Others, though, haven’t been so shy. And those voices all seem to be knee-jerking in defense of Israel.

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) put the blame squarely on “the so-called ‘humanitarian aid’ flotilla” for steering into “an internationally recognized [blockade] … in an effort to provoke Israel.” Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) told Greg Sargent that the flotilla was designed “to instigate a conflict with the Israeli navy ,” which, he added, “isn’t hard to do.” And Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), senior Republican on the Foreign Affairs panel, said that Israel was simply acting in self defense.

“Israeli soldiers had every right to defend their lives against a lynch mob attacking them with knives and clubs,” she said in a statement.

But of course, this implies that the anti-blockade activists didn’t have the right to defend themselves from armed soldiers dropping out of the sky onto the decks of foreign-flagged ships in the middle of international waters. The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle today pushed that point further:

This morning a bunch of people are trying to defend Israel by saying that the protesters attacked first.  No, they didn’t.  Boarding someone’s ship in international waters is an attack.  To put it another way, how many of the people mounting this defense would criticize Israeli sailors if they attacked a bunch of armed Palestinians who were airdropping, one by one, onto their ship, after firing tear gas grenades in to soften them up?

Along those lines, why would Iran, Syria or anyone else feel an obligation to obey international law if Israel here is immune from it?

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses AIPAC on Monday. (EPA/ZUMApress.com)

Setting nearly two weeks’ worth of diplomatic acrimony behind her, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a passionate address to the U.S.’s largest pro-Israel lobbying organization, declaring the the U.S.’ bond to Israel to be “rock solid,” and gently challenging the Israeli government to commit wholeheartedly to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

[Security1] In a rhetorical flourish to play down the tension over Israel’s announcement of Jerusalem settlement expansions during a visit by Vice President Biden, Clinton said the settlement move “exposes daylight between Israel and the United States that others in the region could hope to exploit.” That line implicitly rebuked Israel’s more conservative American defenders over the fracas, who have said that Obama’s reaction — that the Israelis “insulted” the U.S. — was the problem, not the settlement expansion itself. Clinton, speaking to the America Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference at the Washington Convention Center, effectively shifted the burden of the division onto Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will address the conference early on Monday evening.

That set the tone for the message Clinton sought to deliver on the need to reinvigorate Mideast peace talks, starting with the new indirect talks the U.S. is brokering: she said the peace process exists within the context of a strong U.S.-Israel bond, and never suggested that the U.S. views Israeli cooperation on a two-state solution as a diplomatic dealbreaker. By contrast, Clinton made a case that intransigence on a two-state solution was against the Israeli interest. “The inexorable mathematics of demography are hastening the hour at which Israelis may have to choose between preserving their democracy and staying true to the dream of a Jewish homeland,” Clinton said, a statement for which she received no applause from the assembled pro-Israel activists.

The secretary received a more fervent reception by forcefully denouncing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the fulfillment of which AIPAC executive director Howard Kohl called an “overarching imperative” that “no other issue can be allowed to detract, distract or derail.” She called on Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip, to “renounce violence, recognize Israel, and abide by previous signed agreements” and gave no indication that it would be invited to peace talks. And she tied President Obama — about whom AIPAC maintains a somewhat skeptical view, despite 78 percent of American Jews voting for him in 2008 — to Jewish history, saying he and his family “have lived the Diaspora experience.”
With a deftness to what her audience wished to hear, Clinton said that “reaching a two-state solution will not end all these threats” to Israel’s security, an article of faith among the pro-Israel community, but immediately added that “failure to do so gives our extremist foes a pretext to spread violence, instability, and hatred.”

At the same, Clinton did not use the speech to outline additional commitments the U.S. expects Israel to fulfill, saying instead that both Israel and the Palestinians ought not to issue “unilateral statements and actions that undermine the process.” Nor did Clinton unveil any U.S. peace plan, as some advocates of a two-state solution had hoped she would, let alone chastise Israel for additional settlement activity that the Israeli peace organization Peace Now has identified as being in the planning stages. The closest she came was to urge Netanyahu to “continue” building “trust and momentum toward comprehensive peace by demonstrating respect for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, stopping settlement activity, and addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” all of which fall short of new concrete responsibilities for Israel.

