insist on naming a public square for Dalal Mughrabi, leader of the 1979 Coast Road Massacre in which 38 Israelis, including many women and children, were butchered by Palestine Liberation Organization terrorists, as the current leaders just did, might not be disposed to negotiating genuine peace.