Pro-Israel Stance Means US Leaders Won’t Try to Revive Middle East Peace Process

The United States’ unquestioning support of Israel ensures that the Middle East peace process and the prospect of an independent Palestinian state are both dead, US analysts told Sputnik.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Middle East Institute analyst Thomas Lippman said on Thursday that "there is no ‘peace process’ in the region."

"There is not going to be an independent Palestinian state. It’s over; the Israelis have won. And the United States is aiding and abetting them even now."

This week, the United States and Israel signed a memorandum of understanding for the Jewish state to receive $38 billion in military aid over 10 years.

Lippman recalled that Ehud Olmert, while serving as Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009, once came to Washington, DC seeking a reduction in US assistance to his country.

"He asked for a cut in aid: ‘We don’t need it,’" Lippman quoted Olmert as saying.

However, support for Israel among members of Congress from both US political parties was so strong, the aid continued anyway, with yearly increases, Lippman said.

"Such is the American political system," he remarked.

Helena Cobban, a veteran Middle East analyst and historian who heads the publishing company Just World Books, agreed with Lippman’s assessment.

She said the United States, for over 40 years, has pursued either of two policies in the Middle East: blocking peace talks or monopolizing influence over them.

"Washington has worked energetically ever since the US-Soviet summit on the Middle East, held in Geneva in December 1973, to roll back any hint of any meaningful non-US role in the sponsorship/organizing of peace talks," Cobban said.

In 2002, this approach intensified when President George W. Bush made sure the United States would lead the "quartet" initiative to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Cobban added.

"Bush struck hegemonic gold when he amazingly managed to subordinate the UN [United Nations] and Russia, along with the European Union, to US ‘leadership’ of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking with the creation of the so-called quartet," she remarked.

Since then, Washington’s handling of the diplomatic process has meant giving successive Israeli governments – increasingly dominated by extremist elements – free rein to do as they wish, according to Cobban.

"There is no peace process," she said. "Instead, Israel continues to pursue its… project of having its settlers wrest control of the maximum amount of Palestinian land while confining those Palestinians who remain in their homeland to ever-smaller ghettoes."

The military-aid deal presented this week sends a clear message to Israel that no one in Washington will do anything to stop its continued pursuit of such policies, Cobban concluded.