In an earlier post, I discussed a Ben Smith piece from Politico, whose theme was that President Obama has had it with Prime Minister Netanyahu because of the latter's refusal to move in lockstep over the 'peace process.'
Jonathan Tobin points out that it's not like Obama ever had a relationship with Netanyahu from the beginning.
Contrary to Smith, if there has been one consistent point about the administration’s attitude toward Israel during this period, it has been its hostility to Netanyahu. From the start, Obama, who prior to his election claimed to be all right with Israel but not with Netanyahu’s Likud Party, showed his dissatisfaction with the outcome of the Israeli vote in February 2009. Rather than seek a common strategy to revive a peace process that had crashed in 2008, when Abbas refused Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert’s offer of a Palestinian state, Obama was determined to create some distance between the United States and Israel. Though the Palestinians had already conceded that most Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem would stay under Israeli control even as they rejected Israel’s offer of peace, Obama drew a new line in the sand. The president demanded that Israel freeze all building, even in areas — like Jerusalem — where everyone knew that Israel would not retreat even in the event of peace. Finding themselves outflanked, the Palestinians had to similarly dig in their heels, and the last two years of failed attempts to get them back to the negotiating table were the inevitable result.
Obama’s first attempts to outmaneuver Netanyahu seemed to be based on a foolish hope that the prime minister would be forced into a coalition with the American favorite Tzipi Livni or out of office altogether. Rather than being weakened by this, Netanyahu gained strength. In the spring of 2010, Obama tried again when he deliberately picked a fight with Israel over the construction of new homes in existing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. The White House and the State Department subjected Netanyahu to an unprecedented campaign of abuse, but the result was no different than their previous efforts. Soon Obama was forced to back down and resort to a charm offensive aimed at damping down criticism from American Jews.
Rather than take responsibility for their own mistakes and the president’s relentless hostility to Netanyahu — whose grip on his parliamentary majority is stronger than ever — all we’re getting from the White House is more negative spin about Israel. But in order to believe a word of it, you’ve got to be afflicted with the sort of short-term memory loss that is the premise of Ben Smith’s article.
This one requires a little bit of mood setting, so let's go to the videotape.
Ben Smith reports that the Odd Couple of - no not Felix and Oscar - Barack and Bibi - is breaking up.
The notion that the two men could prove a productive diplomatic odd couple has been tossed aside because, in the American view, the worst expectations about Netanyahu’s intransigence have been confirmed. The new view: Netanyahu chose the constraints of a coalition that he steered further right this month, and the U.S. won’t be offering him help, or sympathy, with his domestic politics going forward.
Meanwhile, this distinctly non-rose colored view of Netanyahu has taken hold in the White House just as there is growing doubt about whether Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas can ever be a consistent, strong American ally. The twin conclusions have brought a distinct frost to administration relations with both men — a chill that for now seems likely to freeze the chances for any new U.S. peace initiative in the region.
“Every leader faces difficult politics — the question for both sides is whether they’re willing to make tough choices that are in their interests despite the politics,” said a White House official of both Netanyahu and Abbas, the latter of whom has drawn White House ire for what officials described as inconsistent demands.
This latest moment of gloom comes as the White House has lost interest in the Middle East for another reason. Obama’s two departing senior aides, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, were personally deeply involved in the Middle East talks, viewing them as historic and politically promising opportunities. They’re being replaced with staffers with little demonstrated interest and few ties to Israel, Bill Daley and David Plouffe.
“There’s definitely been a change since Rahm and Axelrod left,” said Zvika Krieger, a senior vice president of The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace in Washington.
...
But the Thanksgiving collapse of talks launched just weeks earlier with great fanfare — prompted by Netanyahu’s refusal to negotiate on points other than security, and the Palestinians’ refusal to enter the American-led talks without prior concessions — has sent the U.S. into a period of re-evaluation, and of frustration with the two leaders in particular.
“It was a total failure of imagination on both their parts,” said a former U.S. official who has been involved in the recent peace talks. “The problem is when you have leaders who lack the imagination to understand how their political environments would change with a deal.”
The U.S. has no obvious path to punish, much less replace, either leader, through a sharp statement . Netanyahu secured his political standing this month by shedding the leftmost elements of his coalition and bringing former Labor leader Ehud Barak into the government in a new party. Abbas’s role as Fayyad’s protector and as a counterbalance to Hamas, meanwhile, makes him better than possible alternatives.
