Israel slapped America – and may have jolted Obama awake

Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:20 am » by **Demobe**

Things might get tense in the green room next week at the Walter E Washington Convention Centre in Washington, DC. Among the guest speakers at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, will be both Hillary Clinton and Binyamin Netanyahu. Normally the US secretary of state and Israel's prime minister could be expected to engage in a mutual love-in. But these are not normal times.

On Friday night Clinton surprised Netanyahu at home with a phone call that amounted to a 43-minute bollocking. Two days later President Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, accused Israel of an "affront" and an "insult" to the United States. No wonder Israel's ambassador to the US – who himself had been summoned to the state department for a dressing down – reported that relations between the two countries had slumped to a 35-year low.

What's going on here between two nations normally seen as inseparable, allies so close their enemies depict them as a two-headed beast? The immediate cause of the fallout is the slap in the face Israel gave last week to the US vice-president, Joe Biden. A lifelong friend who is proud to call himself a Zionist, Biden was in the country on a mission to make nice, giving Israel a warm embrace on the eve of a new round of indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks. Biden's welcome gift from the Israelis was an announcement of the planned construction of 1,600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighbourhood of East Jerusalem – even though the US had sought a freeze on all such building in areas conquered by Israel in 1967.

That this was a poke in America's eye, few disputed. Netanyahu insisted that stupidity, not malice, was to blame: a low-level planning committee had made the decision on technical grounds, no offence intended. Biden responded by turning up 90 minutes late for dinner with Netanyahu and his wife, and delivering a ferocious statement of condemnation – but that seemed to be that. Until Hillary picked up the phone.

Why would the Obama team have chosen to escalate a row they could easily have let fade away? "They weren't exactly looking for a fight," says Daniel Levy, Middle East analyst of Washington's New America Foundation, whose ear is close to the administration ground. He notes that Obama is on the brink of passing healthcare reform – and hardly needs to distract attention from that most perilous of battles. The danger will be more acute if pro-Israel Democrats make a "linkage" between the two issues, demanding that Obama lower the pressure on Israel in return for their votes on the health bill.

One explanation is the face-value one: that Obama was "incandescent with rage" at the one-fingered salute that greeted his deputy, and even more furious at Netanyahu's subsequent attempts at an apology. These insisted that Israel had every right to settle in East Jerusalem – but conceded that it was wrong to announce the fact while Biden was in town. This emphasis on timing was, says Levy, tantamount to saying: "I'm sorry I slapped you on Monday: next time, I promise, it won't be on a Monday."

There are other explanations for the US decision to hit back hard. One is that Obama is seizing on the Biden row to send a message to the Arab world: to show that he won't be pushed around by Israel. This view has been given extra traction by a Foreign Policy article reporting that a team of senior officers from US Central Command recently briefed the top brass at the Pentagon, declaring that Israeli intransigence was damaging US standing in the region, and that Arab leaders now deemed the US too weak to stand up to its Israeli ally.

Just yesterday, in testimony before the Senate armed services committee, General David Petraeus, the commander of Centcom, echoed that message, arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict posed a threat to America's interests, that it "foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel", and that "anger over the Palestinian question" aided al-Qaida and other jihadist groups in their efforts to recruit support. Such views have long been conventional wisdom among liberal critics of Israel, but to hear such talk out loud from America's most senior soldier in the field is breathtaking. Perhaps Obama has taken the Centcom warnings to heart and is trying to make amends.

He may have a darker purpose, hoping to notch up the first regime change of his presidency – by toppling Netanyahu. That is not wholly fanciful. The last time the US put such a serious squeeze on Israel was nearly 20 years ago, when the first George Bush threatened to withhold $10bn in loan guarantees to Israel if settlement building did not stop. That led eventually to the removal of the stubborn Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister and his replacement by the peace-seeking Yitzhak Rabin. Obama may be calculating that the same dynamic still holds today – that Israeli public opinion values good relations with the US above all else, and will cast aside any leader who gets on the wrong side of Washington.

