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"The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story" by Mark Perry
From time to time, the
Palestine Center distributes
articles it believes will enhance understanding
of the Palestinian political
reality. The following article by Mark Perry
was published in Foreignpolicy.com
on 13 March 2010. To view
this article online, please go to http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/14/the_petraeus_briefing_biden_s_embarrassment_is_not_the_whole_story.
"The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s
embarrassment is not the whole story"
By
Mark Perry
On Jan. 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 Joint Chiefs of Staff
Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been
dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. 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."
The January Mullen
briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM
commander had ever expressed himself on what is
essentially a political issue; which is why the
briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their
conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour
of the region where, on Petraeus's
instructions, they spoke to senior Arab
leaders. "Everywhere they went, the message was
pretty humbling," a Pentagon officer familiar
with the briefing says. "America was not only
viewed as weak, but its military posture in the
region was eroding." But Petraeus wasn't
finished: two days after the Mullen briefing,
Petraeus sent a paper to the White House
requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which,
with Israel, is a part of the European Command
-- or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of
operations. Petraeus's reason was
straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to
be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged
in the region's most troublesome
conflict.
[UPDATE: A senior military
officer denied Sunday that Petraeus sent a
paper to the White House.
"CENTCOM did
have a team brief the CJCS on concerns
revolving around the Palestinian issue, and
CENTCOM did propose a UCP change, but to CJCS,
not to the WH," the officer said via email.
"GEN Petraeus was not certain what might have
been conveyed to the WH (if anything) from that
brief to CJCS."
(UCP means "unified
combatant command," like CENTCOM; CJCS refers
to Mullen; and WH is the White
House.)]
The Mullen briefing and
Petraeus's request hit the White House like a
bombshell. While Petraeus's request that
CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians
was denied ("it was dead on arrival," a
Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama
administration decided it would redouble its
efforts -- pressing Israel once again on the
settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit
to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching
Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with
the chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt.
General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American
press speculated that Mullen's trip focused on
Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a
blunt, and tough, message on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel
had to see its conflict with the
Palestinians "in a larger, regional, context"
-- as having a direct impact on America's
status in the region. Certainly, it was
thought, Israel would get the
message.
Israel didn't. When Vice
President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an
Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu
government was building 1,600 new homes in East
Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no
one was more outraged than Biden who, according
to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a
private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli
Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden
told Netanyahu reflected the importance the
administration attached to Petraeus's Mullen
briefing: "This is starting to get
dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told
Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines
the security of our troops who are fighting in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers
us and it endangers regional peace." Yedioth
Ahronoth went on to report: "The vice
president told his Israeli hosts that since
many people in the Muslim world perceived a
connection between Israel's actions and US
policy, any decision about construction that
undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem
could have an impact on the personal safety of
American troops fighting against Islamic
terrorism." The message couldn't be plainer:
Israel's intransigence could cost
American lives.
There are
important and powerful lobbies in America: the
NRA, the American Medical Association, the
lawyers -- and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby
is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S.
military. While commentators and pundits might
reflect that Joe Biden's trip to Israel has
forever shifted America's relationship with its
erstwhile ally in the region, the real break
came in January, when David Petraeus sent a
briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark
warning: America's relationship with Israel is
important, but not as important as the lives of
America's soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the
message now.
Mark
Perry's newest book is Talking To
Terrorists.
The
views
expressed in this article are those of the
author and do not necessarily
reflect
those of The Jerusalem Fund.
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