But observers have noted the change.
“There is a sense of frustration, which is genuine — both in terms of the inability to choreograph a positive result and the continuing nature of delay and excuse that is too often exhibited by both sides to this conflict,” said former Rep. Robert Wexler, who now heads the Abraham Center.
“There’s no question that this represents a recognition that they really are up against certain limitations,” said veteran Mideast negotiator Aaron David Miller, now a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, saying it showed the realization that Obama’s rhetoric and efforts “simply cannot substitute for the absence of ownership in these negotiations on the part of the Israelis and the Palestinians.”
Observers debate the consequences of the new chill, and pro-Palestinian activists in particular worry that they will be its victims.
If Obama really has “lost interest” in solving that standoff, then give him credit for being a faster study than most of his predecessors. It only took Obama two years to realize that it’s not solvable in the current political paradigm, which is to say that the Palestinians won’t settle for just the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis won’t settle for annihilation. Palestinians want the entire territory and have spent the last sixty years convincing themselves that they’re both entitled to it and can recapture it. Palestinians aren’t interested in peaceful coexistence, and Israelis aren’t interested in the Helen Thomas plan.
Heck, it took both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton two full terms to figure it out. Kudos to Obama if he decides to stop wasting time and effort on the issue.
However, that doesn’t mean that Obama should cut Netanyahu loose over his rightward leanings. Israel remains a critical ally, if for no other reason to Obama than as a key component for containment of Iran. The alliance between the US and Israel is too critical for it to decline because of personal pique on the part of any President. He doesn’t have to like Netanyahu, but Obama had better figure out how to work with Netanyahu, because the time is rapidly approaching where the US and Israel will need Bibi.
Ed's right, but I can see Obama letting his personal pique over the 'peace process' get in the way of that relationship. Yet another reason to work to make Obama a one-term President.
The New America Foundation's Steve Clemons wrangled some regular Israel critics and some, like Peter Beinart, who come from a somewhat different place, into an open letter from senior ex-diplomats and writers that called for the U.S. to support a U.N. resolution condemning Israel's settlement in the territories, while affirming "our strong commitment to Israel's security."
This drew dismissive reference by the Washington Post's very hawkish new blogger, Jennifer Rubin, to "the usual crowd of Israel bashers" -- which is of course what Clemons had sought to avoid seeming. [Having Walt and Mearsheimer sign on certainly supports the notion that these are just Israel bashers. CiJ]
I would like to know from Jennifer Rubin and from her editor -- and from the Chairman of the Board of the Washington Post -- what I have ever said, what I have ever written, what I have ever organized that deserves the characterization I received from Jennifer Rubin today at the Washington Post. What does she consider makes me an Israel-basher?
I believe that she and I have a serious disagreement about what Israel's interests are -- and I believe that the Netanyahu wing of the Israeli political establishment regularly places short term interests over long to mid-term interests. But I don't call those who support Netanyahu Israel-bashers even though I believe that as patriotic as they may be as Israelis or as pro-Israel as they may be as Americans they are harming Israel's interests. That could be a constructive debate -- something where both sides could learn something, perhaps.
Calling someone as Israel-basher is akin to calling them an anti-Semite or a bigot, and that can't go without response....
There are two fights underway at the moment: One is defining the politically acceptable space in Washington for debating Israel policy; the other is the push by Bill Kristol and his allies to identify support for Israel explicitly with the Republican Party. That latter effort, ironically, has some of the same goals of the former, which would like to see the Democratic Party soften its hard line.
UPDATE: Former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block emails:
Steve is a friend and a very smart guy, so he probably knows this already, and while I have no dog in this particular hunt, having read neither his post nor Ms. Rubin's, just yours, given his "plaintive" question, perhaps it is worth pointing out the obvious.
Working to isolate Israel in the United Nations, and calling on the United States to abandon our policy of opposing unbalanced, anti-Israel Security Counsel resolutions, is the DEFINITION of anti-Israel activism, as is bragging or promoting in widely circulated emails one's letter being signed by the likes of Walt/Measheimer, Chas Freeman and a like crowd of mostly anti-Israel actors and critics. [Emphasis mine. CiJ]
Prime Minister Netanyahu's office has issued a statement regarding the demolition of the Shepherd's Hotel (now suddenly being called the 'historic' Shepherd's Hotel in much of the mainstream media) in Jerusalem's Nachlat Shimon neighborhood:
Actions undertaken yesterday at the Shepherd Hotel were conducted by private individuals in accordance with Israeli law. The Israeli government was not involved.
