Upping the ante on Israel

By David Ignatius

May 20, 2009

The Washington Post

Binyamin Netanyahu’s friends liken him to a good poker player. They explain, for example, that before the Israeli prime minister plays the card marked “Palestinian state,” he wants an American commitment that this state will be demilitarized.

But the Israeli leader faced an unusual test in his meeting this week with Barack Obama. The new president is not the poker-player sort of politician: When he decides to do something, he goes straight at it, laying his cards on the table face-up. That direct style is becoming an Obama signature, and it has subtly changed the dynamics of the U.S. dialogue with Israel.

The relationship has traditionally been an intricate political dance, with American presidents weighing how far they can go without offending Israel’s supporters in Congress. But that sort of gamesmanship was absent this time: Obama said he wants negotiations for a Palestinian state, soon, and he challenged the Israeli prime minister to get on board.

Obama squeezed Netanyahu, ever so gently, in his public comments after their Oval Office meeting. “I have great confidence in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s political skills, but also his historical vision. . . . And I have great confidence that he’s going to rise to the occasion,” Obama said.

Obama similarly outmaneuvered Netanyahu in the run-up to the White House meeting. The Israeli leader sought to link progress on the Palestinian issue with a tough U.S. stand against Iran. But from his first day in office, Obama began staking out strong U.S. positions — for a Palestinian state and for engagement with Iran. By this week, Netanyahu found himself acceding to Obama’s plans for exploratory talks with Iran through year-end, even though many Israelis fear this timetable could be dangerous.

To reassure Israel and its supporters, Obama said the right words Monday: He spoke about the “special relationship” and pledged that “Israel’s security is paramount.” But that didn’t paper over the wide gap between U.S. and Israeli positions on Palestinian statehood.

The Obama strategy over the next few months will be to create a regional framework for peace negotiations that’s enticing enough to draw in the wary Netanyahu. To give Israel some quick tangible benefits, the United States wants the Arabs to begin normalizing relations with the Jewish state. Jordan’s King Abdullah describes this promise of recognition by the Arab League nations as a “23-state solution.”

The key to this front-loading strategy is Saudi Arabia. But the Saudis warn privately that they won’t normalize anything unless Israel makes some dramatic moves — such as freezing settlements in the occupied West Bank — that demonstrate its commitment to the 2003 “road map” for peace.

To break this logjam, the Obama administration appears ready to lean hard on Netanyahu. Obama has a range of options, starting with criticism of Israel for failing to meet the road map conditions and escalating to tougher measures.

Obama bluntly stated his opposition to settlements: “I shared with the prime minister the fact that under the road map . . . there’s a clear understanding that we have to make progress in settlements. Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward.”

To start narrowing the gap between U.S. and Israeli positions, Obama directed his Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, to sit down with the Israeli team immediately after the Oval Office meeting. Mitchell’s mediation efforts will intensify in coming days, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visit Washington next week and Obama travels to Cairo in early June for a speech that will dramatize his outreach to the Arab world.

Here’s where Netanyahu’s poker skills will be tested. The Israeli prime minister wants U.S. and Arab leaders to pledge that any future Palestinian state will be demilitarized — with no army and no control over its airspace — before he agrees to negotiate the details of statehood. Netanyahu probably isn’t bluffing on this one: Unless a formula can be reached that protects Israeli security, he won’t play.

Netanyahu knew Obama was a rare politician when they first met in March 2007. Back then, nobody was giving the Illinois senator much of a chance, but the Likud leader told his aides: “I think this is the next president of the United States.” Now Netanyahu faces the full force of the Obama political phenomenon — a president who feels politically secure enough to ignore the usual rules of the U.S.-Israel relationship and push hard for what he thinks is right.

The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address is davidignatius@washpost.com.

