Browsing by Subject "Palestine"

The master’s thesis views the public statements of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump concerning two issues central to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Israeli settlement activity and the status of Jerusalem. The ties between the United States and Israel are remarkably close, and it would be reasonable to assume the U.S. to have leverage over Israeli politics. The continuing Israeli settlement activity on the West Bank and East Jerusalem threaten Jerusalem’s status as a divided city between the Israelis and Palestinians and contribute to the overall unrest on the area. While the position of successive U.S. administrations has been that the settlement activity is ill-advised or even illegal, most presidents have only applied verbal means in an attempt to press Israel to end the construction. When it comes to Jerusalem, the stance of the U.S. had long been that the status of the city was to be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinians, which however changed as the Trump administration recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In this thesis, I view the ways with which the three presidents rationalize the righteousness of their actions in speeches, interviews, press conferences and proclamations. Here, I borrow Isabella and Norman Fairclough’s term “practical argumentation”, which is argumentation for or against a particular way of acting. Using discourse analysis as my method, I view the strategies with which the presidents make their action, or abstention from action, seem as the single right option. Such strategies are referred to as “factualization strategies”. The focus is in the decisions the presidents make concerning Israeli settlements and the status of Jerusalem. For the most part, Bush avoids elaborate critique towards Israeli settlements, guiding the discussion to other topics, such as the fight against terrorism. When Bush does urge Israel to cease building settlements, he justifies his critique by referring to previous agreements and by arguing that the settlement activity has a prejudicing effect on the final-status negotiations. Obama’s critique towards the settlements is consistent. Unlike Bush, he does not show unwillingness to discuss the topic, arguing that the 2010 settlement freeze helped negotiations proceed in a constructive way. However, when inquired about further actions towards Israel, Obama states that he needs to wait and see how Israeli and Palestinian politics are going to sort themselves out and that Israeli politics are too complex to be interfered with. Like Bush, Obama occasionally prioritizes on other matters at the expense of the settlement question arguing that less emotionally loaded issues need to be solved first. Close to the end of his last term, Obama decided to abstain from vetoing a United Nations resolution that condemned Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. He factualizes the righteousness of his decision by stating that the accelerating pace of the settlement construction poses a threat to the two-state goal. Bush and Obama share the view that the status of Jerusalem is to be negotiated between the parties themselves. Trump has a different approach. While he voices his stance on the settlements only once, suggesting that Israel should slow down with the construction, he addresses the status of Jerusalem multiple times. Trump argues that recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was right due to Jerusalem being founded by Jews and that the recognition was the will of the U.S. Congress. Furthermore, Trump argues that the status of Jerusalem has long been the hardest topic of the negotiations and that a U.S. intervention to solve the issue serves the interests of the peace process, as there now is one less question to discuss.