By Alan Sabrosky *

The hopes Obama raised in Cairo didn't last a week before US Middle East envoy George Mitchell buried them five days later in Israel. It was understood that what Obama proposed would be difficult to translate into concrete deeds. I believe Obama was sincere, and it wouldn't have been the first time a US president used a major speech to end a debate within the government, and as a springboard for some dramatic policy initiatives. But Congressional supremacy inheres in the US constitutional order, and with the US Congress firmly in Israel's corner, the Wailing Wall trumps the dream.

The Dynamics

There are three futures for Israeli-Palestinian relations. These are: (1) the status quo, a mix of Israeli apartheid and repression coupled with Palestinian attempts at retaliation or at least survival; (2) a two-state solution, with a weak Palestinian state infested by Jewish settlements, periodically ravaged by the IDF; or (3) a one-state solution, either a secular, non-Jewish state or a Jewish state "ethnically cleansed" of Palestinians.

None of these is a joy. If all parties within and outside of the region agree on anything, it is that the status quo is too unstable to endure much longer. Jews inside and outside of Israel hate it, often for different reasons. Palestinians loathe it. Countries nearby wonder when conflict there will embroil them. Outside powers, especially the US and the European Union, desperately want something to emerge that lets them get off the political (and sometimes military) firing line.

It is this desperation more than good judgment that drives support for a two-state solution. Otherwise intelligent and, occasionally, well-meaning people advocate it, either as a political pablum to soothe anxieties or like someone drowning clutching a sinking lifeboat, knowing it isn't much but hoping that it will at least buy some time for something else to happen. Even with the best will in the world, a Palestinian state in two parts, separated by Israeli territory and with no common border or viable economy, would be a basket case, although possibly a supportable one with enough external aid. Add in Jewish settlers, Palestinian refugees, and East Jerusalem, and its prospects would be somewhere between dismal and abysmal. Whatever Palestinian state might emerge would make old-time Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe seem positively free.

Which leads to the one-state solution. A single, unified secular state might have worked once, but no longer. It is one thing to dismiss rhetorically the past and point to the future, but that requires someone outside of the region to make it happen, and then to enforce it. Neither the UN nor the EU can do it without a demonstrated US determination to bring Israel to heel. But Obama before Cairo and especially Mitchell afterwards have made it abundantly clear the US today simply will not do that. The US says it wants something to happen, Israel either ignores the US or openly flouts it, and the US then reaffirms its support for Israel. No sanctions, no reduction in aid, just words – ours, theirs, and occasionally those of others, within or outside of a negotiating context. But with or without US approval, Israel will do what Israel wants to do, the consequences be damned, and trust its puppets in the US Congress – both houses, both parties – to allow it.

Towards the Future

This is controlling. If the settlements stay in place in "Judea and Samaria" (i.e., the West Bank), any Palestinian state is simply a temporary "holding company" awaiting dissolution by Netanyahu, Lieberman and their merry band. Objectively, the US could force Israel to remove the settlements, and give Israel the pleasure of their relocation inside of Israel proper. Absent US financial support, military aid and diplomatic protection, Israel as a state withers on the vine or discards its "chosen people" visage and joins the global community. With US support, aid and protection, it has no need whatsoever to change the way it does its business, and therefore no need to give anything but lip service to the grandiose ideas being tossed around about a Palestinian state and a new beginning.

What is going to happen is an old story retold – "ethnic cleansing" that succeeds. And from the perspective of people like Netanyahu and Lieberman, it has its logic. The present is an untenable mess; a separate Palestinian state only postpones a solution and might see the US change its own policy as more and more Americans become aware of what is happening there; a secular state that ends the dream of a Jewish state is a more existential threat than anything posed by Iran; and all that remains is a single Jewish state without the Palestinians, and probably without the current Arab citizens of Israel as well. Of course it will be a crime against humanity, but with the US shielding them, they'll not end up in the dock or on the gallows where they belong.

It isn't even hard to anticipate how that will happen. At some point in the coming months, Israel will strike Iran, an illusionary "existential threat" contrived by Israel principally to incite fear and encourage support from the Jews of the Diaspora (especially in the US). However the strike goes, large numbers of people and many governments in the region will blame the US, either for helping or at least for not hindering Israel. There is a good chance much of the region will convulse, and during that convulsion with attention directed everywhere else, the IDF (actively aided by settlers in the West Bank) will expel the Palestinians there across the Jordan River and those in Gaza into the Sinai. It doesn't take a seer to anticipate their fate.

It also isn't hard to see how this might be averted. Much depends on what the US chooses to do, and so much of that depends on what the American people know and how they make that knowledge felt. There is much more criticism of Israel, and of US support for it, within the US today than existed even five years ago, and another five years could well produce a diplomatic revolution. It wouldn't be easy, but it could happen, and even sooner than that, depending on how much rage, pain or fear the US public experienced due to events in the region. Israel knows this, and I do not doubt for a moment what it will do – unless Obama forgets the Wailing Wall and remembers his dream.

* Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College. He can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net