If that is the plan, then the three demands laid down by Hillary to Bibi – the cancellation of the Ramat Shlomo construction; a confidence-building gesture towards the Palestinians; and talks on core, rather than technical, issues – are well aimed. Just the first of those could bring down Bibi's coalition. Were he to surrender the principle that Israel is allowed to build where it likes in Jerusalem, his rightwing allies would bolt. Inside the Likud, Netanyahu – who has always insisted that Jerusalem must for ever remain undivided and under Israeli control – would be discredited.

But the third demand is most intriguing. Instead of using the Biden flap simply to assert his own macho credentials – "Don't cross me" – Obama might be grasping hold of it as a rare chance to revive the near-dead peace process.

His critics say that Israel never responds to pressure, that it only makes compromises when it feels secure. Only with the full backing of George W Bush did Ariel Sharon feel able to disengage from Gaza. But the Bush Sr experience tells a different story: that it was US pressure which dragged Israel to the peace table in Madrid in 1991, spawning the Oslo accords two years later.

With that precedent in mind, Obama could dispense with the endless talks about talks that were about to get under way, shifting the ground away from process and procedure – the terrain on which Bibi is most comfortable – and to substance instead. He should do it, demanding both sides – Israeli and Palestinian – present their vision of the endgame, their statement of how they finally see this conflict being resolved. It would have to cover everything, even the most difficult areas: borders, refugees, Jerusalem. Netanyahu always says he is serious about peace. This exercise would force him, and his Palestinian counterparts, to say how serious.

Then Obama should set out a vision of his own, including "bridging proposals" to close the gap between the two sides. If he is going to spend political capital on a peace process, let it at least be spent on peace – not process. Last week Israel slapped the US vice-president in the face. Now there is a chance to make that the slap heard around the world – the one that jolts America awake.

• Comments on this article will remain open for 24 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... bi-hillary

Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:23 am » by **Tonybigman3**

demobe wrote:Things might get tense in the green room next week at the Walter E Washington Convention Centre in Washington, DC. Among the guest speakers at the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, will be both Hillary Clinton and Binyamin Netanyahu. Normally the US secretary of state and Israel's prime minister could be expected to engage in a mutual love-in. But these are not normal times.

On Friday night Clinton surprised Netanyahu at home with a phone call that amounted to a 43-minute bollocking. Two days later President Obama's senior adviser, David Axelrod, accused Israel of an "affront" and an "insult" to the United States. No wonder Israel's ambassador to the US – who himself had been summoned to the state department for a dressing down – reported that relations between the two countries had slumped to a 35-year low.

What's going on here between two nations normally seen as inseparable, allies so close their enemies depict them as a two-headed beast? The immediate cause of the fallout is the slap in the face Israel gave last week to the US vice-president, Joe Biden. A lifelong friend who is proud to call himself a Zionist, Biden was in the country on a mission to make nice, giving Israel a warm embrace on the eve of a new round of indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks. Biden's welcome gift from the Israelis was an announcement of the planned construction of 1,600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighbourhood of East Jerusalem – even though the US had sought a freeze on all such building in areas conquered by Israel in 1967.

That this was a poke in America's eye, few disputed. Netanyahu insisted that stupidity, not malice, was to blame: a low-level planning committee had made the decision on technical grounds, no offence intended. Biden responded by turning up 90 minutes late for dinner with Netanyahu and his wife, and delivering a ferocious statement of condemnation – but that seemed to be that. Until Hillary picked up the phone.

Why would the Obama team have chosen to escalate a row they could easily have let fade away? "They weren't exactly looking for a fight," says Daniel Levy, Middle East analyst of Washington's New America Foundation, whose ear is close to the administration ground. He notes that Obama is on the brink of passing healthcare reform – and hardly needs to distract attention from that most perilous of battles. The danger will be more acute if pro-Israel Democrats make a "linkage" between the two issues, demanding that Obama lower the pressure on Israel in return for their votes on the health bill.

One explanation is the face-value one: that Obama was "incandescent with rage" at the one-fingered salute that greeted his deputy, and even more furious at Netanyahu's subsequent attempts at an apology. These insisted that Israel had every right to settle in East Jerusalem – but conceded that it was wrong to announce the fact while Biden was in town. This emphasis on timing was, says Levy, tantamount to saying: "I'm sorry I slapped you on Monday: next time, I promise, it won't be on a Monday."

