Hardline pro-Israel groups in the U.S. are confronting President Barack Obama’s demands for a halt to settlement expansion by accusing him of promoting the ethnic cleansing of Jews and jeopardising Israel’s security.
Members of Congress allied with Israel and powerful lobby groups in Washington are also trying to shift the focus of administration policy from the Jewish settlements — arguing they are not an obstacle to peace — to demands for Arab governments to recognise Israel.
The strategy, intertwined with a similar campaign by Israeli politicians and officials, has taken on added urgency because of Mr. Obama’s demands, first laid down during a testy meeting in May with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Israel freeze all settlement construction in the West Bank.
Mr. Netanyahu arrives in London on Monday for a series of meetings, including discussions on Wednesday with the White House’s special envoy, George Mitchell. He is also due to see Gordon Brown on Tuesday.
The visit comes amid signs that an agreement will eventually be reached for a settlement freeze for up to a year.
But both sides regard that as merely a first step in a wider struggle over the future of the settlements, as well as other issues including the pace of negotiations toward the establishment of a Palestinian state and the shape of final borders.
The strategy to play down the significance of the settlements is laid out in a document drawn up for an influential pro-Israel lobby group by a prominent Republican pollster Frank Luntz on how to influence American public opinion.
The Israel Project, with an advisory board including 20 members of Congress from both parties, issued the confidential document to its supporters at about the time Mr. Obama came to power in January.
The report, marked as “not for distribution or publication” but since widely disseminated outside the organisation, says those who back the removal of the settlements should be told they are supporting ethnic cleansing and anti-Semitism. The guide offers what it describes as “the best settlement argument”.
“The idea that anywhere that you have Palestinians there cannot be Jews, that some areas have to be Jew-free, is a racist idea. We don’t say that we have to cleanse out Arabs from Israel. They are citizens of Israel. They enjoy equal rights. We cannot see why it is that peace requires that any Palestinian area would require a kind of ethnic cleansing to remove all Jews,” the guide says.
The accusation of ethnic cleansing is particularly ironic for many Palestinians, as the past 41 years of occupation have been marked by a continual forced removal of Arabs to make way for Jews. The Israel Project document advises its supporters to argue that the “settlements are necessary for the security of Israel” while also urging them to mislead Americans over the important role of religion in land seizures.
“You must avoid using Israel’s religious claims to land as a reason why Israel should not give up land. Such claims only make Israel look extremist to people who are not religious Christians or Jews,” it says. These views are shared by some influential members of Congress.
Last week, Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Howard Berman, a Democrat, told a closed meeting of Jewish leaders in Los Angeles that Mr. Obama was wrong to put pressure on Israel over the settlements.
Mr. Berman said the administration’s position had benefited Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas who was “waiting for the U.S. to present him Israel on a platter”.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2009
