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.

Ian Williams: Width and quality of Barack Obama’s Peace Commitments, Tribune Mag uk

Ian Williams: Width and quality of Barack Obama’s peace commitments
June 8, 2009 12:00 am admin comment
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2009/06/08/ian-williams-width-and-quality-of-barack-obama%E2%80%99s-peace-commitments/

Reversing Bill Clinton’s election dictum, Barack Obama shows an admirable attention span. “It’s not just the economy, stupid.” No one can accuse him of neglecting the economy, but one of the lessons being reinforced is that he needs to pull the political process with him. This is particularly important when the Democratic Party in Congress has a vociferous and disloyal group of rightists who will vote with the Republicans at the drop of a hat in the name of moderation.

That is one of the explanations for Obama’s incremental strategy on the Middle East. Faced with the most obtuse and self-centred set of Israeli leaders, he has to cover his rear carefully and so far the Likud-led coalition of zealots is playing into his hands.


Readers of a certain age may remember David Kossof on television playing a Jewish tailor whose watchword was “Never mind the quality – feel the width.” He seems to have written the script for recent Israeli diplomacy, which has been predicated on talking to politicians who truly and sincerely want the wool pulled over their eyes.

Things have changed. Binyamin Netanyahu came to see Obama and wanted a quick deadline for an attack on Iran. Despite his crowing, he got a promise of open-ended negotiations with Tehran and a warning that the Americans thought that settlement building was a more urgent problem. He and Ehud Barak came to the United States and talked fiercely about how they were going to close a few dozen “illegal outposts” by hook or by crook in the hope that the continuing settlement building would go unremarked.

Obama and his inner circle, well aware that some of these “illegal” outposts had been “closed” repeatedly and that in any case were provided with water, roads, electricity and security by the various government departments, were less impressed. They all sang from the same hymn sheet: no building in the Occupied Territories.

It is a measure of how much Israeli governments have got away with that this one is indignant about US “diktats”, when one of the Israeli commitments in the famous road map is a halt to settlement building.

Netanyahu and his government wanted to talk about alleged Palestinian failures to follow road map commitments. Obama’s officials keep reminding them that the US supports the two-state solution. Netanyahu and most of his cabinet have consistently opposed a Palestinian state, which somewhat devalues their complaints about Palestinian reluctance to admit it was a good thing they were thrown out of their homes. Obama even had the chutzpah to remind Israel of its repeated promises to open the gates to Gaza.

Equally, on the quality versus width dimension, Israeli complaints about the potential for Iran to become a nuclear power are disingenuous. Iran does not have nuclear weapons while Israel has several hundred of them and refuses to sign the NPT. Imagine the shock when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – of all people – suggested that they should sign up.

In all of this, Israeli indignation is necessarily forced and strained. All they are being asked to do is to abide by their own promises, let alone by international law.

Obama’s cautious and non-confrontational strategy of attrition is also paying off domestically. Netanyahu spoke to the AIPAC conference, but the Israel lobby’s traditional posture went into reverse. In times past, its guiding principle was to follow whatever policy the Israeli government wanted. Now the lobby endorsed the two-state solution that the Israeli Prime Minister abhors and, after many years of swinging rightwards, thinks a liberal Democrat Congress and White House may be a good excuse for a change of tack.

One factor in this may be that there is now an alternative Israel lobby. J-Street, only recently founded, has made great inroads. Despite the lack of funding from conservative Zionists and Christian evangelists, it actually represents the much more nuanced, progressive and peace-tending views of most American Jews, whose support for Obama among ethnic groups is only matched by Arabs and blacks.

Administration sources are even suggesting it may be possible that, the next time the United Nations Security Council considers Israeli behaviour, Netanyahu will lose the protection of the automatic American veto that Israel has enjoyed for four presidential terms.

Such a course of action would send a message to the Israeli electorate that there are serious consequences to having a racist government. With a few exceptions, Israelis know their country’s existence, and their living standards have depended on American financial and military support.

With bills in the Knesset from cabinet members threatening to disenfranchise non-Jews, Netanyahu’s guaranteed combative statements, Congressional support for Likud will fade.
And the economic crisis even offers opportunity. If Obama, more in sorrow than in anger, is forced to threaten cuts in US aid to Israel, he simply has to ask embattled voters whether they really want to send taxpayers’ money to an ungrateful nation that refuses to live up to its commitments and flies in the face of accepted US and international policies. Never mind the quantity, just watch the width of the gap.