There should be no expectation that the State of Israel will impose a ban on Jews purchasing private property in Jerusalem. No democratic government would impose such a ban on Jews and Israel will certainly not do so.
Just as Arab residents of Jerusalem can buy or rent property in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Jews can buy or rent property in predominantly Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem.
Politico's Ben Smith argues that Sheldon Adelson's Yisrael HaYom has become Israel's Fox News.
Adelson's paper is an assault on the media status quo in the model of Fox News in a country where newspapers still litigate the political conversation. The echoes aren't subtle: One of the five principles printed on the tabloid's dense second page translates as "fair and balanced."
And like Fox, the paper has positioned itself against a mainstream media its editors cast as elitist and out of touch. Another of the five principles is "to remember that we are Israelis."
The paper's foreign editor, Boaz Bismuth, a former Israeli ambassador to Mauritania and longtime Paris correspondent for Yediot Aharonot — the new paper's main target and rival — embraces the comparison.
"Fox is proud to be American, but what is nice about America is that ABC and CBS and NBC are no less proud to be American," he said in an interview at the paper's quiet, humming Tel Aviv newsroom, leaving unstated the suggestion that Israel Hayom's rivals are not so proud.
"It doesn't mean that if sometimes Israel is right that I work for the government," said Bismuth, who offered an example of the new paper's posture: "If there are rumors about the bad conduct of a soldier, it won't immediately be our main headline."
Israel Hayom takes as its premise that out-of-touch mainstream media are the country's real power.
"They try to portray my newspaper as the real ruler of Israel, not Netanyahu," said Nahum Barnea, the top columnist at Yediot Aharonot, labeling the charge "ridiculous."
I don't have sales statistics, but my sense is that the number of newspapers sold in hard copy in this country has declined precipitously over the last 20 years. We get the JPost delivered, and I can tell you from experience that the last time we tried to cancel it, they cut the price again to persuade us to stay (that's two or three cuts in the last few years). In fact, the reason there are newspaper sales here at all here is that Orthodox and traditional Jewish Israelis won't turn on the computer or the television or radio on the Sabbath, and therefore they buy the Friday paper, which is like the Sunday paper elsewhere in the World. So far, the local newspapers have resisted giving any reasonable price for a "Friday only" subscription.
Fox also has considerable influence outside the US. Yisrael HaYom has none about which to speak. JPost and Haaretz carry Israel's message - or what they see as Israel's message - to the outside world. That message is not always presented the way that I (and I'm sure Adelson) would like to see it presented. While Adelson has conquered the market for Hebrew print media, his newspaper sorely lacks a real English language web site that is updated in real time (a must these days for having influence outside of Israel).
This is a small country that lives on exports. Our news media is no exception.
One of the people who got to meet with Ben Smith last week is my friend Yisrael Medad, who had some very positive thoughts about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
Israelis follow American politics as closely as most Americans, and there was a great deal of curiousity when I was there last week about who is the likeliest Republican presidential nominee.
Most Israelis didn't express a strong preference on that subject -- all the leading Republicans have at least generically hawkish, pro-Israel stands -- with a sole exception: Settlers love Sarah Palin.
I heard this from a few people, but most clearly from Yisrael Medad, a Queens-born dual citizen of the the U.S. and Israel who has lived for 30 years on top of a hill in Shilo, deep in the West Bank and inside any future Palestinian state. His is one of the settlements that the Israeli government would have to dismantle -- likely as not by force -- in any future peace deal. Medad had met Mike Huckabee, who has visited and backed both settlements in the West Bank -- though the one he visited is less remote, and more likely to be swapped into Israel, than Medad's -- and controversial Jewish expansion into an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
Palin, though, is Medad's favorite.
"I want to get Sarah Palin out here," he told me during an interview at his kitchen table. "She made a very good statement -- even if it was a little factually off."
Aside from a sort of general sympathy between settlers -- who see themselves as frontiersmen of sorts -- and the former Alaska governor, they've also gotten specific -- if somewhat hazy -- encouragement from Palin.
