UK -Politics & World Current Affairs

Some aid to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leaked to Israeli paper what, allegedly, have been said in the inner cabinet about President Barak Obama’s demands to kick-start the frozen peace, which is something to the effect of not only the demands are ‘ a disaster’ but that the president himself was a ‘ strategic disaster for Israel’.

The unnamed Netanyahu confidant was quoted by Israel’s largest circulation Yedioth Ahronoth accusing the American leader’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as ‘patently Palestinian’. The exact quote, according to the paper was ‘The situation is catastrophic. We have a problem with a very, very hostile administration. There’s never been anything like this before. This president wants to establish the Palestinian state and he wants to give them Jerusalem….you could say Obama is the greatest disaster for Israel, a strategic disaster.’
However, many Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora say that Bibi Netanyahu is the disaster for Israel. The founders of Israel - I believe it was Ben Gurion (1886-1973) who said it, something roughly translated as ‘ beware of Jabotinsky’s people – Like Bibi and his father who is the driving force behind his mad ideology- if they get hold of power, it could be the end of the state of Israel’. It is like Bibi never learns from his mistakes, or deliberately goes out of his way to re-upset the Americans.
The White House did not wrap the disagreement with Mr Netanyahu in the usual diplomatic language, but chose to throw a bucket of cold water. Robert Gibbs, the Whit Hose spokesman described the talks as frank ” honest and direct on the points of difference” ; which is translated in press briefing codes as resentment by the party giving the briefing..
The President did not receive his guest or said goodbye to him at the entrance, or posed for photographers, who were also denied the customary shots of the two leaders in front of the fireplace at the start of a meeting lasting 89 minutes (followed by another 35 minutes meeting at the request of Mr Netanyahu, after he made telephone calls to his partners in Israel, which indicates that he was confronted by options requiring immidiate answers).
His Labour partners and the Israeli left accused Mr Netanyahu of centrist ‘spitting in America’s eye’ on the question of building settlements. On the day of meeting the President, Municipality of Jerusalem, announced the construction of 100 apartments for settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem (which is a Palestinian neighbourhood in contrast to the Jewish settlement of Ramat Shlomo, built in the eighties), Non of the previous right wing governments (including those Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon dared to expand settlements into Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem,). Israel’s President, Shimon Peres, who normally doesn’t interfere in politics, did criticise this step.
Netanyahu has been testing President Obama’s patience, just as he did with President Bill Clinton administration (1992-2000) with disastrous consequences for his government. During the Wye River talks with the Palestinians in 1998, under American auspices, he nearly caused the talks to collapse. The Israeli delegations packed their bags and were about to leave to the airport after President Clinton lost his temper with Netanyahu. The latter tried some trade off for his honouring the 1993 Oslo agreement, demanding the release of Jonathan Pollard. Mr Clinton, reportedly said something to the meaning of ‘ f*** you’, to Bibi’s face.
Mr Pollard, a U.S. citizen who worked as intelligence analyst with American intelligence, has been spying for Israel for years. A Federal Court passed a life sentence on him in 1987 for providing Israel with information deemed sensitive to American national security. Israel awarded him citizenship for his services in 1995.
Mr Clinton saw this linkage by Bibi as an intolerable interference in America’s sovereignty over her citizens and its security, let alone disrespect to one of most respected justice system in the world.
Only the intervention of the late King Hussein bin Tall (1935-1999); who and being treated at the time of his terminal cancer in Minneapolis; saved the talks. With his known courage and composure he paused his treatment and flew to Wye River to co-chair the meeting with President Clinton. The Israelis and the Palestinians co-signed the Wye River memorandum ( to implement steps agreed in Oslo five years earlier). But Mt Netanyahu hardly implemented any of the steps he agreed to take according to the memorandum.
According sources present (of three different nationalities) the late king persuaded President Clinton to ‘give [ Netanyahu] another chance’ in order to salvage the dying Oslo accord, which was signed on the Lawn of the White House when Mr Clinton nudged the late Ytizhak Rabin (1922-1995) and Shimon Peres to shake hands with the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat (1929-2004).
King Hussein urged the American leader to overlook Mr Netanyahu’s own personal shortcomings for the sake of peace, although he himself had a taste of one of the usual follies of Mr Netanyahu. One year earlier to the date Mr Netanyahu ordered the assassination of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal ( against the advice of Israeli intelligence chiefs themselves) in a street in Amman by spraying poison in his ear.
This angered the British educated normally calm Jordanian monarch to the point that he gave an ultimatum to the Israeli government to provide Jordanian doctors treating Mr Meshaal with the poison antidote immediately or the Israeli ambassador would be expelled within 24 hours.
It became one of the biggest crises to face Mr Netanyahu’s government, with coalition partners threatening to leave. The antidote reached the Jordanian hospital in time to save Mr Meshaal’s life while Israel’s President Ezer Weitzman (1924-2005) – a great champion of peace with the neighbours- sent a personal apology to King Hussein, who demanded gestures of good will ( to satisfy his subjects two thirds of whom were Palestinians sympathising with Mr Meshaal) by releasing dozens of Palestinian militants from Israel’s prisons including Hamas’s founder and late leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin (1937-2004), who went on a tour of Muslim countries raising huge funds which strengthened the group at the expense of Mr Arafat’s and led to the exchange of assassinations, suicide bombs and violence and the collapse of peace.
