Yesterday, Middle East expert and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole had a piece in Salon in which he suggested that a two-state resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict had Lord of war download.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/11/05/settlements/index.html”>reached a dead end. And it’s true, things look pretty grim right now. Sadly, the Obama administration, while initially signaling a promising shift in US policy towards Israel, has only exacerbated things by retreating to the reflexively pro-Israeli government posture of the Bush administration.

It started with the Goldstone Report, the product of a UN investigation which found evidence that both Israel and Palestinian militant groups (most notably Hamas) were guilty of war crimes. Needless to say, the Israeli government was displeased.

Pop quiz: Did the Obama administration A) acknowledge the slaughter committed by their ally, or B) do everything they could to suppress the report? The depressing answer is below the fold.

The answer is B. The White House prevailed upon the Palestinians not to make an issue out of it in the United Nations, the result being both a lack of accountability for Israel and a sharp spike in Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s unpopularity.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has taken a surprisingly soft line on Israeli West Bank settlements, patting Israel on the back for agreeing to slow–but not stop–further expansion into Palestinian territory. Clinton later backtracked, but the fact remains that a two-state solution is inconceivable while Israel continues to eat up more West Bank territory, and the United States seems unwilling to put much energy into pressuring them to stop.

And then there was the news today: because he acquiesced to American pressure to suppress the Goldstone Report, Abbas has found his base so diminished that he will not seek reelection. Which is great news for Netanyahu, who, as Matthew Yglesias says, “loves the idea of isolating and discrediting Palestinian moderates in order to bring Palestinian radicals to power and thus have the pretext he wants to avoid peace negotiations.”

Look, this has always been an extremely difficult situation, and Obama took office at a particularly difficult point, after the Gaza incursion. But he indicated a very different approach during and after the campaign that he hasn’t followed up on. And in the mean time, he’s fucked up bad.