Obama Pushing U.S.-Israel Alliance to the Brink?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at the weekly cabinet meeting in his office in Jerusalem, March 14, 2010.
/ APTrying to meddle in a foreign country's internal politics is like playing with fire, but in the cause of pushing for progress toward Israeli-Arab peace it looks to many as though Obama is brandishing a big box of matches and a large jerrycan of gasoline. Instead of calming suddenly choppy seas between Washington and Jerusalem, he is demanding that Israel instantly make some concessions that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may consider politically impossible.
The State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley, today confirmed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Netnayahu for specific commitments - but Crowley refused to say what is being requested. This follows the annoying timing of Israel's government announcing an expansion of a Jewish neighborhood in the captured eastern half of Jerusalem -- just when Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel last week.
One of the most powerful lobby groups in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is practically declaring an emergency. It sent more than 100,000 members an e-mail blast on Sunday that sought to shift the blame onto Washington: "The Obama Administration's recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern. AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State."
A more left-leaning, mostly Jewish lobby group called J Street issued a very different statement that said the Obama Administration's annoyance is understandable. J Street is calling on the White House to be more explicit in framing possible future borders for an independent state of Palestine.
As soon as tomorrow, Obama's Middle East mediator, former senator George Mitchell, is to launch a new round of talks - though not face-to-face - between Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas.
According to senior Israeli sources, the Obama administration is demanding that Israel take some steps that Netanyahu would find difficult if he is to keep key right-wing political parties in his coalition:
1.) Fully explain why the housing announcement was made while Biden was in Jerusalem, and take bureaucratic steps to ensure that top-level U.S. officials are not similarly taken by surprise in the future.
2.) Declare that talks with the Palestinians should quickly turn to the deepest issues: refugees, borders of a new Palestinian state, Jerusalem's status, how to share water, the fate of settlements, and future rights for refugees.
3.) Make a major gesture to Abbas, aimed at strengthening Yasser Arafat's highly challenged successor, such as the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
4.) Reverse the decision to approve 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem.
Looking closely at that list - as Israeli officials are surely doing -- it seems that if Netanyahu is to preserve his coalition he could perhaps acceptably answer #1, dance around #2, surely go along with #3, but never agree to #4 because Israel annexed the parts of Jerusalem it captured in 1967 and insists that the whole city is the Jewish State's capital.
A religious Jewish party named Shas would bolt. New elections might be required.
Few tears would be shed in official Washington if Netanyahu is forced out. It does not seem that he has gotten along warmly with Obama, certainly nothing like George W. Bush's warm friendship with Ariel Sharon, and the extent to which they agree on how to confront Iran's nuclear program remains veiled in ambiguity.
Netanyahu might not fall from power, if he backs off on Jewish construction in East Jerusalem. Perhaps the Shas party and other right-wingers would leave the coalition, but a larger moderate party - Kadima - might join and preserve Netanyahu's majority in the Knesset (the parliament).
Kadima was established by Ariel Sharon, the former prime minister who has been in a coma for over four years. Its leader now is Tzipi Livni, the former Mossad spy who got along well with Washington during her time as foreign minister.
Middle East timing often brims with irony, and on the calendar now is the huge annual policy conference of AIPAC -- to bring more than 5,000 big American fans of Israel to the Washington, D.C. convention center starting this coming Sunday. On the agenda for March 22 are two keynote speakers: Secretary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu. The prime minister will fly in for a very brief visit to mend fences and deliver a pep talk to American Jews and Israel's supporters in Congress.
CBS News correspondent Dan Raviv is based in Washington, where he hosts radio's CBS News Weekend Roundup. He is also co-author of books including Friends In Deed: Inside the U.S.-Israel Alliance.
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Obama as a Modern Pharaoh
Kevin MacDonald
June 5, 2009
The more important point is that it really doesn?t matter if it?s good for Israel. The present government is the most right-wing in Israeli history, and many of its supporters are the types of fanatics putting up posters stating that Obama is an ?Anti-Semitic Jew hater.?
The extremists have had a powerful say in Israeli politics, at least since the 1967 war. They are now more entrenched than ever. There is simply no way that these people are going to make major territorial concessions without a fight.
Any attempt to rein in the settlements or make a meaningful withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem or allow a viable Palestinian state would produce a civil war among Israelis. But it?s also quite clear that there is no political will in Israel for supporting such policies. The Labor Party functions mainly to collaborate with the right in order to give it a fig leaf of respectability (see also here). (Predictably, Labor leader Ehud Barak was sent to the US to present the Israeli position on the settlements.) According to my calculation, the ethno?religious?nationalist?pro-settlement right holds 92 of 120 seats in the Knesset.
