Not a moment too soon.

AIPAC Wall Beginning to Crack

For years, AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has helped to stonewall the Middle East peace process by building a solid wall around the Israeli government, protecting it from criticism in the US. Senators and representatives have feared the wrath of AIPAC come Election Day, even in states and districts where the Jewish vote is negligible. Whatever they may have thought privately about Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, they've remained silent.
I got a first-hand glimpse of the process shortly after last year's election, when I talked to an aide of a newly elected House member. The new member, who represents a district with hardly any organized Jewish community, knew very little about the Middle East when the campaign began. The representative had been "educated" on the issue, the aide told me, by a handful of wealthy Democrats - none from the member's district, all generous contributors to the campaign, and all staunch supporters of the AIPAC line. That's how it works, all over the country.
Or at least that's how it used to work. Now, for the first time, there are signs of a crack in AIPAC's vaunted political edifice. The wedge issue is the Obama administration's public demand that Israel stop all new construction in its West Bank settlements, including what the Israelis call expansion to accommodate "natural growth."
Though Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads the right-wing Likud party, settlement expansion is hardly a partisan matter in Israel. It has continued at a more or less unbroken pace for years, regardless of which party headed the government. And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, leader of the opposition Labor Party, is equally staunch in demanding the right of "natural growth."
What's new is the serious objection being voiced in the US government, not merely by the president and his administration, but by members of Congress, including John Kerry, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and several prominent Jewish lawmakers, such as Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Howard Berman, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee; and influential representatives Henry Waxman and Robert Wexler.
When they met recently with Netanyahu, they made him "very, very aware of the concerns of the administration and Congress," according to one Congressional aide. They pressed Netanyahu on the need to stop building in settlements and rejected his call for Palestinian reciprocity on terrorism as a precondition.
(Another sign of the change: A Congressional delegation visiting Israel actually discussed, in private, the possibility of prohibiting Israel from using American weapons in the West Bank.)
After so many years of AIPAC dominance, it would be too much to expect all Democrats to back Obama on the settlements question. There are still plenty in Congress who toe the AIPAC line.
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