Hadar Susskind, the policy and strategy director for J Street, AIPAC’s younger and more progressive counterpart organization, said Clinton “obviously knows and understands intimately the room she’s in,” but praised the substance of the secretary’s message. “She did a good job of saying we’re all coming at this from the same goals,” Susskind said. “She said, look, we don’t think this [Jerusalem settlement expansion] is in the best interest of Israel, and we’re going to continue to do what we can to bring the parties to the table for direct talks.”

Clinton did not disclose any details of any diplomatic assurances Netanyahu conveyed to her before the weekend, a move that cleared Mideast envoy George Mitchell to return to the region over the weekend and for Netanyahu to receive a White House reception Tuesday. Before Netanyahu addresses AIPAC, his chief political rival, Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni, will deliver a speech to AIPAC delegates at 2 p.m.

When the White House press shop sent out its statement criticizing Israel this afternoon — I received mine at 2:14 p.m. — the headline above the statement read: “Statement by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the Approval of Settlement Expansion in Jerusalem.” But the version that appears online has the headline “Statement by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Jerusalem.”

I don’t know what happened here. Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capitol, but the claim is rejected by the Palestinians and the United Nations, and the U.S. maintains its embassy in Tel Aviv so as to avoid the appearance of taking sides in the dispute. The Gilo area of Jerusalem in question did not fall into Israeli hands until the 1967 war, and so while there’s a dispute in the press over whether it should be called a settlement, the United Nations considers it to be one. From, ahem, Wikipedia:

Gilo is located over the 1967 Green Line. According to HonestReporting, Gilo is not a “settlement” in the most widespread sense of the term, which HonestReporting states “can conjure up images of isolated enclaves in the West Bank”. Gilo lies within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries and is geographically contiguous to surrounding Jewish neighborhoods that pre-dated the Six Day War. Some media outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Associated Press, Boston Globe and CBS News,have described Gilo as a “neighborhood”.^[11] A CNN memorandum to its staff stated that “We refer to Gilo as a ‘Jewish neighborhood on the outskirts of Jerusalem’… We don’t refer to it as a settlement.” Palestinians and media watch groups feel this is not accurate.^[12] Other media outlets such as the BBC, AFP, Reuters and the Economist describe Gilo as a “settlement”.^[11] The United Nations also describes Gilo as an “Israeli settlement” in East Jerusalem.^[13]

But your post mentions a couple times the possibility of Hamas running in elections. You’re missing something (though you’re in good company). They can’t run.  They are barred by Abbas’s decree law on elections.  Not by name, but still pretty explicitly: nobody can run who doesn’t certify his/her acceptance of some things that Hamas won’t accept.  Those provisions were inserted precisely to keep Hamas from running.

This is, by the way, another case of blindness to Palestinian domestic politics.  The reason elections are unlikely is because they would be deeply unpopular unless they would be based on national reconciliation.  They would give nobody in Ramallah any legitimacy and would probably cost them dearly.

Since the June 2007 fighting in Gaza, it’s been pretty clear that there couldn’t be elections unless Hamas and Fatah agree, the US supports them, and Israel acquiesces.  And that’s a tough series of hoops.  The most likely course, by the way, is for the Central Elections Commission to report to Abbas that they don’t think they can carry out elections. He then regretfully reports that while he is a good democrat, Hamas is not. And he throws the problem to the PLO to appoint a president (and get rid of the parliament where Hamas still has a majority).  I don’t know who that president will be—we’ll hear what Abbas has to say about that soon—but I would guess Abbas himself is still the most likely option.

A likely consequence is that Hamas — which formally rejects a two-state solution to the conflict and with which Israel is, to put it mildly, extremely reluctant to negotiate — will benefit if next year’s scheduled elections go forward. Abbas is now polling even with Hamas’ Ismael Haniyeh for the presidency. Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress continues to denounce and reject Goldstone, with little attention paid to the consequences of such a stance for the alternative to Hamas in Palestinian politics.

I asked my friend Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine for his perspective on the Obama administration’s relationship with the Palestinians — over Goldstone and beyond — and he emailed me a typically insightful and judicious reply:

I think they also showed a very profound lack of understanding about how what they were asking the PLO to do diplomatically would play out domestically in Palestine in the context of the lack of a settlement freeze and actually the lack of anything specifically concrete the PA could point to as positive benefits deriving from the PLO’s diplomatic strategy of maximum cooperation with the Obama administration. To be fair, the administration has had to balance a lot of different factors while trying to pressure both Israel and the Palestinians to come to terms when there are tremendous domestic political obstacles to either of them actually doing that.