As throughout Jewish history, it is the most committed members who determine the direction of the entire group. This is doubtless true of most groups, but it is especially the case with Jews where there is a long history of fanaticism. In the present case, the most fanatical members of the Jewish community are firmly in support of territorial expansion in the West Bank. They are a solid majority in Israeli politics.
I am reminded of Christiane Amanpour?s depiction of Jewish fanatics in her excellent TV documentary, God?s Jewish Warriors (now back online[!]). One of the early scenes shows a large force of Israeli soldiers forcibly removing settlers from a Hebron neighborhood. Imagine what it would be like to remove anything approaching the nearly 500,000 settlers (as of 2006) now living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
These West Bank settlers and Jewish activists are massively ethnocentric, and they do not accept Western values like democracy and free speech. They live in a completely Jewish world where their every thought and perception is colored by their Jewish identity. Theirs is an apartheid world separated by high concrete walls from their Palestinian neighbors, where even tiny settlements are necessarily protected by the Israeli army.
At a time when Americans are constantly being encouraged by Jewish organizations like the ADL to be ever more tolerant of all kinds of diversity, these people are anything but tolerant. Calls for expropriation and expulsion of the Palestinians are commonplace among them. Many believe that God gave Jews all of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Such people may not be representative of the Jewish community, at least in America. But their numbers are large, and they have created ?facts on the ground? that make any kind of reasonable settlement impossible.
In the foreseeable future, it is quite clear that no Israeli government will fail to promote their interests. And the problem will only exacerbate as time goes on because the fanatics are the ones having the children. Already, the calls for ?natural growth? of the settlements are rationalized because of the high fertility of the settler population.
As Walt points out, there are indeed signs in America that the less fanatic Jews, such as J Street, may have some influence in blunting the force of the Israel Lobby or possibly even turning it against the settlement movement. However, in keeping with the general finding that the most extreme Jews tend to win the day within the Jewish community, I predict that in the end Jews will be forced to choose between supporting their extremist brethren, or become marginalized or even ostracized from the Jewish community. The great majority of activist Jews in the US will support Israel even if it continues to stand firmly behind the settlement movement.
And when push comes to shove, Jews will go along with the activists who lead the organized Jewish community. One can talk about U.S. interests or Israeli interests all one wants, but this is a fight to the finish.
I?m not sure that Obama realizes what he?s getting into.
Kevin MacDonald is a professor of psychology at California State University?Long Beach.
Bang! And he was right!
that's what Dr. Mahathir said and he was verbally attacked from all over.
nice post btw.
THE PALESTINIANS VIA THE PLO, DID THEIR BEST TO TERRORIZE ISRAEL.
THE PALESTINIANS HAVE LAUNCHED THOUSANDS OF ROCKETS AND ARTILLERY INTO ISRAEL OVER THE YEARS.
HOW MANY HUNDREDS HOMOCIDE BOMBERS FROM "PALESTINE" HAVE KILLED HUNDREDS OF ISRAELI CIVILIANS?
Why did the Jews have the need to leave Europe and create a homeland for them in the heart of the Middle East? Is it because they believe its theirs, or is it because they couldn't get along with the Europeans? And if the latter is the reason why do we expect the Arabs to succeed when many nations didn't?
It seems they came to the Middle East because they know their chances of survival is better there.
Read Dr Kevin Macdonald. He has some interesting historic prespectives regarding the Jews and the West.
No, the Jews attempted for centuries to live in peace with their European neighbors -- confined into ghettos so small that every European town has a "Jew Street" where they were forced to live in densities that exceed modern day Tokyo. Jews were not allowed to hold jobs, own land, run for public office, or integrate into society in any way until Napoleon finally freed them from this barbaric slavery.
Why were the Jews in Europe -- talk to the Romans -- they mercilessly kicked almost every Jew out of modern day Israel 2,000 years ago. Perhaps you wish they died off like almost every other society of that age (with the notable exception of the Chinese)? But if you want to place the blame where it lies, place it at the foot of the Roman legions who invented our modern day notion of "ethnic cleansing" after forcibly scattering the Jews to the four corners of the earth.
The Jews "came to the Middle East" (as you say) 2,500 years ago after being enslaved in Egypt -- perhaps you've heard of Moses? They are, and have always been a Semitic people indigenous to the Middle East ranging from Persia to Northern Africa. They have as much "right" to live on the infinitesimally tiny strip of land they developed (from the malarial swamps that the coastal range always was -- read Mark Twain) as any other current inhibitor of the Middle East.
What the heck is Adam Sandler doing in the background ? Is he researching a future film role ?
Mr. Sandler, some actors are born to play certain historical figures, and some are not.
Will Smith, for example, was obviously born to play Barack Obama in some inevitable film role some day.
But you sir, sadly, were not born to play Bibi Netanyahu.