Don’t hold back

Editorial

May 14, 2009

The Economist

Barack Obama must not just scold Israel’s leader but also promote his own plan soon

FOR the first time in many years, an Israeli government is scared stiff that an American administration may squeeze it until its pips squeak. That is surely a good thing, if it makes the Israelis more amenable to giving the Palestinians the fair deal—in essence, a proper state of their own—that might bring peace to the two peoples and to the wider region of the Middle East. So when Barack Obama meets Binyamin Netanyahu in the White House on May 18th, he must be tough with him.

Mr Netanyahu refuses publicly to accept the notion of two states. He seems to want to continue to squeeze the Gaza Strip until its elected government, run by the Islamist movement, Hamas, is toppled. He says he will not give Syria back the Golan Heights, which Israel conquered in 1967. He now adds a demand that the Palestinians should not just recognise Israel as a country but as a specifically Jewish state. He refuses to freeze the growth of Jewish settlements that continue to bite into what is left of a barely contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank. And, most pressingly, he seeks to link peace with the Palestinians to a prior deal between the West and Iran to ensure that the Islamic Republic is prevented from having a nuclear bomb. His stance on these issues makes him appear an unpromising partner in negotiation; but much the same was said of Menachem Begin, whom the Americans persuaded to make peace with Egypt 30 years ago, so it’s certainly worth Mr Obama’s while to put some political capital into budging him.

Mr Obama must tell Mr Netanyahu that he is flat wrong on all those counts. No more settlements can be built or expanded—on pain of a reduction in American aid. On Iran, Mr Netanyahu’s logic is back-to-front. For sure, sensible leaders the world over, including Arab ones, want Iran to forgo the bomb. But how much easier it would be to persuade the Iranians to drop their ambitions if they were unable to invoke the unresolved conflict over Israel as part of a holy nuclear cause.

It is not just for the Palestinians’ sake that Mr Obama needs to take a tough line. Being too kind to the Israelis, as American administrations have been in the past, does them no favour in the long run either. Israel’s long-term security can be ensured only by America cajoling and even threatening its leaders in the hope that they will accept that the Israeli state’s safety depends overwhelmingly on the viability of a Palestinian one.

Mr Netanyahu does, however, have one good question to pose to the American administration. Who would govern the Palestinian state the world wants him to create in the West Bank and Gaza? Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party run the West Bank under Israeli supervision but are chronically weak. Hamas is strong. Both movements say that Israel must withdraw from every inch of land occupied in 1967 and accept back to what is now the Jewish state all the Arab refugees who fled more than 60 years ago. But unlike Fatah, which has explicitly accepted the idea of two states, Hamas, while groping towards a de facto acceptance of Israel, has yet to renounce its desire eventually to liberate all of Palestine from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea.

So far Mr Obama has held his cards to his chest. But if he is to push Israel into concessions he needs to answer the Hamas conundrum. Unlike George Bush’s team, Mr Obama’s has endorsed the idea of a Palestinian government that would include Hamas and so talk with more authority to the Israelis, making any agreement more likely to stick. The snag is that the two halves of the Palestinian movement are at daggers’ drawn and have fluffed repeated opportunities to reconcile.

The chances are that Mr Netanyahu’s rendezvous at the White House will not end in a public fracas. The Israeli leader is too clever for that, and shouting in public is not Mr Obama’s style. More likely, the pair will frankly acknowledge differences. Mr Netanyahu is a practised opportunist—and may indeed edge towards an acceptance of the two-state idea over time. After all, he says he accepts Mr Bush’s “road map” that led nowhere but clearly affirmed a two-state solution.

In Palestine it takes three to tango

Still, if the meeting does end in a stalemate, it will not be enough merely for Mr Obama to mutter doleful thoughts about reassessing America’s special relations with Israel—and then back off. Former administrations told the Israelis and Palestinians that, in the end, it was for the two sides to negotiate peace. It is now plain that this approach does not work. America too needs to be deeply involved from start to finish.

