Two States, Many Problems

As President Obama began his Middle East tour on Wednesday, June 3, Israeli and U.S. foreign policy experts expressed skepticism about the new U.S. administration’s proposals, which many believe are simply a rehash of previous failed policies.

In a speech at Cairo University outlining his plan for Middle East peace, Obama called for a renewed attempt at the Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution and increased diplomacy toward radical Islamic countries like Iran.

Critics of this plan say that it has been tried numerous times and always ended in failure.

Major General Giora Eiland of the Israeli Defense Forces said, “Here is the paradox…The solution is not desired by either side.”

Even if the solution was deemed acceptable by both sides, there would be no Palestinian leader to sign the contract, argued Jonathan Schanzer, director of the Jewish Policy Center. “[If] Israel determined tomorrow that it wished to cede all of the West Bank or Judea and Samaria, would remove all checkpoints within the West Bank and around the Gaza Strip, would hand over all the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem…if Israel ceded all of these things, what I think has been lost on [the Obama] administration is that there would be no one to ratify that agreement on the Palestinian side.”

The problem, asserted Schanzer, is that the Fatah party, which controls the West Bank, is not considered legitimate by many Palestinians because it was not democratically elected. Schanzer also pointed out that the democratically-elected Hamas party in the Gaza strip is a designated terrorist group according to the U.S. Department of State, and so the U.S. cannot legally negotiate with them.

“This is not the right time for peace,” added Schanzer. “There is nobody on the Palestinian side to talk to in order to move forward.”

There were also harsh words for Obama’s approval of Iran’s quest for nuclear power.

“I think that it is a mistake for the United States to acquiesce in nuclear power for Iran,” said James Woolsey, the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Clinton.

“People tend to believe that if you just think the best and hope for the best, contain and
deter—that worked for us over a 45-year period during the Cold War—that it probably would work with an Iranian regime. But the theocratic totalitarianism is a very different and new thing,” he argued.

Alana Goodman is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.