Obama v Netanyahu – the next round
The headline over a recent op-ed article in the New York Times by Rashid Khalidi was Is Any Hope Left for Mideast Peace? The answer to that question might or might not be clear beyond dispute when the curtain comes down on President Obama’s performance in Israel-Palestine. (He’ll be on stage there on Wednesday for two days, mainly, it seems, to tell Israeli Jews what they want to hear, not what they need to hear).
Obama’s response to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s confirmation that he had been able to cobble together a new coalition government just in time for the president’s arrival was, “I look forward to working with it.”
Unless that was an expression of diplomatic necessity and represents the opposite of what he is really thinking and feeling as he packs his bags for the trip, it can only mean Obama that has already decided that he’s not going to confront a Netanyahu-led Israeli government and its lobby in America in order to kick start a real peace process.
Israel now has its most pro-settler and pro-settlement government ever. As Aluf Benn, Ha’aretz’s editor-in-chief, put it:
“The third Netanyahu government has one clear goal: enlarging the settlements and achieving the vision of ‘a million Jews living in Judea and Samaria.’ This magic number will thwart the division of the land and prevent once and for all the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
In the new Israeli government Obama said he is looking forward to working with, the Minister of Housing and Construction is the extreme rightwing Uri Ariel. He was the founder of a settlement and has served as secretary general of both the Amana settlement movement (formed by Gush Emunim in 1976), and the Yesha Council (an umbrella organization of the municipal councils of the illegal Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank). He was also a director of the Jewish National Fund, a key player from 1901 in Zionism’s colonial enterprise. He is opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state and in favour of the annexation of all of the occupied West Bank.
Uri Avnery’s comment on Ariel’s appointment was this:
“Turning this Ministry over to such a person means that most of its resources will go to a frantic expansion of the settlements, each of which is a nail in the coffin of peace.“
To kick start a real peace process Obama would have to succeed where he failed in his first term – he would have to insist on, and secure, Israel’s agreement to a total freeze on settlement expansion. It could well be that appointing Ariel as Minister of Housing and Construction was Netanyahu’s way of saying to Obama (without having to say it), “Don’t even think about asking for that, Mr. President!”
It’s not difficult to imagine what line Netanyahu will take in his conversations with Obama in Jerusalem. As Aluf Benn put it (after referring to Israel’s prime minister as “the old fox”), he will “continue with the successful ploy from his previous term – threatening an attack on Iran.”
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