The Big White Elephant In US-Israeli Ties

By Marwan Bishara
On March 15th, 2010
Courtesy Of Al Jazeera

Photo by EPA

Over the last several months, Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, and Barack Obama, the US president, have led the campaign praise for Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, despite his extremist views.

Peres, for long Netanyahu's political nemesis and considered the architect of the 1993 Oslo Peace Process along with Mahmoud Abbas, commended the right-wing Likud leader's stance on peace as "brave and real".

The Obama administration spoke in a similar tone, noting and praising Netanyahu's acceptance of the principle of a two-state solution and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, celebrated the unprecedented 'limited temporary freeze on settlement'!

The message from Israel and the US has been clear: Give Netanyahu a chance. He means business.

Netanyahu, who boasts of knowing US power politics better than most since his tenure in New York as ambassador to the UN, seems to have outsmarted his US counterpart.

Undermining trust

After a year of wrangling and arms-twisting, the Palestinians finally agreed to four months of so called "proximity talks" in order to test Netanyahu's intentions. And the result: humiliation.

The Israeli announcement of new settlement expansion in East Jerusalem on the eve of the talks was as humiliating to the Palestinian president as it was rude to Joe Biden, the US vice-president, who was visiting the country.

But the Palestinian leaders have got used to this sort of Israeli behaviour and have developed a thick skin in response.

The move has proved that Palestinian and Arab reluctance to trust Netanyahu's intentions is based on fact.

While Netanyahu insists on talks about the future of the occupied Palestinian territories, his party and coalition partners do not even recognise they are Palestinian and occupied.

He speaks of a Palestinian state - but when all said, done and illegally settled, he actually means no more than autonomy.

Pleading ignorance

As soon as the diplomatic incident began to take the shape of a major crisis, with US condemnation and Israeli apologies adding to its urgency, the Israeli prime minister pleaded ignorance and did what he does best: he spun the crisis in his favour.

He claimed to have been blindsided by extremists in his coalition, who control the interior ministry, and opened yet another investigation.

But regardless of "what he knew and when he knew it", his coalition's agenda is crying out for such announcements.

Until today, and despite the US anger and international condemnation, Netanyahu would not reject the plan. He only expressed regret for its bad timing.

What will he do? Well, he told his cabinet on Sunday that Israel knows how to deal with such situations.

I guess that means, calling on the Israel lobby to make sure the Obama administration does not, in his words, get "carried away and to calm down".

What now?

Let us assume that the tensions ease and Washington accepts the Israeli apology and assurances that they will try and behave with more sensitivity next time around. Then what?

Netanyahu can ease, spin and investigate the incident, but at the end of the day, the mistrust is not about timing or style, it is political.

For the Palestinians and the international Quartet (US, EU, Russia and the UN) that oversee the peace process, Israel's attempts to create new damaging facts on the ground ahead of final status negotiations underlines its unwillingness to negotiate in "good faith".

But the Israeli prime minister cannot stop the Jewish settlement in favour of a peaceful settlement process even if he wanted, or even if only tactically. His coalition government would collapse and his party would be in even bigger jeopardy.

But settlements and borders are not the only hot and untouchable questions for Netanyahu's party and his ruling coalition.

Any sign of serious talks about the burning issues of Jerusalem and the refugees would also lead to the collapse of the Israeli government.

Cutting both ways

Netanyahu's appeasers refuse to recognise the big elephant in the room: without changing the makeup of the Israeli government, there will be no movement on the peace process.

That does not mean such movement could or would lead to a successful conclusion. Alas, Israelis and Palestinians have been processing peace under US auspices for two decades now, to no avail.

I remember very well back in 1991 when I was in Madrid for the launching of the international peace conference on the Middle East how Netanyahu, then the deputy foreign minister, defended the Shamir government's hard line positions on the negotiations.

Netanyahu has since moved up to become a second-term prime minister, but his skill at spinning political issues remains intact.

Today, the US government faces a similar crisis with Netanyahu to that faced by the senior George Bush when Yitzhak Shamir refused to freeze settlements.

Except that in 1991, the US had just come out victorious from the Cold War, while today it is at war in the greater Middle East.

Then, the Bush/Baker administration withheld loan guarantees from Israel and threatened further economic sanctions, all of which arguably led to Shamir's loss to Yitzhak Rabin in the 1992 elections.

So what would the Obama administration do if Israel does not change its government coalition, refuses to freeze all settlement activity, and fails to get seriously involved in the peace process?

For Netanyahu the answer is clear: "Israel and the US have mutual interests but we will act according to the vital interests of the State of Israel".

Would, or could, the Obama administration make the same claim?

Especially after Obama frames the peace process in the context of US national security, and, reportedly, General Petraeus claims that lack of progress on the Palestinian front is endangering the lives of US soldiers in the Middle East?

That's the big white elephant in the room.