Tom Friedman has been an Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times for a long time. As early as 11 years ago he was being ridiculed (see picture) by the more irreverent members of the blogosphere for his certainty that he was the holder of all truths, even when those truths had been invalidated convincingly. For example, he was a fervent supporter of the Iraq War, and even when it went to hell as many of us suggested it would he continued to support Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer in their folly.
Nonetheless, if you keep swinging at pitches you eventually hit one, and if you hit it hard enough it may go out of the park. I think he did that in today’s column. In it he just wipes the floor with Bibi Netanyahu, calling him
a leader who is forever dog paddling in the middle of the Rubicon, never ready to cross it. He is unwilling to make any big, hard decision to advance or preserve a two-state solution if that decision in any way risks his leadership of Israel’s right-wing coalition or forces him to confront the Jewish settlers, who relentlessly push Israel deeper and deeper into the West Bank.
Friedman suggests that Obama and Kerry took the step of abstaining from the UN vote condemning Israel’s continuing construction of settlements the other day and allowing the resolution to pass in hopes that it would provoke the half of Israel’s population which does believe in the two-state solution with the Palestinians to force Bibi and his ever-more right-wing party to stop building them long enough to debate the wisdom of doing so. Indeed, that’s what US Secretary of State John Kerry said in his speech today:
In the end, we could not in good conscience protect the most extreme elements of the settler movement as it tries to destroy the two state solution. We could not in good conscience turn a blind eye to Palestinian actions that fan hatred and violence. It is not in U.S. interests to help anyone on either side create a unitary state. We may not be able to stop them, but we cannot be expected to defend them. And it is certainly not the role of any country to vote against its own policies.
That is why we decided not to block the UN resolution that makes clear both sides have to take steps to save the two state solution while there is still time.
Congratulations, then, to Friedman, who figured it out before Kerry delivered his speech.
Netanyahu has been a willing captive of the Israeli hard-right for his entire second term as Prime Minister (2009-present), and it moves further right every year. His coalition has a one-vote majority in the fractious Knesset, so he finds it necessary to pander to that part of his party and the smaller ones even further out on the fringe in order to hang on to power. After all these years of doing so I’m not entirely sure he’s got enough integrity left to do otherwise. The only way he can be made to do it is through his citizens’ standing up and scaring him into believing he can lose his job if he doesn’t reconsider the settlements and the provocation they have become.