Almost certainly, what happened yesterday in the White House briefing room is provoking joy among Palestinians, concern if not fear in Israel, and urgent “taking of views,” as the British put it, in foreign ministries worldwide.
For the first time in decades, Washington is not reflexively and unconditionally standing with Israel.
As a matter of fact, the Obama administration is explicitly doing the opposite.
Repeatedly, President Obama’s aptly-named spokesman, Josh Earnest, told reporters Thursday the U.S. is “rethinking” and “re-evaluating,” and “reconsidering” its decades-long, unwavering support of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The days of Washington automatically supporting Israel at the UN, striving to protect it from international isolation may be over: “That foundation has been eroded,” said Earnest. “It means that our policy decisions need to be reconsidered.”
And the president’s spokesman was happy to provide everyone with the reason for America’s change of heart: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-election declaration earlier this week that shattered, finally, the idea of “the peace process.”
I use those quotation marks deliberately. The peace process has been a fiction for many years, if it was ever real at all.
But it was a fiction nearly everyone had an interest in perpetuating: negotiations leading to “two states, living side by side in peace and security.”