NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
As you can imagine, a main topic in the international and domestic press today is the meeting between Obama and Netanyahu. Links to some of the reports on this are below, if you care to read them.
Two articles, both commentaries, stand out from all the rest: Akiva Eldar’s “Obama and Netanyahu’s White House masquerade ball” and Avi Shlaim’s “Obama must stand up to Netanyahu.” They are items 1 and 2 below, and are the only items plus the links to reports that you might wish to glance through. Of the latter, the Guardian’s is a blow by blow account. All of the reports are more or less of the same tenet.
Not so with items one and two. But, before going to them, I would like to briefly express my own thoughts about Netanyahu’s obsession with Iran. My personal feeling (which item one slightly confirms) is that all of the hullabaloo that Netanyahu is stirring up against Iran is a smoke screen to hide what Netanyahu’s government is doing on the ground in the OPT, and, perhaps even more, is to keep Obama from harping on deliberating with the Palestinians, and on ending colony construction. The Palestinians have, for the time, disappeared from the US-Israel dialogue, or at least we hear nothing of it. Does Netanyahu’s use of Iran as a smoke screen to hide Israel’s crimes and to keep the subject of 2 states off the ledger mean that Israel won’t strike Iran? I don’t trust Netanyahu and clan as far as I can throw a rock—and I can’t throw far at all. I tend to think that with all his talk about Iran, he will talk himself into undertaking another foolish and harmful venture, just as he did years back with the tunnel (if you are unfamiliar with that episode, seehttp://www.stopmoskowitz.org/article0080.shtml ).
Whether I am right or wrong in my assessment of why all this fuss about Iran, the fact is that Israel is doing all in its power to make life unbearable for Palestinians, notwithstanding the relative calm for the time being. Just how long that calm will last, no one knows.
In item 1 Akiva Eldar regards the present Obama-Netanyahu talks to be a masquerade. Item 2 is Avi Shlaim’s scathing diatribe against Netanyahu—which the latter has well deserved.
All the best,
Dorothy
1 Haaretz
Monday, March 5, 2012
Obama and Netanyahu’s White House masquerade ball
If the United States does eventually decide to do the work itself and attack Iran’s nuclear reactors, the citizens of Israel will have to pay for all the noise and fuss.
By Akiva Eldar
Even before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu crosses the threshold of the White House Monday, the importance of his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama can be said to “lie in the very fact that it is taking place.”
This is the phrase that spokesmen typically reserve for high-ranking diplomatic meetings that go nowhere, or for those whose content is kept secret. Netanyahu will not hear anything from Obama that he has not heard before from the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the national security adviser: Obama will make sure that Netanyahu has absorbed the message that attacking Iran before the U.S. presidential elections in November is tantamount to attacking the incumbent president. And for this time-out, Obama will be prepared to pay generously.
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During election season in the United States – when Netanyahu’s friends, the wheelers and dealers, come out in full force – Netanyahu can dress up as Samson the nebech and play the part of the Jewish victim. And, in the spirit of this week’s Purim festival, the joint press conference that will take place after the meeting will be a masquerade ball. Obama will wear a friendly expression and pretend to be Netanyahu’s best friend. He will utter familiar declarations about his commitment to Israel’s security, and about preventing Iran from arming itself with nuclear weapons. He will look in Netanyahu’s direction, but he will be winking the whole time at his Jewish donors, and at the floating voters in Florida’s retirement homes. Obama will not be satisfied merely with a second term; it is also important to him that the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC grant favors to the Democratic candidates for the two houses of Congress. And so, until November, Obama will be singing the tunes that the wheelers and dealers want to hear. The bill will arrive in December. Perhaps.
The real issues, though – the tough ones, the ones that Netanyahu and the Jewish activists don’t want to hear – those Obama will keep to himself on Monday. He won’t reiterate the statements he made at the end of his meeting in September 2010 with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – one of the many meetings in which it was agreed that there would be “accelerated negotiations about a final status arrangement.”
The alternative to the status quo is not acceptable, Obama told journalists at the time, noting a chance to change the strategic landscape of the Middle East in a way that would help to deal with Iran – which does not want to forgo its nuclear program – and with the terrorist organizations in the region.
