A History Lesson for Obama

[or
Israeli Intransigence? Eisenhower Knew What to Do]

By Henry Norr

With President Obama's Middle East peace plans so completely -- and humiliatingly --
shipwrecked on the rocks of Israeli intransigence, it's time for him to consider a new
approach, at least if he's serious about his announced objectives. In the spirit of
bipartisanship that he's so dedicated to, I suggest he look to the way Dwight D. Eisenhower
handled a similar predicament a half-century ago.
First, a quick review of the goals Obama staked out last year and how much progress his
efforts have produced. In his speech in Cairo last June, he declared “America will not turn our
backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their
own....Israel must live up to its obligation to ensure that Palestinians can live and work and
develop their society.”
Specifically, on the key issue of Israeli colonization of East Jerusalem and the West Bank,
he reaffirmed that “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli
settlements. ... It is time for these settlements to stop.”
As to the devastated Gaza Strip, the Obama administration last May delivered a
diplomatic note to the Israeli government demanding that it open border crossings to allow
food, medical equipment, and reconstruction materials to reach the 1.5 million Gazans.
Now, thirteen months after Obama took office, and almost nine months since his Cairo
speech, no one can seriously claim that the Palestinians are any closer to “dignity,
opportunity, and a state of their own.” The only major changes I can detect are that Israel has
stepped up its repression of grassroots, non-violent anti-occupation activism and its efforts to
“Judaize” East Jerusalem.
With regard to settlements, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s promise of a 10-month
“freeze” on new construction was riddled with loopholes, and in practice, as both Israeli and
Palestinian media and human-rights organizations have documented, settlement expansion
continues unabated. Last month, as Netanyahu planted trees in several of the settlements, he
declared that he wanted to “send a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We
are planning and we are building.” The major settlements, he proclaimed, are an “indisputable
part of Israel forever.”
Meanwhile, conditions in Gaza have scarcely changed. Just this week, Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton said “We have pushed the Israelis to end the—to increase the trickle
to a flood of goods into Gaza,” but the UN reports that deliveries of goods currently amount to
only 17 percent of the pre-siege average. When she was pressed about the contradiction,
Clinton’s response was downright pathetic: “I hope that we are going to see some
progress. ... there are so many countries standing ready to help the people of Gaza rebuild.
And we just want the chance to be able to do that.”
President Obama sounds equally helpless. “This is just really hard,” he told Time’s Joe
Klein a few weeks ago. “This is as intractable a problem as you get. ... And I think that we
overestimated our ability to persuade” the parties.
He promised, of course, to keep working on the issue, but if —as he’s shown over the
past year—he’s unwilling to stand up to Netanyahu even over core American objectives, what
reason is there to think he’ll have any more success in the coming year?

