I am not often accustomed to siding with the Trump administration against the Europeans. On the new boycott of goods from Israeli settlements, however, Washington has the smarter take. The move by Britain, France and Canada manages to combine bad politics with questionable foreign policy.
It hands Benjamin Netanyahu a campaign gift weeks before an Israeli election that his opponents desperately need to make about his failures, while risking valuable economic, intelligence and security relationships with Israel—and America—for sanctions whose impact will be largely symbolic. There is also something hypocritical about governments that have no intention of giving up the benefits of close relations with Israel advertising their moral disapproval through a crudely simplistic boycott. Britain and France value Israeli technology, intelligence and security cooperation, including against Iran and jihadist terrorism.
They are not about to sever those relationships, because doing so would carry real costs. Instead they have selected a highly visible punishment with relatively little economic bite, allowing them to retain the parts of the Israeli relationship they need while satisfying small but hysterically anti-Israel constituencies at home. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s reaction was almost a shrug.
Washington would not follow Britain’s lead, he said, while warning against measures that could destabilize the West Bank or complicate American efforts in Gaza. And the timing could hardly be more helpful to Netanyahu. His opponents need the coming election to be about the catastrophic failure preceding October 7, the conduct of the wars that followed, his corruption trial, his attacks on independent institutions and his effort to push Israel toward something resembling an elected autocracy.
Their path to victory runs through center-right Israelis who have grown exhausted by Netanyahu while remaining deeply concerned about Israel’s security. The boycott gives him a much better subject. Netanyahu can tell those voters that foreign governments are once again trying to dictate Israel’s borders, punish Jews for living on the wrong side of a fairly random line drawn when the fighting stopped in 1949 and treat businesses in parts of Jerusalem that Israel has annexed and where Arabs have rights to citizenship as if they were radical distant hilltop outposts.
The policy may please some of Western left-wing voters demanding that their governments punish Israel—but it simultaneously helps the Israeli politician they presumably most want to weaken. None of this requires defending the settlement movement. Radical settlers who attack Palestinians are thugs, and their violence is abhorrent.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