Obama stressed that an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not only in the interest of the two sides, but also a U.S. interest and an interest of the rest of the world.
In order to bring these remarks up to date, in order to adjust them to the reality of the current situation in March 2012, Obama would have to say to Netanyahu Monday: “I have seen the grocery list you presented to the Palestinians as a list of ‘Israel’s positions.’ I have read the latest report from our consulate in Jerusalem about the creeping annexation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. I regret that you are sticking to the status quo and missing the opportunity to influence the new strategic landscape of the Middle East. We have heard that your Foreign Ministry has also warned that the Palestinian Authority could collapse and that a third intifada could ensue, which would undermine stability in the region. You are demanding of us that we intensify the struggle against Iran, even as your settlement policy and your foot-dragging in negotiations with the Palestinians are not only making it difficult for us to put together an Arab and Muslim coalition against Iran, but are actually fueling terrorist organizations. I have told you many times that an arrangement with the Palestinians is also a U.S. strategic interest. A failure to establish a two-state solution to this conflict is a personal failure to defend this interest of mine.”
From Netanyahu’s point of view, Monday’s meeting with Obama succeeded even before it took place. This will be the first time that the president does not nag him about the Palestinian state, about the 1967 borders, about freezing the settlements. Who has the patience now for the Palestinian bomb that is ticking right under our noses? The important thing is that all the newspapers report that Netanyahu succeeded in ironing out the disagreements with Obama over the Iranian nuclear issue.
In Tehran they are aware that “the little Satan” is the one that is busy undermining negotiations with it, and that it is busy beating the drums of “the big Satan.” If the United States does eventually decide to do the work itself and attack Iran’s nuclear reactors, the citizens of Israel will have to pay for all the noise and fuss. That is the real significance of Monday’s meeting.
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2 Avi Shlaim: Obama must stand up to Netanyahu
He views relations with the Arab world as one of conflict, a struggle between light and darkness
Avi Shlaim
Monday, 5 March 2012
It is clear what kind of Israeli prime minister President Obama will be receiving at the White House today. Benjamin Netanyahu is a bellicose, right-wing Israeli nationalist, a rejectionist on the subject of Palestinian national rights, and a reactionary who is deeply wedded to the status quo. Nationalism has an in-built tendency to go to extremes and Netanyahu’s brand is no exception. A nation has been defined as ‘a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours’. This definition fits the Likud leader on both counts: he has a selective and self-righteous view of his own country’s history and he is driven by distrust and disdain, if not outright hatred towards the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. This hostility towards Arabs is the central thread that runs through his public utterances, books, and policies as prime minister.
Netanyahu does not believe in peaceful co-existence between equals. He views Israel’s relations with the Arab world as one of permanent conflict, as a never-ending struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. In his 1993 book – A Place among the Nations: Israel and the World – the image he presents of the Arabs is consistently and comprehensively negative. Nor does he admit any possibility of diversity or change. The book does not contain a single positive reference to the Arabs, their history or their culture. Autocracy, violence, and terrorism are said to be the ubiquitous facts in the political life of all the Arab countries. A democratic shift on the Arab side is a precondition to genuine peace with Israel, wrote Netanyahu, in the confident expectation that such a shift is beyond the realm of possibility. The Arab Spring has proved him wrong.
The coalition government headed by Netanyahu is the most aggressively right-wing, diplomatically intransigent, and overtly racist government in Israel’s history. His Foreign minister is Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the far-right party Yisrael Beiteinu, Israel is Our Home. Lieberman has set his face against any compromise with the Palestinians and he also favours subjecting Israel’s 1.5 million Palestinian citizens to an oath of loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state. Netanyahu’s Defence Minister is Ehud Barak who destroyed and then defected from the Labour Party to form a small break-away faction called Independence. A former chief-of-staff, Barak suffers from a déformation professionelle: he regards diplomacy as the extension of war by other means. Barak is a bitkhonist, a security-ist who wants 100 per cent security for Israel which means zero security for the Palestinians.
