Political Comment (9 November 2009)

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has confirmed that the Obama administration has abandoned its demand for a freeze in Israeli settlement activity, and Palestinian President Mahmud 'Abbas says he will not contest January's presidential elections. After a promising start, the latest attempt to resolve the crisis over Iran's nuclear program is losing momentum. The Houthi insurgency in northern Yemen has for the first time spilled over into Saudi Arabia.

Clinton Says Israel's Restraint "Unprecedented:" 'Abbas Threatens To Step Down

Faced with an outright refusal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Barack Obama a month ago abandoned his demand for a halt to all Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories in favor of urging "restraint" on the Israelis. Now US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ‒ from the Arab point of view ‒gone one better by appearing to praise the Israelis' defiance of American wishes. At the start of her latest regional tour in Jerusalem on 31 October, Mrs Clinton told a press conference that "what the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements…is unprecedented in the context of the prior two negotiations," adding that Mr Netanyahu's position on settlements "when fully explained will be seen not only as unprecedented but in response to many of the concerns that have been expressed." That is most definitely not how the Palestinians are likely to see it, and their reactions were immediate and negative. For Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib on 1 November "calling for a resumption of negotiations despite continued settlement construction doesn't help because we have tried this way many times." And according to Nabil Abu Rudaina, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmud 'Abbas, "the negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel's intransigence and America's back pedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon."

Mrs Clinton next faced the unenviable task of explaining the Americans' retreat to a gathering of Arab foreign ministers in Marrakesh on 2 November, and while she did her best to retrieve an irretrievable situation, it was a far from convincing performance. "The Obama administration's position on settlements is clear, unequivocal. It has not changed," she declared. "And as the president has said on many occasions, the US does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." However, "now the Israelis have responded to the call from the US, the Palestinians and the Arab world to stop settlement activity by expressing a willingness to restrain settlement activity…this offer falls far short of what we would characterize as our position or what our preference would be. But if it is acted upon, it will be an unprecedented restriction on settlements." She also tried to repair the damage at her next stop in Cairo on 4 November, saying that "we do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity and we have a very firm belief that ending all settlement activity, current and future, would be preferable." However, she went on to claim that "getting into final-status negotiations will allow us to bring an end to settlement activity," and it would be interesting to know what leads her to believe this is the case. Certainly it is not an argument that is likely to cut much ice with the Palestinians, whose chief negotiator, Saib 'Uraiqat, said on 4 November that the Palestinians had "made a mistake" in the past by agreeing to negotiate without insisting on a settlement halt, and they were not about to repeat the error.. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu al-Ghait for his part backed Mrs Clinton on resuming negotiations without endorsing the dubious proposition that this would lead to a settlement freeze, saying that "the Egyptian vision is that we have to focus on the end game, and we should not waste time to get stuck on this issue or that issue in order to start negotiations. We focus on the end game."

In the circumstances, it was unclear whether Mr 'Abbas' 5 November announcement that he would not contest the forthcoming presidential election was a genuine statement of intent or a reversible attempt to persuade the Americans to rethink their volte-face. The Palestinian president said he had been surprised at the Americans "favoring of the Israeli position" on settlements and that "I have told our brethren…that I have no intent of running in the upcoming presidential election, and this decision is not up for debate or bargaining at all," which sounds definitive enough. But it is always possible that he will allow himself to be persuaded that he is irreplaceable before the 24 January election.

Iran Equivocates

As Iran marked the thirtieth anniversary of the storming of the US embassy on 4 November with pro-government demonstrations and a surprising show of strength from protestors from the pro-reformist opposition, the latest attempt to resolve the question of Iran's nuclear activities diplomatically appeared to be running out of steam after a promising start when Iran agreed in principle to a plan to ship most of its low-enriched plutonium abroad for further processing. Mrs Clinton sounded impatient on 31 October when she warned that "the world is united in a view that Iran should not have or acquire nuclear weapons capacity. And our view is that we are willing to work toward creative outcomes like shipping out the low-enriched uranium to be reprocessed outside of Iran. But we're not going to wait for ever. Patience does have, finally, its limits." However, in Tehran on the same day the head of parliament's foreign policy committee, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, declared that "we are completely opposed to the proposal on delivering uranium," while the committee's spokesman, deputy Kazem Jalali, said that "the demand that we should deliver all enriched material to other countries…is completely out of the question."  Two days later, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki played the good cop when he said that "we passed our views and observations to the International Atomic Energy Agency so it is very much possible to establish a technical commission to review and reconsider all these issues."  And on 3 November, in a statement marking the seizure of the embassy, Mr Obama put the nuclear issue in a wider context, saying that 'if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community, adding that "Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against: the question now is what kind of future it is for…It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people." The conciliatory tone of these remarks failed to elicit a similar response from Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared on the same day that "the American government is a really arrogant power and the Iranian nation will not be deceived with its apparent reconciliatory behavior until America abandons its arrogant attitude."

Yemeni Insurgents Cross Into Saudi Arabia

Yemen's Shi'a Zaidi insurgency in the northern Sa'da province on the border with Saudi Arabia escalated on 3 November when the Houthi rebels moved into Saudi territory and claimed to have captured Jabal al-Dukhan. The official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) confirmed on 4 November that gunmen who had infiltrated from Yemen had killed a Saudi security officer and wounded 11 others and said that the Kingdom "will do what it takes to preserve the security of the homeland and protect its borders," but Saudi air strikes on Houthi positions on 5 November evidently failed to dislodge the intruders, as the SPA reported the next day that "operations will continue until all sites within Saudi territory are cleansed of any hostile element." On the face of it, the Saudi armed forces ought to be easily capable of containing any incursion by Yemeni tribesmen. But the problem is not just that the fighting in Yemen might occasionally spill over into Saudi territory. If Yemeni government claims that Iran is arming and backing the rebels have any truth in them, the danger is that the Zaidi insurgency has the potential to develop into a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia on the Arabian peninsula.

Charles Snow

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