That's where Ike comes in. 53 years ago this week, he too was facing a defiant Israeli
government.* A few months earlier, in late October 1956, while he himself was in the home
stretch of his re-election campaign, and the world was preoccupied with the bloody Hungarian
revolution against Soviet rule, the Israelis colluded with Britain and France to launch a
surprise attack on Nasser's Egypt, apparently without so much as a word to Washington.
Israeli forces quickly seized the Gaza Strip (previously under Egyptian control) and Egypt's
Sinai Peninsula, while the British and the French took over the Suez Canal.
Miffed at not being consulted, and embarrassed by such a blatant display of old-fashioned
imperialism -- instead of the neocolonial tactics of economic coercion and CIA manipulation
the U.S. preferred -- Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, forthrightly
condemned the attack. At the United Nations, where Britain and France held veto power in
the Security Council, the U.S. joined the Soviet bloc -- even as Soviet tanks rolled through
Hungary -- as well as emerging third-world governments in taking the matter to the General
Assembly and approving resolution after resolution calling for a ceasefire, then withdrawal of
the aggressors.
Within days the British and French gave in and began pulling out their troops. A few
weeks later Israel grudgingly agreed to withdraw from the Sinai. But Israeli Prime Minister
David Ben Gurion adamantly refused to give up the Gaza Strip as well as an area along the
Gulf of Aqaba, despite personal pleas from Eisenhower and a sixth UN resolution calling for
withdrawal. Israel's parliament, the Knesset, formally proclaimed the country's intent to keep
Gaza.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., Israel mobilized its lobby -- already a formidable political force, if
not quite as dominant as it is today -- to pressure the administration to back off on its
demands. Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson led the campaign, joined by his
Republican counterpart, William Knowland, and backed up by such luminaries as Eleanor
Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Time Inc. publisher Henry Luce. Noting the "terrific control the
Jews have over the news media and the barrage the Jews have built up on congressmen,"
Dulles complained that "The Israeli Embassy is practically dictating to the Congress through
influential Jewish people in the country."
"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a foreign policy not
approved by the Jews," he told Luce, but "I am going to have one. That does not mean I am
anti-Jewish, but I believe in what George Washington said in his Farewell Address that an
emotional attachment to another country should not interfere."
Eisenhower agreed. On Feb. 11, 1957, he sent another message to Ben Gurion, offering
to guarantee Israeli access to the Gulf of Aqaba but demanding "prompt and unconditional
withdrawal" from Gaza. Ben Gurion again refused, replying that "there is no basis for the
restoration of the status quo ante in Gaza."
At that point, instead of an Obama-style cave-in, Ike decided to take the gloves off. On
Feb. 20 he sent another cable to Ben Gurion threatening to support a UN call for sanctions
against Israel and warning that such sanctions could apply not only to U.S. government aid to
Israel (then modest) but also to Israel's lifeline at the time, tax-deductible private donations
and the purchase of Israel's bonds. That same evening the president went on national
television specifically to address the dispute with Israel. "We are now," he told the American
people, "faced with a fateful moment as the result of the failure of Israel to withdraw its forces
behind the Armistice lines, as contemplated by the United Nations Resolutions on this
subject."
"I would, I feel, be untrue to the standards of the high office to which you have chosen
me, if I were to lend the influence of the United States to the proposition that a nation which
invades another should be permitted to exact conditions for withdrawal," he continued. "I
believe that in the interests of peace the United Nations has no choice but to exert pressure
upon Israel to comply with the withdrawal resolutions."
Ben Gurion's initial response was continued defiance, but with no indication that
Eisenhower would back down, and the General Assembly about to vote for sanctions, he had
no choice but to capitulate. On March 1 Israel's foreign minister, Golda Meir, announced that
her government would withdraw from Gaza after all, and by March 16 the pull-out was
complete. On the way out, the Israelis systematically destroyed all surface roads, railway
tracks, and telephone lines in the area, as well as several villages. But at least the occupation
of the Gaza Strip came to an end -- until the Israelis came storming back 10 years later.
Granted, there was hypocrisy aplenty in Eisenhower's stand, considering his own
administration's activities in Iran, Guatemala, and elsewhere. (In mid-1958 he even sent the
Marines into Lebanon.) And of course the Middle East today is very different from in 1956-57.
Still, there's a lesson in the events of 53 years ago that remains relevant today: on the
rare occasions when U.S. leaders have the guts to stand up to the bluster of the Israelis and
their supporters at home, to insist on respect for international law, to take their case to the
American people and the world, and to back up their demands with the threat of economic
sanctions, even the most recalcitrant Israeli government has to give in.
If Obama would only learn that lesson, he might yet be able to achieve the goals he set
out last June in Cairo.

*This account of the events of 1956-57 is based mainly on the Eisenhower papers posted
by the American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara
<www.presidency.ucsb.edu>; the archives of the New York Times; Patrick Tyler's A World of
Trouble: The White House and the Middle East - from the Cold War to the War on Terror
(2009); and two books by Donald Neff, Warriors at Suez: Eisenhower Takes America into the
Middle East in 1956 (1988) and Fallen Pillars: U.S. Policy towards Palestine and Israel since
1945 (1995).

--------------------
Henry Norr is a retired journalist. He was fired by the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003 after
participating in the International Solidarity Movement in the Gaza Strip, then getting arrested
in San Francisco protesting the war on Iraq. He welcomes comments at henry@norr.com.