...
As Medad wrote on his blog earlier this year, "Whether she believes our communities will grow due to God or plain old Zionism, [this] is a very good base to build on. There are many other good reasons and she should be hear to see, learn and be impressed by all the factors: geopolitical, ideological, legal rights, military and more."
Well, yes, people on the Right here (and not just 'settlers') love Sarah Palin. But I could see them getting equally comfortable with Mike Huckabee or Mike Pence or Marco Rubio or even Rudy Giuliani to name a few.
Palin's attraction is that she's very outspoken about being pro-Israel (she wears it on her sleevelapel), that just about everything she does attracts a lot of attention, and that love her or hate her, everyone has an opinion about her. I'd love to see Palin come here - I've already been involved in one effort to bring her here.
Will Palin wink back at Winkie (Yisrael's nickname)? I hope so.
The only Israeli leaders who believe in peace are... Netanyahu and Livni!?!
Ben Smith was in Israel last week, and met with a number of government officials and media types. He produced this lengthy article, which has three particularly interesting points (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). One is obvious, the other two are less obvious.
The obvious point is that Israelis do not trust President Obama. Well, we knew that already. Anyone who has read this blog knows that Obama's approval ratings in Israel have been in single digits since the Cairo speech in June 2009. But it's not just the Israeli public that doesn't trust Obama - it's members of the Israeli government, including many of Netanyahu's closest advisers who don't trust the President. And at least some of them were willing to talk about it on the record.
“Israelis really hate Obama’s guts,” said Shmuel Rosner, a columnist for two leading Israeli newspapers. “We used to trust Americans to act like Americans, and this guy is like a European leader.”
Many senior Israeli leaders have concluded that Hillary Clinton and John McCain were right about Obama’s naivete and inexperience.
“The naïve liberals who are at the heart of the administration really believe in all the misconceptions the Palestinians and all their friends all over the world are trying to place,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former high-ranking military intelligence officer who is now deputy director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
Kuperwasser, like other Israelis, bridled at the suggestion that the country’s dislike of Obama draws from the Muslim influences of his heritage – or even his name.
“It drives me crazy. Who cares that his middle name is Hussein? It’s the last thing we care about. [To suggest that] is just anti-Semitism,” he said. “There is one reason why we are hesitant about this guy: he doesn’t understand us.”
Rosner is a columnist - a particularly perceptive columnist when it comes to American - Israeli relations, but a columnist all the same. Kuperwasser, however.... Many of you may not have heard of him, but he's someone who's a real expert on security affairs. I'm more than a little surprised that he spoke on the record and that his criticism was so harsh. But it's spot-on.
The problem is that virtually nobody in Israel who isn’t required by the logic of politics to express public faith in the political process of peace talks has much faith that the talks will lead anywhere. Netanyahu’s coalition is dominated by people with a profound skepticism about not just these talks, but of any negotiated peace.
“The only positive policy is to operate under the realistic assumption that as long as the PLO do not change fundamentally their thinking, no government of Israel can sign an agreement with them,” said Beni Begin, a cabinet minister from Netanyahu’s own Likud party and – like most of the Israeli government – a firm skeptic of the prospects for a Palestinian state any time soon.
The extremist group Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, “is not a ‘real problem’,” Begin says, mocking the diplomatic conversation on the topic. “It’s an insurmountable problem. Everyone knows it.”
Netanyahu’s close staff and his government share some of that skepticism.
“It might be that the reason you haven't had peace with the Palestinians is not because you haven’t had changes in policies, not because you haven’t had changes with the American approach, but because the Palestinians haven’t brought themselves to real reconciliation with Israel,” Netanyahu’s closest adviser, Ron Dermer, told POLITICO.
The fact that Begin and Dermer said what they said is not surprising. But what you're missing here is the undertone - let me fill that in. Everyone here agrees that much of the fault for the failure of the 'peace process' for the last two years lies with Obama. What Begin and Dermer are pointing out is one of the things that most annoys Israelis about Obama: He's (acting like he's) living in Fantasyland. He is so consumed with the 'fierce moral urgency' of making an 'historic settlement' between Israelis and 'Palestinians' (maybe because he has not had any other foreign policy successes, but that's of no consequence to people here) that he is pretending that the obstacles to that 'settlement' don't exist. Obama may want to make peace, but by trying to force it at a time when the parties aren't ready for it (and let's face it - they're not) all he is doing is pushing the prospects for peace back. Consider this from Eyal Arad, who led Tzipi Livni's campaign in the last election:
“If Obama wanted to be a transformational figure, he would never have led with the settlements,” said Eyal Arad, the architect of Livni’s campaign for prime minister. He argues – like most Israelis – that Obama inadvertently got talks hung up on a matter of irrelevant principle, rather than engaging the reality that some settlements can stay while others must go.
