New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper reporting ahead of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to the US emphasised their mutual lack of trust. She said they were “facing a turning point in a relationship that has never been warm.
By all accounts, they do not trust each other. President Obama has told aides and allies that he does not believe that Mr. Netanyahu will ever be willing to make the kind of big concessions that will lead to a peace deal.
For his part, Mr. Netanyahu has complained that Mr. Obama has pushed Israel too far."
Columnist Roger Cohen concurs. "The best Obama and Netanyahu will ever be able to do is position a fig-leaf of decorum over their differences. The worst poison is distrust. These two men have it aplenty for each other."
The personal friction was exacerbated by a phrase in President Obama’s policy speech, the remarks made before Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived in Washington. Analyst Mark A. Heller mentioned this in an article he wrote for “Insight” published by The Institute for National Strategic Studies.
“There is no reason to suspect that, Obama, by invoking 1967, intended to provoke a firestorm of controversy and a clash with Netanyahu. This was a carefully crafted speech that accommodated most Israeli sensitivities: the reference to borders was located in a brief paragraph that stipulated “negotiations” or “negotiated” three times, the point of reference used was “1967 lines” rather than the tendentious and inaccurate term “1967 borders” to which most Israelis are allergic, and the coupling of this point of reference with mutually agreed swaps clearly implied that it was meant to be the starting point of negotiations rather than their outcome.” Well it appears that it wasn’t enough. Perhaps if the president should have fleshed out the phrase, “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”
Heller elaborates, “1967 has such a highly charged symbolic value in the discourse about the conflict that Obama and his political advisers should have expected headline writers, pundits, and Israeli politicians to simplify and sensationalize his speech and focus on that one phrase to the exclusion of almost everything else – which they did. Moreover, the growth of settlement blocs in the intervening years has created a demographic reality that other US presidents, especially Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, acknowledged explicitly – which Obama did not do. Consequently, Netanyahu, perhaps caught off guard and concerned about a political backlash at home, did not reaffirm his own previous endorsement of a two-state solution or focus his attention on settlement blocs, but instead felt compelled to stress his refusal to do what he had not actually been asked to do: return to the 1967 lines. And Obama then felt compelled, three days later, to remove ambiguity and lower the flames of this controversy by telling the AIPAC Policy Conference that his term of reference had been misreported or misinterpreted and that what he meant was that the parties themselves will negotiate a border that is, by definition, "different than the one existing on June 4, 1967."
Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,( he is described by the New York Review of Books as “a neoconservative with very hawkish views on the Middle East”) provided his own interpretation of the awkward reference to the 1967 lines.
“Obama became the first sitting president to say that the final borders should be "based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps." (The Clinton Parameters -- which former President Bill Clinton presented to the two sides in December 2000 and then officially withdrew a month later, when they were not accepted -- did not mention the 1967 borders but did mention ‘swaps and other territorial arrangements.’)
The Obama formulation concretizes a move away from four decades of U.S. policy based on U.N. Security Council resolution 242 of November 1967, which has always interpreted calls for an Israeli withdrawal to a ‘secure and recognized’ border as not synonymous with the pre-1967 boundaries. The idea of land swaps, which may very well be a solution that the parties themselves choose to pursue, sounds very different when endorsed by the president of the United States. In effect, it means the official U.S. view is that resolution of the territorial aspect of the conflict can only be achieved if Israel cedes territory it held even before the 1967 war.
The president also said that the new Palestinian state should have borders with Egypt, Jordan and Israel, and referred to the ‘full and phased’ withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces. This statement implies categorical American opposition to any open-ended Israeli presence inside the future ‘Palestine.’ This is also the first such statement by a U.S. president, and it differs significantly from the Clinton Parameters, which envisioned three Israeli ‘facilities’ inside the West Bank, with no time limit on their presence.”
The very sympathetic reception he got at the AIPAC conference and at his address to both houses on Capitol Hill, more than compensated Netanyahu for the initial bad start at the time of the Oval Room meeting with the president.
Describing the meeting in the Capitol New York Times reporters Helene Cooper and Ethan Bronner said, "Mr. Netanyahu was granted a grand platform before a joint meeting of Congress, and his speech had many of the trappings of a presidential State of the Union address."
Watching the many standing ovations Prime Minister Netanyahu received I found his skillful use of intonation, emphasis and pause to cue applause somewhat disconcerting.
Now that the dust has settled and we are able to assess what really was achieved during Netanyahu's visit, it seems that apart from an enormous boost to his ego, nothing has changed.
His firm declarations at the contentious White House meeting with President Obama and in the address to Congress have thrown differences with the Palestinians into sharp relief. Admittedly, they won support for the prime minister in his right wing coalition government, but not without some criticism.
Yossi Alpher, co-editor of "Bitter Lemons," an Internet forum on Middle East issues, and former head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, said. “Netanyahu outlined his opening position for a peace process, but it’s a nonstarter. He made peace with Congress and even called a truce with Obama, but I don’t think he’ll convince anyone in Europe, the Arab world or the White House to take his side.”
Commenting on the present impasse Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen said, “The current situation in the Middle East does not allow for procrastination"…. "It's time for Netanyahu to ditch his do-nothing policy."
Momentarily Cohen played the devil's advocate arguing, "I can understand Netanyahu’s reluctance to move off the dime. The Arab world is in flux. Zealots, radicals and anti-Semites are vying for influence. The region’s so-called revolutions are actually counterrevolutions — reversing the policies of the military men who secularized their governments and tempered their hot hate of Israel with cold pragmatism. The region may not be getting ahead of history but returning to it. It could be a swell time to do nothing."
Predictably Thomas L. Friedman summed up the situation with more than a pinch of pessimism. "It may be that Israeli and Palestinian leaders are incapable of surprising anyone anymore, in which case the logic on the ground will prevail: Israel will gradually absorb the whole West Bank, so, together with Israel proper, a Jewish minority will be ruling over an Arab majority. Israel’s enemies will refer to it as 'the Jewish apartheid state.' America, Israel’s only true friend, will find itself having to defend an Israel whose policies it does not believe in and whose leaders it does not respect — and the tensions between the U.S. and Israel displayed in Washington last week will seem quaint by comparison."
Ever since he took office the prime minister has been fettered by his coalition partners and some members of his own Likud party. He has very little political leeway.
The Palestinian leadership is also hamstrung by Islamic extremist elements. It fears being accused of betraying the Palestinian cause.
Our experience with Palestinian leaders calls to mind the adage “You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
President Obama moved on to drink a pint of Guinness in Ireland and propose a toast to Queen Elizabeth in Buckingham Palace while Bibi returned home still basking in the warmth of the standing ovations on Capitol Hill.
Have a good weekend
Beni 25th of May, 2011.
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