Much Ado About Nothing

ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedDECEMBER 27, 2016, 9:42 PM EDT

In the days since the US allowed the UN Security Council to vote on a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has unleashed a fusillade of abuse aimed at the Obama White House, one likely unprecedented in the almost 70 year history of the US-Israel relationship, at least in terms of its public character. Adding to the uncanny nature of the dispute, Israel can claim that it is not attacking the United States but simply President Obama and his administration, since we are in the final liminal few weeks of the Obama administration, awaiting dramatic changes in under President Trump after January 20th. Minister of Culture Miri Regev spit out: "Obama is history. We have Trump." Indeed, Netanyahu's government has gone so far as to promise it will share "ironclad" evidence of Obama's perfidy with Trump after his inauguration. This of course builds on the efforts prior to the resolution in which Netanyahu enlisted Trump's assistance in a failed effort to block the vote.

As I wrote, this level and intensity of public attack on a US government by an Israeli government is simply unprecedented. What is notable, though, is that Israel is now focusing its entire case on a largely semantic and I would argue largely meaningless claim: specifically that the US did not merely allow the vote on the resolution to take place but actually crafted the language and whipped votes on its behalf. This contradicts White House's Ben Rhodes statement that, "we [the White House] did not draft this resolution; we did not introduce this resolution. The Egyptians, in partnership with the Palestinians, are the ones who began circulating an earlier draft of the resolution ... And we took the position that we did when it was put to a vote."

As a purely factual matter, the Israeli government's claims seem at best exaggerated. Today Ha'aretz's Barak Ravid published a detailed look at the back channel threats, consultations and feverish diplomacy that led up to the vote and the real great power guiding hand appears to have been the United Kingdom. Netanyahu backers dismiss this and claim that Britain was actually operating at the behest of the United States (i.e., President Obama) to push through the resolution without US fingerprints.

I think the best way to look at this is to draw back from the claims and particulars. They confuse the issue rather than clarify it. A great power like the United States is never a hegemon Mr Magoo walking forward unawares on a question as weighty and consequential as this one. It is not credible to claim that the US made no effort to make its views or possible actions known or took a role that was purely passive. Indeed, the US made clear publicly a month ago that while it would veto any resolution that focused solely on settlements, it might now allow a vote on one that also condemned Palestinian incitement and violence. Indeed, if you look at Ravid's reporting, it appears that the United Kingdom used this as a metric as a guide around which to craft a resolution with the countries who brought the resolution forward.

In its escalating series of attacks, the Israeli government has now claimed it has "ironclad" evidence that the US was behind the resolution and says it will share this with President Trump after January 20th. Netanyahu's spokesman refused today on MSNBC to describe the evidence. But just this evening an Egyptian paper published what some in Israel are interpreting as the ironclad evidence: a purported transcript of a December meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in which Kerry said the US was prepared to cooperate with the Palestinians on a resolution before the Security Council (remember this was originally a Palestinian resolution that was going to be brought forward by the Egyptians.)

There were apparently no details (I'm not able to read the original report in Arabic) about this transcript, whose side it's from, or anything else. So there's a question mark over its authenticity. But if this is true it seems plausible since since what is claimed is really no different from what Kerry said publicly in Washington in early December.

As I said, this whole argument seems at least partly semantic and entirely a distraction. At a conference in Washington in early December Secretary Kerry signaled clearly the US would again veto a resolution if it was "biased and unfair and a resolution calculated to delegitimize Israel" but suggested that recent Israeli actions and statements in favor of settlements might lead it to allow a more even-handed resolution.

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