As if “Mideast Peace” was ever a US goal…

Mideast Peace Slips to Second Billing for US
17 July, 2012 – Associated Press – by Bradley Klapper and Josef Federman

JERUSALEM – Mideast peace, America’s defining issue for decades of dealings with Israel and its Arab neighbors, was just a postscript Monday as Hillary Rodham Clinton made perhaps her final visit to the region as secretary of state.

Three years after President Barack Obama declared the plight of the Palestinians “intolerable,” his administration no longer sees the failing Arab-Israeli peace efforts with the same immediacy. U.S. interests are focused now on Iran and Syria, though the deep differences between Israel and the Palestinians are not ignored.

“Peace among Israel, the Palestinian people and all of Israel’s Arab neighbors is crucial for Israel’s long-term progress and prosperity,” Clinton said following discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s president, foreign minister and defense minister.

Clinton also met Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, but she couldn’t report any progress toward an accord that might secure an independent Palestine and an Israel at peace with its neighbors.

In a departure from the usual pattern for top U.S. diplomats, she did not travel to the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank seat of government in Ramallah.

The Palestinians said a visit was unnecessary because Clinton had met with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, just a few days earlier in Paris.

Israel has defied Obama’s call to halt settlement construction in occupied lands, and the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank has refused to resume negotiations, leaving peace hopes in a tense status quo with no breakthrough in sight.

Both Israelis and Palestinians are frustrated with one another and with Obama’s peace efforts so far.

Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi said Obama’s Mideast policy has been a “disaster.”

“The American standing and credibility have never been worse than now,” she said. “A major power is being constantly humiliated by Israel, and they put up with it and they take it.”

Obama acknowledged frustrations in an interview Sunday, but in many ways the region’s crises and Washington’s priorities have moved on. Syria’s civil war, Egypt’s political instability and the Iranian nuclear program have all overshadowed the moribund peace process.

Asked what he believed he failed at in his first term, Obama cited Arab-Israeli peace efforts in an interview with WJLA-TV, a Washington, D.C., station.

“I have not been able to move the peace process forward in the Middle East the way I wanted,” he said. “It’s something we focused on very early. But the truth of the matter is that the parties, they’ve got to want it as well.”

Iran’s nuclear program has become the most pressing problem for the U.S. and Israel, and one that is a far easier cause to take up for an American administration in an election year. Republicans have consistently criticized Obama for putting too much pressure on Israel in the peace process and being too weak on Iran.

Obama rejects the criticism, and his aides point to what they call unprecedented U.S.-Israeli security cooperation. Still, his frosty relationship with Netanyahu has fueled the perception that U.S.-Israeli relations have deteriorated, a potential problem for Obama with Jewish voters in the swing state of Florida.

Israel is getting more attention at the moment as the U.S. political race proceeds. …more