“The settlements were pushed by a bunch of left-wingers who were out of sync with the realities and were out of government too long,” he said. “The irony is that Obama went directly back to the place where George Bush the father left off.”
Yes, Obama has set the 'peace process' back 20 years to the days of Madrid.
The second particularly interesting point in Smith's article - and one which makes sense but has not been reported in the media here - is that the extra 20 F-35's were requested by Prime Minister Netanyahu in response to the Saudi arms package in order to maintain Israel's 'qualitative advantage' (to which Obama's few remaining supporters in the pro-Israel community often point as proof of Obama's pro-Israel bona fides) and were supposed to be unconnected to the 'settlement freeze' extension. Until now, we had heard how every other element in the Obama package for the 'settlement freeze' had been something that Israel had asked for before or was supposed to get anyway. But the extra squadron of F-35's had seemingly come out of the blue. Now, we know that it didn't. It was requested by Israel to meet a specific need that was not connected to the 'peace process.' It's not just what Israelis would call a chupar (a sweetener). Surprise, surprise, surprise.
The other point I found particularly interesting in Smith's article is that Netanyahu's advisers put him in the camp of being among the few true believers in the 'peace process.' As some of you may have sensed, I've been going back and forth in my own mind over the last couple of months as to whether Netanyahu actually believes in the 'peace process,' or whether he's trying to call Abu Mazen's bluff. Smith makes it clear that Netanyahu - and Tzipi Livni - may be the only true believers that it's possible to make peace with 'Palestinians' in this generation (recall that earlier I cited Eyal Arad - one of Livni's closest advisers - who also apparently does not believe it's possible).
Netanyahu, oddly enough, given his perception around the world (and particularly in Washington) as an unyielding hawk, sounds like a virtual peacenik compared with many of his advisers. Almost alone on the right, the prime minister “thinks (Palestinian president) Abu Mazen may rise to the occasion,” Dermer said.
“The prime minister is not only more optimistic than his staff. The prime minister is more optimistic than his ministers,” he said, adding that unlike Begin, Netanyahu “does not believe that the status quo is sustainable.”
Netanyahu is almost alone in his party in suggesting that the peace process could go somewhere; one of the few others in Israeli public life who insists on that point is his chief rival and critic, opposition leader Tzipi Livni. Peace talks really could advance, she argues, if Israel had a leader whom the Americans and Palestinians could trust, as they did when she served as Foreign Minister when her party, Kadima, ran the government before the rightward correction that occurred just weeks after Obama’s own election.
“I believe it’s feasible, but I don’t have a 100 percent guarantee. What I don’t do is try to undermine the willingness of the other side,” Livni told POLITICO. “When we negotiated there was trust – there’s no trust now.... It depends on the way you negotiate.”
Livni scrupulously avoids criticizing Obama’s conduct of the peace talks, but those around her are blunter.
So Netanyahu actually believes 'peace' is possible, and so does Livni so long as someone other than Netanyahushe is in charge. But no one else does. Can Netanyahu drag the rest of the country along under those circumstances? I doubt it. Arik Sharon dragged the country along on the Gaza expulsion by sheer force of character. Given the results of that endeavor, I doubt even Sharon could drag the country along today. Netanyahu certainly cannot. And Livni is even less likely to do so.
The first rule of doctors is 'First, do no harm.' It's clear to everyone here (I'm not even getting into the 'Palestinian' perceptions because I don't believe they were honest with Smith) that peace isn't going to happen right now. The least Obama could do would be to leave the region no worse off than he found it. At the moment, even that looks unlikely.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
In an earlier post, I discussed a Ben Smith piece from Politico, whose theme was that President Obama has had it with Prime Minister Netanyahu because of the latter's refusal to move in lockstep over the 'peace process.'