The ideological make-up of this coalition government militates against a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians. It is a government of militant nationalists whose aim is to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel. The government is democratically elected but by putting nationalism above morality and international legality, and by relying on military power to subjugate another people, it is in danger of drifting towards fascism. And it is already drifting away from the common values that constitute the foundation of the special relationship between the United States and the State of Israel.
On 14 June 2009, Netanyahu gave a speech at Bar-Ilan University in which, under strong American pressure, he grudgingly endorsed a ‘Demilitarized Palestinian State’. This was hailed as a reversal of his government’s opposition to an independent Palestinian state. But the change was more apparent than real. Judged by his deeds rather than rhetoric, Netanyahu remained the relentless rejectionist that he had been throughout his singularly undistinguished political career. The litmus test of commitment to a two-state solution is a freeze of settlement expansion on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, the capital of the future Palestinian state. Under Netanyahu’s leadership, however, settlement expansion has gone ahead at full tilt, especially in and around Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the most sensitive issue in this tragic, hundred year-old conflict. By putting Jerusalem at the forefront of his expansionist agenda, Netanyahu knowingly and deliberately blocks progress on any of the other ‘permanent status issues’ such as borders and refugees. Netanyahu is not a peace-maker; he is a land-grabber who rides roughshod over Palestinian rights. It is he who has turned the so-called peace process into an exercise in futility. He is like a man who pretends to negotiate the division of a pizza while continuing to gobble it up.
Barrack Obama reiterates at regular intervals that the bond between America and Israel is ‘unbreakable’. If anyone can break this bond, it is Benjamin Netanyahu. Early on in his presidency, Obama identified a settlement freeze as the essential precondition for progress in the American-sponsored peace process. During his Cairo speech, on 4 June 2009, he made it clear that ‘The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements’. Obama had three confrontations with Netanyahu over the demand for a settlement freeze and he backed down each time. Moreover, Obama has all but turned over to Netanyahu the American veto on UN Security Council. Since 1978 America has used the veto forty-two times to defeat resolutions critical of Israel. The most egregious abuse of this power happened in February 2011 when a resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion was supported by fourteen members and killed by America. That was a veto of America’s own foreign policy.
How can a jimcrack politician from a small country defy the most powerful man in the world and get away with it? At least part of the answer lies in the enduring power of the Israel lobby. Ever since 1967 the lobby has opposed every international plan for resolving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute that was not to Israel’s liking. But any proposal for a military strike against Israel’s enemies can count on the support of Israel’s friends in Washington, Iraq in 2003 and Iran today being the most obvious examples. In the case of Iran, Netanyahu is the war-monger in chief and he is doing his utmost to drag America into a dangerous confrontation that cannot possibly serve American interests. The region is like a tinder box and one spark could set off a major conflagration.
On 5 March, President Obama is due to receive the Israeli prime minister in the White House. At their first meeting, on 19 May 2009, Obama’s priority was Palestine whereas Netanyahu only wanted to talk about the Iranian threat. Subsequently, Netanyahu succeeded in imposing his agenda on his ally. Today the peace process is in tatters and the war hysteria against Iran is gathering force. The challenge for Obama is to reign in his reckless junior ally and to reorder American priorities in the Middle East. The main threat to regional stability is not Iran but the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories. And the main source of hostility towards America throughout the Arab and Muslim lands is Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and America’s complicity in this oppression. If Obama cannot stand up to Bibi Netanyahu in defence of vital American interests, who will he stand up to? His own credibility as the leader of the free world is on the line.
Avi Shlaim is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University and the author of Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (Verso).
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Links
Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/mar/05/barack-obama-
Independent Obama pledges US loyalty to Israel http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/obama-pledges-us-loyalty-to-israel-7537520.html#
LA Times Obama to Netanyahu: ‘Still a window’ for diplomacy on Iran
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-obama-netanyahu-israel-iran-20120305,0,3526399.story
NY Times Obama Cites ‘Window’ for Diplomacy on Iran Bomb
Washington Post Obama Cites ‘Window’ for Diplomacy on Iran Bomb
Al Jazeera Netanyahu, Iran and the fundamentals of policy
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/20123395724716603.html