Israel's Netanyahu pays lip service to dismantling outposts

http://english.aljazeera.net/



Israel's prime minister has said that Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank will continue to be expanded.

"I have no intention to construct new settlements," Binyamin Netanyahu was quoted by officials as telling his cabinet on Sunday.

"... but it makes no sense to ask us not to answer to the needs of natural growth and to stop all construction," he added.

Barack Obama, the US president, pressed Netanyahu to halt all settlement activity when the two men met in Washington last week.

About 500,000 Jews live in settlement blocs and smaller outposts built in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.

Netanyahu also told the cabinet that the government would move settlers living in the outposts it considers to be illegal under Israeli law.

"We will take care of them," he said. "If possible by dialogue. There is no doubt that we have committed ourselves to deal with them."

Dismantling outposts

Last week an outpost near the town of Ramallah was demolished and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, told reporters that Israel was planning to dismantle 22 others.

"We should deal with the remaining 22 in a responsible and correct way," he said. "First, by talking and, if that doesn't work, then unilaterally."

"What we are interested in seeing is that Israel should implement its obligations under the road map, which includes halting settlement activity and expansion in all its forms"

However, the Peace Now group says that more than 50 outposts have been erected since March 2001 and more than 100 are currently in existence.

All settlements are considered illegal under international law and US and European negotiators see them as a major obstacle to achieving a peace deal with the Palestinians.

"What we are interested in seeing is that Israel should implement its obligations under the road map, which includes halting settlement activity and expansion in all its forms," Mohammed Shatayyeh, the Palestinian public works and housing minister, said on Sunday.

He said that if Israel wanted to show it was serious about peace talks with the Palestinians then it should stop providing utilities, such as water and electricity, to settlements and deny them state funding.

But Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said the fate of existing settlements should be decided at any such negotiations.

"In the interim period, we have to allow normal life in those communities to continue," he said.

Yesha, the main Israeli setttler organisation, criticised Netanyahu's comments, saying that he "should respect the wishes of voters who voted en masse for parties that are in favour of continuing construction in Judea and Samaria," as Israelis refer to the West Bank.

At Sunday's cabinet meeting, ministers also approved a draft law banning commemoration of the Naqba, or "catastrophe" as it is referred to by Arabs, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians left their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948.

The draft law is scheduled to be submitted for parliamentary approval next week and will propose punishment of up to three years in prison, an official told the AFP news agency.

The law was brought forward at the instigation of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party of Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister.

Yisrael Beitenu, Israel's third biggest party with 15 of the 120 seats in parliament, targeted Israel's Arab minority during this year's election campaign, adopting the slogan "No Citizenship Without Loyalty."

About 1.2 million Palestinians live inside Israel.

They are descended from 160,000 Palestinians who remained on their land after the establishment of Israel in 1948.

France: Jerusalem should be capital of two states By Haaretz

Source: Haaretz
22/05/2009


France accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of prejudicing the outcome of the Middle East peace process by declaring that Jerusalem would forever be Israel's undivided capital.

"Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people, a city reunified so as never again to be divided," Netanyahu said on Thursday at a ceremony to mark Jerusalem Day in the city's Mercaz Harav yeshiva.

Our people's unparalleled affinity to Jerusalem has spanned thousands of years, and is at the basis of our national renaissance. It has united our people, secular and religious people alike."

Foreign Ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux said Friday, "The declaration made by the Israeli prime minister yesterday in Jerusalem prejudices the final status agreement," according to AFP.

Desagneaux also said the "Middle East road map" to peace calls on both parties to negotiate an agreement on Jerusalem.

"In France's eyes, Jerusalem should, within the framework of a negotiated peace deal, become the capital of two states," he said, adding that French President Nicolas Sarkozy had told Israeli lawmakers this in a speech last year.

"Actions such as the destruction of Palestinian homes or the transformation of Arab districts risk provoking an escalation in violence. They are unacceptable and contrary to international law," Desagneaux said.

"In broad terms, France condemns the ongoing settlement, including in East Jerusalem. We reiterate the need for a freeze on colonization activities, including those linked to natural population growth," he added.

Netanyahu said he had made the same declaration during his recent visit to Washington, where he met with United States President Barack Obama over the peace process and Iran's nuclear program.

"Only under Israeli sovereignty will united Jerusalem ensure the freedom of religion and freedom of access for the three religions to the holy places," he said.