Netanyahu convinced Obama seeks clash with Israel to appease Arabs

By Aluf Benn
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/











Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that U.S. President Barack Obama wants a confrontation with Israel, based on Obama's speech in Cairo last week, Netanyahu's confidants say.

In Netanyahu's opinion, the Americans believe an open controversy with Israel would serve the Obama administration's main objective of improving U.S. relations with the Arab world, the aides say.

In his speech, Obama called for a "new beginning" in relations between America and Islam, and spoke at length about the Israeli-Arab conflict.


He demanded that Israel recognize the Palestinians' right to a state and freeze construction in the West Bank settlements.

Netanyahu objects to a complete suspension of construction beyond the Green Line. This is Netanyahu's main bone of contention with the Obama administration.

Netanyahu expects Obama to present his plan for peace in the Middle East next month. He fears that the president will present positions that will not be easy for Israel to accept, such as a demand to withdraw to the lines of June 4, 1967. These lines, before the Six-Day War, are at the basis of both the Arab peace initiative and previous American presidents' peace forays.

By telephone yesterday, Netanyahu told Obama of his intention to give a key policy speech on Sunday, in which he would outline his policy to achieve peace and security. Obama promised to listen to the address closely, and the two "agreed to maintain open and continuous contact," the Prime Minister's Bureau said.

Today Netanyahu is to meet the special U.S. envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell.

Political sources close to Netanyahu say that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama's senior political consultant David Axelrod are behind the clash between the administration and Israel.

Israel historically has depended on the White House to balance the consensus of officials in the state and defense departments; this consensus usually leans toward the Arab side.

Israeli officials say that under Obama, the White House has become the main problem in relations.

Israel is also having difficulty mustering the support of Congress and the American Jewish community for its demand to continue expanding the settlements.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who visited Washington last week, says the Obama administration has no personal problem with Netanyahu and that the Americans do not not seek to undermine the Israeli coalition and topple the government.

Barak says Obama's positions are guided by strategic considerations - he has undertaken to withdraw from Iraq and is striving to end the war in Afghanistan and needs the moderate Arab states' support. This, rather than "political persecution," is behind the administration's attitude toward Israel, he says.

Obama to be an 'honest broker in Middle East: The Arab Resistance is to Capitulate and adopt US style sweet reasonableness

Thursday, June 4, 2009













"Obama neglected the legal rights of the Palestinian people and tried to shape the Palestinian cause as a humanitarian cause" - Mohamed al-Hindi, a senior Islamic Jihad leader.

BE WARNED, THE FOLLOWING ESSAY IS BASED ON ANTI-IMPERIALIST CONVICTIONS THAT ARE DISCORDANT WITH US FOREIGN POLICY...

It is Palestine's legal international right to exist as a state that was glossed over in the speech. Palestine is not asking for charity or a special favor but for justice. The US president praises Islam's cultural contribution, he is against bigotry. He does not want Islam stereotyped. Neither should the US be stereotyped as an imperial state. No,no,... the REAL problem is "violent extremists". These violent extremist militant types are the universal enemy - not the cruelly stereotyped USA or the good (pro-western) Muslims.

Obama's Statement is a reversal in tone vis-a-vis Bush's positioning on Israel and Palestine, in that Bush deliberately didn't say much, and pretty well left the Israelis to deal with the Palestinians according to their will. But I flinched at Obama's decidedly moralizing tone in the whole piece. He has visited King Tut I've heard, and it seems to have rubbed off. From henceforth I'll think of the US President as King 'tut-tut'. Tut-tut did not talk about the Palestinians legal right to RESIST Occupation and Usurpation under international law - and that is the core of the argument about the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. He talked of "legitimate" Palestinian "aspirations". That is not a legal claim: it is not laying out a peace plan, it is about "hope" .Not strong ground for Palestine. Familiar rhetorical ground for Obama.

In fact it was excellent rhetorical ground for a discredited imperial power with very bloody hands that wants to be seen by the Muslim world to play the "honest broker" between Israel and Occupied Palestine after 50 years of doing everything possible to allow Israel to have everything!

'King tut-tut' did not mention the scores of UN declarations affirming Palestine that the US and one or two of its more obeisant client states have vetoed. He did not talk about the very crucial Palestinian legal right to return under international law.

Israel's aggressive intrusion into Arab territories is not identified by Obama as a problem. No, the MUSLIM/ARAB RESISTANCE is the problem, those "violent extremists" fighting back against The Empire is the problem...Is that King tut-tut's view of the American Minutemen and other Sniper Revolutionaries of the 1770s? Somehow I think not.

This may be conciliatory talk for a US president, an improvement on Bush, the Butcher of Baghdad, but it is not a declaration that the USA has reversed itself and is now in solidarity with the wretched of the earth in Refugee Camps from Gaza to the Swat Valley. In fact, it is an imperial exercise in evasion and doublespeak that skirts mercy and justice while cloaking itself in high sounding Philistine moralizing to its dependents.
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Posted by Andrew Taylor at 12:45 PM