[The following, by Eamonn McDonagh, is crossposted from Z Word.]

3. The Facts

The controversy arose from the fact that during a visit in early March from Vice President Biden, Israel announced its intention to build 1600 new housing units in a part of the city of Jerusalem captured from the Kingdom of Jordan during the Six Day War. Given that Biden was in the country to make encouraging noises to both sides in the then approaching proximity peace talks, the timing of the announcement was unfortunate to say the very least. Biden himself immediately condemned the move while Secretary of State Hilary Clinton described it as "deeply negative" and David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, described it both as an "affront" and an "insult". Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the United Sates, is alleged to have said that the row amounted to the worst crisis in US-Israeli relations in 35 years, though he later claimed to have been misquoted. Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed that he was unaware that the announcement was to be made during Biden's visit, expressed regret about its timing and set up a committee to ensure that such a decision would not be made public without his approval in the future. The Palestinian side reacted by threatening not to participate in the proximity talks.

While on one level, the controversy is adequately explained by the fact that either through arrogance or incompetence, Israel chose to spit in the eye of its most powerful friend while it was hosting Vice President Biden, there is perhaps an extra factor at work. In recent years the notion that United States foreign policy in the Middle East is inordinately influenced by the supposed machinations of organizations like AIPAC has gained traction among many sectors of opinion in the United States and elsewhere. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have led the way in seeking to give that view academic respectability. At least some of those who voted for Barack Obama, and perhaps some who did not, were probably hoping that he would be the man to finally put the so-called "Lobby" in its place. Disappointed that he accepted a ten month freeze on settlement activity outside Jerusalem, rather than the full freeze he originally sought, this sector of opinion has been energized by the controversy and contributed to its effervescence. John Mearsheimer has himself interpreted the current row as the beginning of the end of the close relationship between Israel and the United States.

4. The Guardian

The core of the Guardian's editorial of March 17th starts like this,

Note the choice of the word "chaff", normally used to refer small metal or plastic strips thrown into the air to confuse an enemy's radar-guided weapons about the position and trajectory of whatever is being attacked by sending back myriad false returns. Chaff, in short, conceals through deception. The obvious alternative word that could have been used is "smokescreen"; while that has certain military connotations too, it points more towards an effort to hide oneself from view in order to facilitate retreat.

It might be argued that I'm doing no more than splitting hairs. Chaff or smokescreen, what's the real difference? I think there are grounds to reject this argument. Firstly, it fails to respect the writer; it takes him or her to be a person who throws down some thoughts on the page in a casual manner, unconscious of the weight of the individual words - or combinations thereof - they choose to use. Secondly, it fails to respect language itself. It doesn't come to us box fresh, it bears traces of what it was used for before, by whom and in what context. When we read we do well neither to ignore the common sense meaning of the text nor the one that may be bubbling up through its surface.

Note also in the quote above that Israeli politicians as a group are held to be prone to throw chaff whenever they come under attack. For The Guardian, therefore, it's not just a question of Prime Minister Netanyahu and/or his government having acting wrongly or unwisely, it's a question of Israeli politicians in general being prone to saying things they don't mean with the intention of deceiving observers about what's really going on. The editorial continues,

If the editorial writer believes that Israel only presents itself as a democracy he or she presumably believes that it is really something else, at least in part, especially as he or she says that it can't only be judged on that basis. His basis for questioning Israel's status as a democracy is the fact that it has "unfinished territorial claims". Indeed it does have such claims and its determination to keep all of Jerusalem as its capital is one of them. How that makes it less of a democracy I am not sure as a considerable number of democratic countries maintain territorial claims against their neighbors' territories. The editorial goes on to talk of,

Note the use of the word "tentacles". Now do a few Google searches for combinations of words including Zionism, Zionist, Jewish and tentacles and take a look at some of the sites that come up on the first page of each search. The writer also posits a contradiction between nationalism and democracy which, if it existed, would have to count for the Palestinians, the other participant in the dispute, too. Nothing is said about that though.

Rory McCarthy is The Guardian's correspondent in Jerusalem and his coverage of the developing story was unexceptionable. It accorded with both the facts and the generally accepted narrative of the Israel-Palestine problem, the one that holds that the sole and only obstacle to a peace settlement between the two sides is Israel's failure first, to stop building in the West Bank and Jerusalem and second, to withdraw to the 1967 ceasefire line. There is though, no odour of ancient hatreds rising from his texts. The government of Israel is not, directly or indirectly accused of being anything other than it is: right wing, determined to hold on to Jerusalem and as orderly in the conduct of its affairs as a bag of cats.

Finally in this section, a notable article by Jonathan Freedland. While not blinding himself to the stupidity of Israel's treatment of Biden, he uses the current crisis not to luxuriate in moral superiority but to try to envision how the United States might use it for the good of all parties and makes the pertinent observation that in the negotiations there should be less focus on process and more on peace. A choice quote and note the emphasis on the obligations incumbent on both sides to the dispute,

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This is the second post in a series of five. The first one is here.