Events later proved that Mr Clinton’s distrust of Mr Netanyahu was rather more accurate than that of King Hussein. Mr Netanyahu continued to frustrate the peace process, and provoking his neighbours, he even picked a fight with the Vatican over some of its property in Jerusalem and the appointment of bishops. There was an increasing criticism in Israel for his conduct with the Americans; while the Clinton administration did not miss an opportunity to directly address the Israeli public while distancing themselves from Mr Netanyahu.
The left, the labour party and centrists were all against Mr Netanyahu’s policy while Leah Rabin, widow of the late Yitzhak Rabin publicly repeated her accusations that Mr Netanyahu was responsible for her husband’s death by creating a climate of hatred and extremism which led an Israeli law student to assassination Rabin during a peace rally in Tel Aviv in November 1995.
The Clinton administration’s isolation of Mr Netanyahu while publicly supporting Israel as a nation played a major role in convincing Israeli voters to desert Netanyahu lead Likud and elect Ehud Barak who fought the election on a ticket of pulling the troops out of Southern Lebanon and rekindling peace with the Palestinians.
Last week in Washington Mr Netanyahu tried to drive a wedge between the White House and Congress(The angry attitude of the White House, foreign and American intellectuals at Israel, does not reflect American public opinion in support of Israel, and thus opinion of most of Congressmen.) In his address to Congress, Netanyahu tried to shift the focus of US foreign policy priority from his disagreement with President Obama over building Jewish settlements to the danger of Iran poses to American interests once it develops nuclear weapons. Some observers believe that Mr Netanyahu was testing Obama’s resolve believing that the latter’s health care plan wouldn’t pass through Congress.
Although Mr Netanyahu’s coalition partners in the Labour Party and other leftwing trends accused him and his ministers ‘of insisting on setting the region ablaze ,’ it is unlikely that the Israeli Prime Minister ( who is an opportunist who may go into an uncalculated adventure just to stay in power) would rush to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, for a simple reason: An effective elimination of Iran’s nuclear threat is beyond Israel’s capabilities.
All military experts I approached agree that any operation with the aim of achieving reasonable ( not just total) success to set the Iranians a few years back would require sustained air raids and direct hits by cruise missile with special warhead round the clock for two to three weeks non-stop. Such operation is much wider than Israel’s capability as well as it will require mid-air refuelling in airspace that would be denied to Israel
Mr Netanyahu did not heed advice from Israeli and non Israeli analysts not to challenge the most popular, nationally and internationally, American presidents since World War II. He was over optimistic in estimating the support he might get from the neo-conservative wing of Republicans. However President Obama to win the vote on Capitol Hill for his Health Care Plan, which catapulted him into the pages of history should have required different calculation by the Israeli Prime Minister. The vote restored his popularity in the U.S. and worldwide as it was coupled with an agreement with Moscow on reduction of nuclear warheads, and a swift visit to the troops in Afghanistan.
Unless Mr Netanyahu finds a more diplomatic angle and a way to restore confidence in a sceptical White House ( and that only by starting talks with the Palestinians which requires freezing all settlements activities as part of 13 points list of demands that President Obama handed down to Bibi) and showing a true will for peace, history might repeat itself and his coalition collapse. Worse for him still, if the emboldened President puts his own Obama Plan ( which will be a plan this time not a road map) on the table and knocks Israeli and Palestinians heads together on ‘take it or leave it and bear the consequences’ lines.
On their part, the Palestinians, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, could even embarrass Mr Netanyahu by going over his head and exploiting Israel’s free press to address the Israeli electorate directly. They can present a set of very reasonable specific options even in the shape of paid ads. But a good number of Israeli media outlets would welcome comment and analysis by Palestinian writers or co-penned by Israelis and Palestinians outlining peace proposals and framework of negotiations for a final settlement.
Obama’s triumph ( Health Care Plan) on Capitol Hill at a time of chilling relations between Washington and the Jewish state which is facing other problems in the world (London expelled an Israeli diplomat in charge of intelligence at from its embassy on Tuesday) will increase the isolation of the Netanyahu government.
It is possible that we would see a replay of the late 1990s scenario with the collapse of Netanyahu coalition, or a new election with him doing much worse than did last year, with Israeli voters opting for a government blessed by Washington to start peace negotiations ; or Netanyahu might be forced into a coalition with Kadima and possibly work with the White House in a process to implement the two-state solution as a strategic option to ensure security.
There is a window of opportunity opened by Obama’s victory on Capitol Hill, but, like most windows of opportunity, the time it remains open is limited. Extremists and anti-peace camp would do their best to ignite another war and close this window ( Hamas, sure on orders from Iran and Syria fire rockets on Israel to shift efforts away from peace to confrontation).
©Copyrights Adel Darwish 2010, not to be reproduced or used in whole or in part without permission.