palestinians

In the midst of all this embracing of enemies, where does the Obama Administration choose to escalate a minor incident into a major diplomatic confrontation? With Iran, Cuba, Sudan, North Korea or Burma? No. With our treasured ally, Israel.

But perhaps, too, the Obama administration has recognized an opportunity in the Ramat Shlomo crisis, an opportunity that required deepening rather than defusing the dispute – an opportunity to convey to the unloved Netanyahu, more starkly than ever before, the fateful choice he faces and the urgency of making it.

Does he want to expand home-building for Jews in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, maintain the support of the domestic political Right, offer less than the Americans would wish him to offer at the peace table should direct talks ever resume, and watch Israel’s ties to the United States falter even as Iran closes in on the bomb?

Or is he prepared to halt such building, marginalize the local hardliners, work to create a climate conducive to negotiated progress with the Palestinians, and bolster the partnership with the US, the better to ensure an effective response to the Iranian threat?

The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel's acquiescence in the Obama Administration's increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran's nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel's restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran.

As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.

On January 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief JCS Chairman Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow...and too late."

On the administration debate after Biden's trip over how to get past continued upsets to U.S. efforts to reviving an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, veteran U.S. Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller writes that there's got to be a "reset" of the U.S.-Israeli relationship:

"This crisis is way above Mitchell's pay-grade," Miller said in an email. "The U.S.-Israeli relationship can now only be reset by the president who's very very busy now."

"Wait a month, let Mitchell tend the garden," Miller continued. "Come April/May, there has got be a Bibi-Obama meeting and effort to see if you can hit the reset button."

The key, Miller says, is an agreement on borders where the gaps between the Israelis and Palestinians are the narrowest, and to get that agreement via U.S.-brokered talks.

After HRW was queried regarding Garlasco’s status on Thursday evening, the group’s communications director, Emma Daly, responded in an e-mail stating, “Human Rights Watch regretfully accepted Marc Garlasco’s resignation on February 15th [and] he is no longer listed as a staff member on Human Rights Watch’s Web site.”

However, according to the NGO Monitor announcement, which had been sent to the Post on Thursday morning, “As of March 4, 2010, [Garlasco’s] name remains on the list of HRW employees, listed as a ‘senior military analyst.’”