One glaring failure in President Obama's first year is his attempt at a new peace process in Israel.  In fact, he failed several levels before that lofty goal when Likud Prime Mininster Benjamin Netanyahu resisted a settlement freeze that was just Obama's opening bid for credibility.  After stonewalling for months while the Obama administration attempted to pressure him into a settlement freeze, Netanyahu then used the months of pressure as proof that Obama was only being tough on Israel and not on Palestine.  Finally, a one year moratorium on new construction "excluding projects in East Jerusalem, public buildings, and housing already under construction" was announced.  The Obama administration seemed content to move the scrutiny away from that situation, but once Hillary Clinton proclaimed the flimsy concessions as "unprecedented" the debate began anew.  That prompted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abba to announce his retirement.  Any goodwill that the new President may of had evaporated and the beginning of the peace process seems more  distant than a year ago.

What is Likud's goal? Abbas is as good a partner as Israel can reasonably hope for; during the Gaza invasion the Fatah controlled West Bank stayed quiet.  Abbas can't take all of the credit for that tenuous calm, but he takes plenty of blame for other things and it was an underrated accomplishment.  Netanyahu's half-hearted advocacy for a two state solution and handshake with Abbas, along with the settlement freeze, at least made the two state solution an official Likud goal, however distant.  Exempting East Jerusalem from the freeze however, renders it hallow.  East Jerusalem is the Palestinian capital in their hearts and history, so freezing construction everywhere but there is a one step forward, two steps back.  Perhaps Likud's motives are revealed when settler leadership rejected Netanyahu's freeze on new construction.  Netanyahu's impotent pleading with them demonstrates their implacable fearlessness towards a government that can not stomach another forced removal of Israeli citizens from Palestinian land.  It is illegal, internationally and locally, to settle past the 1967 borders but it will continue unabated.  The Likud government has its back against that wall of Avigdor Lieberman support and struggles to craft a middle way between the pressures of Israel's far right and the West growing impatience.

This impatience is a reality that undermines Israel's long term security.  Israel managed to wring a watered down statement out of European leadership in Brussels after Sweden put forward a bill that would have recognized East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.  Israel threatened to block European participation in peace talks and the language was changed to "recognizing pre-1967 borders barring Palestine approval."  Israel's threat to cut off its nose to spite its face was nuclear brinkmanship diplomacy that spends political capital to forestall a certainty.  The world will not accept the annexation of East Jerusalem, pretending it isn't happening until it is completed will only make the eventual backlash far more ferocious.  The peace process is in Israel's interest and Europe is essential partner, but this Israeli government would rather illegally colonize than try again for peace.  Even as the Swiss remind the world of how uncomfortable Europe is with its Muslim immigrants, Israel accuses Europe of being too deferential to Palestinians.  Minaret bans and Palestinian advocacy are not mutually exclusive; Europe's unease with its new Muslims may explain its pressure on Israel as an attempt to pacify its Muslim immigrant population.  However, Europe's brush with codifying Palestinian goals should serve as a warning to Israel that there is no end game apart from the two state solution.  The pressure on Israel will only grow with every year of Palestinian deprivation and the demographic apocalypse of Arabs outnumbering Jews in Israel fast approaches.  Clearly Israel understands the power of majority, that is why it revoked the residency of 4,500 Arabs in 2008, 20 times the yearly average, and attempts to encircle East Jerusalem in Jewish settlements.  The disconnect between national strategy and immediate tactics lurches from crisis to calamity and demonstrates the worst kind of conservativism, pulling your head into the shell and pretending the world will go away.

I sympathize with a Jewish public that went right in the last election; it must be unnerving to see Iranian nuclear belligerence and hopeless to imagine peace with corrupt, fractured and duplicitous Palestinian leadership.  However, hunkering down into "fortress Israel" isn't an strategic option.  There are consequences to that policy, notably lending credence to those that conflate Israel with apartheid, rather than renewed Palestinian violence.  The New Republic, indistinguishable from neoconservatives in its Israel politics, mused about a third intifada spurred on by a Palestinian leadership desperate to regain control of its population.  I don't think that is an option, or it would have happened already in desperate, Hamas controlled Gaza.  Suicide bombings must be nearly impossible with the wall and security check points and the asymmetry of force has been demonstrated so clearly that I can't imagine what a Palestinian uprising would look like. Instead of an intifada, the West Bank Palestinian government has boycotted all goods produced in Israeli settlements.  That sort of non-violent protest makes Israel look bad, a task it it does all by itself these days.  

Obama and George Mitchell believe in "radical incrementalism" and it is early in the game, but it has been a bad year for peace in the Middle East.  It's been a bad decade for Israel, though so maybe it is time to wonder: if George Bush was the most Israel-friendly President ever, then how come he inherited the Camp David summit and bequeathed the Gaza war, Hamas and Hezbollah ascendant and a nuclear Iran?  Israel needs new friends, but it isn't feeling very social.