I do think the administration understood to some extent the problem the PA found itself in because the attitude, at least in Geneva, of US representatives towards the Goldstone report softened somewhat after the uproar in Palestine and the Arab world, and I think they’ve shown some understanding of the Palestinian position. However, they seem to decided now is the time to tack towards easing pressure on Israel and turning pressure towards the Palestinians, possibly partly motivated by displeasure on Goldstone but probably more because they want the Palestinians to return to negotiations without insisting on a complete settlement freeze which they have come to understand they are not going to get out of Netanyahu. Overall, I think this administration is more sensitive to the needs of its Palestinian partners than any of its predecessors, but I think the United States in general has a long way to go in realizing how much it shapes the Palestinians it will be dealing with and how much every little detail determines who will be in power in Palestinian society. I think we are inching towards a better understanding of that, but it obviously hasn’t been fully digested yet or things would have gone somewhat differently than they have.

Hussein thinks there just won’t be elections next year. That’s how serious the consequences of this episode are — though he points out that Hamas’ unpopularity means that it won’t necessarily benefit from the damage inflicted on Abbas’ Fatah party. Yet the Goldstone debacle seems to be barely discussed in the United States, a chasm in the story the size of the political and humanitarian problems in Gaza.

QUESTION: Has State seen the reports coming out of Jerusalem via AP that, apparently, an internal Fatah Party document suggests that Fatah has lost faith in the Obama Administration? And if so, what is the Administration’s reaction?
MR. CROWLEY: I have not seen – I’m not familiar with those reports. Obviously, I think that in the region there’s a very strong recognition and there’s an appreciation that the Obama Administration, from the outset, has been committed to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
QUESTION: But the Palestinians seem to think that it’s great to say that you’re committed, but they feel that it’s not moving in a direction that kind of benefits them.
MR. CROWLEY: Well, I mean – and ultimately, if there’s going to be progress in the peace process, it will be fundamentally up to the Israelis and the Palestinians. We are committed to support this process, but they ultimately have to decide as we’re going through these discussions, based on intensive meetings by George Mitchell going back a number of months, and looking at the kind of political investment that various parties have been willing to make in negotiations, is that enough to move it to the next stage? We don’t know. That will ultimately be up to the Palestinians and the Israelis, but that’s the reason why we’re bringing these teams back to Washington this week and next to see if there’s a basis to move forward. And that’s what we pledged to do from the outset, and we continue to fulfill that valuable role.

“To see if there’s a basis to move forward”? Sounds ominous.

The message is “an invitation” from bin Laden to take part in “jihad to stop the aggression against Gaza.”

The terrorist leader has attempted to hijack the cause of the Palestinians before, so this was probably inevitable. What’s always been interesting is how few Palestinians there are in Al Qaeda, a point that Peter Bergen, among others, has made. Palestinians, one presumes, have problems far more close to home that preclude a fascination with global jihad. Yet In an interesting post at Wonk Room last week, Matt Duss surveyed the rise of ultra-extreme Islamist elements in Gaza — yes, more extreme than Hamas — that are competing with Hamas for power. It doesn’t appear that those are Al Qaeda elements, but just as Israel and the United States blithely squeezed Fatah and wound up with Hamas, it’s worth wondering if there’s an alternative in Gaza worse than Hamas as well.

What matters most, General Amidror said, are three changes: coordination between the infantry and the air force; having commanders on the ground with a clear mission and flexibility to achieve it; and methods to keep Hamas in the fog of war, which includes disinformation and impediments to real-time press coverage on the ground.

“The less Hamas understands, the better,” he said.

And the less you understand, the less Hamas understands! Shh, the enemy is listening!

There’s something to this, of course. But you can also take it to the extreme. Israel could just go completely buck-wild and pour its whole military into Gaza. Hamas won’t understand that! Why not get totally astrategic? No one can predict your actions then!

But who knows, maybe this is part of the disinformation campaign, since French President Nicolas Sarkozy is saying that Israel and the Palestinian Authority have agreed to an Egyptian/French truce proposal. Let’s hope.