The Great Debate UK
from The Great Debate:
U.S. aid, Israel and wishful thinking
In June 1980, when an American president, Jimmy Carter, objected to Jewish settlements in Israeli-occupied territories, the Israeli government responded by announcing plans for new settlements. At the time, settlers numbered fewer than 50,000.
In 2010, another American president, Barack Obama, is calling for an end to settlements he considers obstacles to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli authorities responded by announcing new ones, illegal under international law. Settlers now number close to half a million.
In the three decades between 1980 and 2010, there have been multiple U.S.-Israeli spats over the issue and they often fell into something of a pattern, spelt out in 1991 by James Baker, President George H W Bush's secretary of state: "Every time I have gone to Israel in connection with the peace process ... I have been met with an announcement of new settlement activities. It substantially weakens our hand in trying to bring about a peace process." That is as true now as it was then.
Also part of the routine: suggestions from critics of Israeli policy that the United States uses its vast aid program to Israel as a lever to change its behavior. "Cut off the Cash and Israel Might Behave" said a headline at the height of the latest U.S.-Israeli spat over settlements. The headline ran over an essay in a British newspaper, The Independent, by Avi Shlaim, a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford who served in the Israeli army.
The folder in which to file that idea might be labeled Wishful Thinking.
from The Great Debate:
America, terrorists and Nelson Mandela
- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
Woe betide the organization or individual who lands on America's terrorist list. The consequences are dire and it's easier to get on the list than off it even if you turn to peaceful politics. Just ask Nelson Mandela.
One of the great statesmen of our time, Mandela stayed on the American terrorist blacklist for 15 years after winning the Nobel Prize prior to becoming South Africa's first post-Apartheid president. He was removed from the list after then president George W. Bush signed into law a bill that took the label "terrorist" off members of the African National Congress (ANC), the group that used sabotage, bombings and armed attacks against the white minority regime.
A Visit to Hebron
-Robin Yassin-Kassab is the author of The Road from Damascus, a novel published by Penguin, and co-editor of PULSE, one of Le Monde Diplomatique’s five favourite websites. The opinions expressed are his own.-
There’s no pretty way to describe what I saw in Hebron, no tidy conceit to wrap it in.
from The Great Debate:
Setback for America’s pro-Israel hawks
-- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. --
"The brutal oppression of the Palestinians by the Israeli occupation shows no sign of ending ... Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians, it strives to pacify them ... American identification with Israel has become total."
from The Great Debate:
First 100 Days: The next steps in the Middle East
President Barack Obama inherits a distinctly gloomy outlook for progress in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Is change really possible?
Reuters asked Oliver McTernan, the director a UK charity called Forward Thinking and two experts from the Brookings Institution in Washington -- former Ambassador to Israel Martin S. Indyk and Kenneth Pollack -- what steps the Obama administration should take next in the Middle East.
from UK News:
BBC – taking a stand on Gaza
The BBC has been roundly condemned at home for its refusal to broadcast an emergency appeal for 
Gaza on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of 13 aid agencies.
It says it does not want to be seen to be taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and that broadcasting the appeal could jeopardise its carefully cultivated position of impartiality. Sky News has followed suit.
from The Great Debate:
In Gaza war, lions led by donkeys?
- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
It's not often that a senior member of Washington's usually staid and cautious foreign policy establishment likens Israeli political leaders to donkeys and questions their competence. But the fighting in Gaza prompted Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies to do just that.
"Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel's action seriously damage the U.S. position in the region, and hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.
from The Great Debate:
Can Obama avert an Arab-Israeli disaster?
- Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own -
Time is running out for Israel and the Palestinians. Barack Obama is probably the last American president to have the option of pursuing an accord leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the so-called two-state solution.
If that fails, another generation will be locked into bloodshed and strife. That is the bleak scenario painted by two senior American Middle East experts in a new book, Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President. It is the product of an 18-month joint study by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations, two pillars of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
