Last week Barry Rubin argued that Israel and the United States – despite what’s being reported – are not headed for a major confrontation.
Yesterday Israel Matzav looked at a report about President Obama refusing to meet with PM Netanyahu and questioned if that was really the case, or if someone was trying to drive a wedge between the two.
Earlier this week there was a report that the United States had pointedly told Israel that Israel must not make its acceptance as a Jewish state a precondition for negotiations and Netanyahu apparently backed off.
And now (via memeorandum) Ha’aretz is reporting that FM Avigdor Lieberman says that the United States will listen to Israel about the peace process:
The Obama Administration will put forth new peace initiatives only if Israel wants it to, said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman in his first comprehensive interview on foreign policy since taking office.
Is Ha’aretz trying to make Lieberman (and thus the new Israeli government) sound confrontational towards the United States, or is Lieberman simply stating a truth? (In 2005 it was an internal Israeli decision not American pressure, for example, to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza.)
And the Washington Post reports, that Israel puts the Iranian threat ahead of diplomacy as a priority. (Note that according to this article President Obama and PM Netanyahu still have a meeting scheduled.)
Obama and Netanyahu are expected to meet in Washington next month. In the intervening weeks, the Israeli prime minister, who took office late last month, is developing his proposals for how to proceed and appears to be bracing for a tough discussion with the president.
“Netanyahu is expecting that when he says, ‘Iran, Iran, Iran,’ Obama will say, ‘Palestine, Palestine, Palestine’ back,” said Martin Indyk, director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and a former peace negotiator who keeps in close contact with U.S. and Israeli officials. “Netanyahu expects Obama to say that in order to be effective with Iran, we need to manage the Palestinian track as well.”
It looks like sources are trying to play up differences between the United States and Israel. Media outlets are happy to get quotes and observations from highly placed sources. The question is how serious are the divisions between the United States and Israel and how much interested parties are magnifying them.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Coming from the same administration that gave Gordon Brown (who can barely see) a set of Region 1 DVDs (which require a different player to play in Britain) I tremble at the thought of what The One will give Netanyahu. A tribute to the German Revolutionary Cells? (The German organizers of the Entebbe hijacking were from the Revolutionary Cells.)
I worry more what he will give Israel as a whole, the shaft. He can give Bibi a first edition, autographed copy of Mein Kampf for all I care if he stands behind Israel in her hour of need, or hours as the case might be. I am afraid, however, that not only has Obama no clue about Iran or the Palestinian Arabs, he has advisors who have Israel’s worst interests at heart.