Israel Matzav

Obama's Riyadh disaster

At Foreign Policy magazine's The Cable blog, Laura Rozen reports that President Obama's June 3 meeting with King Abdullah at Abdullah's horse ranch outside Riyadh 'did not go well.'

Sources say Obama was hoping to persuade the king to be ready to show reciprocal gestures to Israel, which Washington has been pushing to halt settlements with the goal of advancing regional peace and the creation of a Palestinian state.

"The more time goes by, the more the Saudi meeting was a watershed event," said the former U.S. official who recently traveled to Riyadh. "It was the first time that President Obama as a senator, candidate, or president was not able to get almost anything or any movement using his personal power of persuasion."

"The bottom line is that the Saudis were not prepared," the former official continued, for Obama to ask them to take steps toward Israel. Obama changed his trip to go to Saudi Arabia, he pointed out.

"Senior sources in the Saudi national security team," he said, "think the president's trip was poorly prepared." From their perspective, "he was coming and asking them for big favors with no preparation," but "the Saudis never give big" in that situation.

The former official said that Ross has told associates that Obama was "upset" about the meeting "because he got nothing out of it." Ross didn't respond to a query.

The former official said Ross's move to the NSC was in discussion before the Riyadh summit. "But the meeting may have been 'the final straw,' he said. "People at the NSC will obviously strenuously dispute that, but Dennis Ross is saying it to everybody. That's his narrative about the NSC and I have heard it from a number of people."

Another official, speaking not for attribution, said last month that the 85-year-old Saudi monarch had launched a tirade during Obama's long meeting in Riyadh, and that other Saudi officials had later apologized to the U.S. president for the king's behavior. The official seemed to imply that the tirade was related to Israel, and that the king may be showing his age.

...

"I can't imagine Obama pressing the Israelis on settlements without expecting the Arabs to do something," University of Vermont Saudi and Persian Gulf expert F. Gregory Gause told Foreign Policy, while saying he had no specific knowledge about the meeting. "He is pushing the Israelis, but he wants to show that in pushing them, it's also bringing the Arabs closer" to peace with Israel. "He wants the Saudis to make some gesture to make it easier for the Israelis to stop settlements."

"And my reading of the Saudis," Gause continued, "is they are not interested. We can criticize. But their line on this is, ‘We have done that already and gotten nothing. We did that in 2002 with the Abdullah peace plan and renewed it in 2007, and got the entire Arab league to sign on. Now why do more? We did that and got nothing.'"

Read the whole thing.

The Saudis have lost interest in the 'Palestinians.' They were trying to humor the US with the 2002 'Saudi plan' and they are certainly not going to do or offer any more than they have already done and offered. The Saudis don't care if Israel and the 'Palestinians' fight forever, but they are not going to risk giving al-Qaeda another grudge against the royal family by orchestrating Arab recognition of the Jewish state of Israel in exchange for anything less than a full Israeli surrender that will ensure that recognition is short-lived.

If President Obama really believes that Israeli concessions on 'settlement construction' - however defined - are going to bring a real quid pro quo from the Arab countries (and I don't consider an agreement not to shoot our passenger planes out of the sky when they fly over at 35,000 feet a real quid pro quo) he's simply delusional.

What this story ought to do - but clearly has not done - is to bring the Obumbler down to earth by showing him that he cannot talk everybody into doing anything he wants them to do. He can't talk the Saudis into doing his will, and hopefully he can't talk the Israelis into it either.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:49 PM