If you’re not aware of it, I want to draw your attention to an open letter to the president that went out last week calling on the President and the Secretary of State either to support or, more plausibly, not to veto an upcoming Security Council resolution condemning on-going Israeli settlement activity in the Occupied Territories. For the US to allow something like this to go forward is usually close to unthinkable. But this new resolution has the awkward dimension of lining up pretty exactly with longstanding US policy, which considers the settlements not only an impediment to peace but in violation of international law.
The signatories are some folks you’d expect and also some you would not.
Whether or not this initiative succeeds though I believe we’re going to see more of this, particularly a new willingness to rethink some of the conventions of the US-Israel relationship and a growing realization that the Israelis and Palestinians are unable to solve this impasse on their own. Some of this is rooted in changing views among American Jews. And some is rooted in the increasingly obvious toll the never-ending impasse takes on US interests in the region and indeed throughout the world. For the futures of both countries, Israelis and Palestinians are in great need of an outside force to help settle the matter. And in the nature of things probably only the US can be that force.