Jordan’s King Abdullah, reasserting the Arab peace initiative of 2002, has boldly called for all Muslim governments to state clearly that they would accept Israel. They must make Hamas do so too. Next month Mr Obama goes to Egypt on his first presidential visit to an Arab country. That would be the perfect moment to unveil his detailed plan for peace, along with a promise that under his administration America intends at last to implement the two-state vision, not just talk about it.

 

Obama ready to end game of pretence

By Roula Khalaf

May 14, 2009

Financial Times

The Middle East could be in for a surprise this time. Though many people in the region have yet to believe it, the Obama administration genuinely understands the urgency of resolving the more than 60-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict.

Unlike previous administrations, this one came to this conclusion early on and appears convinced that the end of the conflict is not only in the interest of the parties involved, but also, crucially, in the interest of America.

This is what makes Monday’s first meeting between Barack Obama, US president, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the rightwing Israeli prime minister, so dramatic. It will mark the start of a flurry of high-stakes diplomacy that will shape US strategy. Most important, the words that we will hear in public, and the body language that we will watch, will be important signals of the extent to which Mr Obama is willing to push Israel to further his peace objective.

We already know a good deal about the thinking of the administration. The talk in Washington today is no longer about a “peace process” but about “peace”. The question is not whether the US favours a Palestinian “track” over a Syrian “track” or vice versa – it wants it all, in a comprehensive peace package.

Whereas the Bush administration’s foreign policy was rooted in fantasy – it assumed that regime change in Baghdad would miraculously resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict (and everything else that is wrong with the Middle

East) – the new administration’s views are rooted in practical realities. It rightly considers that Middle East peace can spread its virtues around, removing a cause that Iran has skilfully exploited to further its influence, undermining Islamist extremists, and restoring America’s battered image in the Muslim world.

Good intentions, and pragmatic analysis, however, are only a start. For the new US vision to materialise, Mr Obama will need to have a few blunt words with Mr Netanyahu, while also carefully sending the message to the Israeli public that the pressure is in the Jewish state’s best interest.

The smooth-talking Mr Netanyahu will no doubt bring a menu of generous initiatives, some he is genuinely interested in and others included for the purpose of diversion. Unless he has undergone a sudden, and unlikely, conversion, his views will not be acceptable to the administration.

Based on what we have heard from him so far, he will outline the obstacles to peace – the divided Palestinians, the untrustworthy Syrians, and the threatening non-state radical groups that are tormenting Israel with their missiles.

He will say peace should begin in Tehran, by stopping Iran’s nuclear programme. He will stress that “economic peace” to improve Palestinians’ standard of living – though not deliver them statehood – is the answer.

Mr Netanyahu will not oppose political dialogue with the Palestinians. Mr Obama, however, should make clear that talks must address the substance of the conflict, which means the borders of the Palestinian state, the fate of Palestinian refugees and that of Jerusalem, and that they cannot be open-ended.

As Mr Obama completes his series of consultations with Middle Eastern leaders in coming weeks, the US contribution will have to go further.

As a bipartisan group of former senior US officials, including Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser, has recommended to the administration, the most important step for Washington, early on, is to flesh out the outlines of a fair agreement.

Mr Netanyahu will not like it – and his Arab opponents too will resist. But the assessment of these American political figures – who are members of the US Middle East Project, a policy institute – reflects the reality of the Middle East: the dispute between Palestinians and Israelis is too deep, they say, and the discrepancies of power too vast, for the parties to be left to solve them on their own.



International Board Meeting, Washington, D.C., April 6-7, 2009

International Board Meeting, Washington, D.C., April 6-7, 2009

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IMPOSING MIDDLE EAST PEACE BY HENRY SIEGMAN

The continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank seems to have finally locked in the permanence of Israel’s colonial project. Outside intervention may offer the last hope for a reversal of the settlement enterprise and the achievement of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Since the U.S. is no longer the likely agent of that intervention, it is up to the Europeans and to the Palestinians themselves to fashion the path to self-determination in the occupied territories.

Prepared for the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre in Oslo.

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