An article in today’s Haaretz http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1126594.html reports that the Netanyahu government is now struggling to deal with the possibility that the Palestinians may unilaterally declare statehood. In and of itself, this is not necessarily shocking. Yasser Arafat used much the same threat to pressure Netanyahu during his previous term as prime minister in the late 1990s. A new twist has been added, however, by the apparently very real possibility of US recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. In fact, Haaretz claims that such recognition is already a done deal.

The reports indicated that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reached a secret understanding with the Obama administration over U.S. recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Such recognition would likely transform any Israeli presence across the Green Line, even in Jerusalem, into an illegal incursion to which the Palestinians would be entitled to engage in measures of self-defense.

According to the report, the issue was raised as part of a plan for Palestinian economic and institutional development. Publicly, Netanyahu was favorable toward the plan, however,

[S]ome Israeli officials told Haaretz that alongside the clauses [in Fayyad’s plan] reported in the media – which are similar to elements of Netanyahu’s call for “economic peace” between Israel and the Palestinians – Fayyad’s plan also contains a classified, unreleased portion stipulating a unilateral declaration of independence.

There is no way of telling if this report is accurate. Anything published in the media about secret agreements and classified documents has to arouse a certain amount of skepticism; the article’s claims are based on unnamed sources; and one of its authors, Barak Ravid, has something of a reputation for the unduly promiscuous use of such anonymous informants. Nonetheless, there are some good reasons to believe that the report could be, at least in general terms, accurate.

Foremost among them is the current state of the Obama administration. Elected to enact sweeping, revolutionary change, especially in the Middle East, Obama’s efforts thus far have been an embarrassing failure. Netanyahu shows no signs of making preliminary concessions, Abbas is threatening to resign rather than face negotiations with Israel without a complete settlement freeze, and the Arab states show no signs of making any gestures toward normalization. Faced with humiliation on all fronts, Obama is currently busy trying to placate all sides, telling both us and the Palestinians what he thinks we want to hear, while convincing no one of his sincerity.

Less than a year into his term, then, Obama is presented with two potentially disastrous scenarios. First, he may come out of this looking weak, feckless, and incompetent in one of the areas he promised to be most effective and influential. The damage to his political standing and prestige could be immense. Second, and more importantly, his image (and, I suspect, self-image) as an omnipotent healer and messianic agent of change, already badly compromised, could be shattered completely. Given that his meteoric political rise was based on little more than that image – a fact of which he must be at least subconsciously aware – such an outcome would place not only his foreign policy clout but his entire presidency in jeopardy.

Given all this, it is not unthinkable that Obama may have concluded that the only way out of this impasse of his own making is to make an unexpected, game-changing move; one that would both remake the map of the Middle East and cement his reputation as the harbinger of a new politics and a “new world,” as he put it in his Cairo speech. Recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state is precisely the kind of Hail Mary pass he may be looking for. It would bring him the adoration of his far-left base and the Arab nations, as well as many European politicians; it would turn him into the hero who defied the dreaded Israel Lobby; and it would write his name into the history books as the man who ended a century-old conflict. There might even be a second Nobel Prize in the offing, this time for actually accomplishing something. One imagines that such temptations may well be difficult to resist.

We should hope, however, that this is not the case; because if the Haaretz report is accurate, such a gambit is unlikely to succeed in achieving the peace based on a two-state solution that Obama claims to be seeking. In fact, its most likely outcome would be a war no one involved even wants to begin to contemplate.

This is underlined by the fact that, according to Haaretz, Fayyed’s plan calls for a Palestinian state to be established with the Green Line as its border with Israel. In other words, what was Israel’s eastern border before the Six Day War in 1967. What this would mean, in practice, is that the entirety of East Jerusalem, including the Old City with its holy sites, and many surrounding Jewish suburbs, would be within Palestinian territory. Moreover, Israel’s major cities and its international airport would be rendered dangerously vulnerable by their proximity to the Green Line, something that the IDF would likely consider unacceptable under any circumstances.

These are only the geographical issues. Even more pressing would be the fact that, despite Fatah’s recent rehabilitation as a buffer against Hamas, it remains a terrorist organization that does not recognize Israel, let alone recognize it as a Jewish state. While it is certainly possible that the first outcome of statehood would be a Palestinian civil war; it is equally possible that, buoyed by its triumph, Fatah could well turn to the sponsorship of mass terrorism and even a full-scale war against Israel, both in hopes of consolidating its hold on power against its theocratic rivals and out of an ideologically driven desire to destroy the Jewish state it still despises. This is not even to mention the even more nightmarish—and very real—possibility of a Hamas takeover of any future Palestinian state.

Should a war ensue, moreover – and it would be difficult to avoid – the other Arab states would be hard-pressed to avoid being drawn into it. Even Egypt and Jordan, despite their peace treaties with Israel, might not be able to stand up to the pressure from their own populations and from the Arab world in general to join in what could become a religiously-tinged apocalyptic battle against the Zionists. In a worst case scenario, Israel’s ostensibly non-existent nuclear arsenal might well be publicly acknowledged for the first time through its use against a pan-Arab invasion force.

Obviously, all of this is speculation, but it is also necessary; because if it proves real, Obama’s gambit would be, at the very least, an extraordinarily reckless and destabilizing move. This would be the case not only for the Middle East, but also for Obama himself. Indeed, it remains an open question as to how the American people might react to seeing their president, less than a decade after 9/11, extend diplomatic recognition to what would be, in essence, a terrorist state.

These considerations alone lead one to regard Haaretz’s claims with a healthy degree of skepticism. Nonetheless, Obama’s own personality, his past conduct, and his current impasse, demand that we also take it seriously. Those who have done little to earn the power they enjoy tend to react extremely violently when it is challenged, whether by other people or simply by events, and Obama’s actions on Iran, Eastern Europe, and Honduras have already proven him quite capable of being reckless in what he imagines to be the cause of peace. If the latest reports about the White House’s intentions prove to be more than simple rumor, there is a strong possibility that this recklessness may indeed write Barack Obama into the history books — not as the man who brought peace to the Middle East, but as the man who plunged it into its bloodiest war in decades.

Benjamin Kerstein is a Senior Writer for The New Ledger.