There are other explanations for the US decision to hit back hard. One is that Obama is seizing on the Biden row to send a message to the Arab world: to show that he won't be pushed around by Israel. This view has been given extra traction by a Foreign Policy article reporting that a team of senior officers from US Central Command recently briefed the top brass at the Pentagon, declaring that Israeli intransigence was damaging US standing in the region, and that Arab leaders now deemed the US too weak to stand up to its Israeli ally.

Just yesterday, in testimony before the Senate armed services committee, General David Petraeus, the commander of Centcom, echoed that message, arguing that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict posed a threat to America's interests, that it "foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favoritism for Israel", and that "anger over the Palestinian question" aided al-Qaida and other jihadist groups in their efforts to recruit support. Such views have long been conventional wisdom among liberal critics of Israel, but to hear such talk out loud from America's most senior soldier in the field is breathtaking. Perhaps Obama has taken the Centcom warnings to heart and is trying to make amends.

He may have a darker purpose, hoping to notch up the first regime change of his presidency – by toppling Netanyahu. That is not wholly fanciful. The last time the US put such a serious squeeze on Israel was nearly 20 years ago, when the first George Bush threatened to withhold $10bn in loan guarantees to Israel if settlement building did not stop. That led eventually to the removal of the stubborn Yitzhak Shamir as prime minister and his replacement by the peace-seeking Yitzhak Rabin. Obama may be calculating that the same dynamic still holds today – that Israeli public opinion values good relations with the US above all else, and will cast aside any leader who gets on the wrong side of Washington.

If that is the plan, then the three demands laid down by Hillary to Bibi – the cancellation of the Ramat Shlomo construction; a confidence-building gesture towards the Palestinians; and talks on core, rather than technical, issues – are well aimed. Just the first of those could bring down Bibi's coalition. Were he to surrender the principle that Israel is allowed to build where it likes in Jerusalem, his rightwing allies would bolt. Inside the Likud, Netanyahu – who has always insisted that Jerusalem must for ever remain undivided and under Israeli control – would be discredited.

But the third demand is most intriguing. Instead of using the Biden flap simply to assert his own macho credentials – "Don't cross me" – Obama might be grasping hold of it as a rare chance to revive the near-dead peace process.

His critics say that Israel never responds to pressure, that it only makes compromises when it feels secure. Only with the full backing of George W Bush did Ariel Sharon feel able to disengage from Gaza. But the Bush Sr experience tells a different story: that it was US pressure which dragged Israel to the peace table in Madrid in 1991, spawning the Oslo accords two years later.

With that precedent in mind, Obama could dispense with the endless talks about talks that were about to get under way, shifting the ground away from process and procedure – the terrain on which Bibi is most comfortable – and to substance instead. He should do it, demanding both sides – Israeli and Palestinian – present their vision of the endgame, their statement of how they finally see this conflict being resolved. It would have to cover everything, even the most difficult areas: borders, refugees, Jerusalem. Netanyahu always says he is serious about peace. This exercise would force him, and his Palestinian counterparts, to say how serious.

Then Obama should set out a vision of his own, including "bridging proposals" to close the gap between the two sides. If he is going to spend political capital on a peace process, let it at least be spent on peace – not process. Last week Israel slapped the US vice-president in the face. Now there is a chance to make that the slap heard around the world – the one that jolts America awake.

• Comments on this article will remain open for 24 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... bi-hillary

obama is an idiot and should have never been the president hes nothing more than a hollywood celibrity.he has no concept of how to run a country. :shooting:

Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:33 am » by **Lowsix**

Proto is going to conspicuously absent on these talks about the settlements.

The ones he INSISTS arent being built or planned for.
You know.... the ones Bibi is saying 'Fuck You America' over.

He picks up almost every Israeli thread,
but i bet he skips this topic..

Thu Mar 18, 2010 2:50 am » by **Proto**

hmm really ? very kind of you to inform me that i insist on things .
but actually the last time i discussed settlements in this forum was
few months ago when natanyau announced the partial temporary build freeze ,
and i also remember mentioning that the freeze does not apply to Jerusalem ,
further then that this houses are going to be build in Jewish neighborhood , not on the
expanse of the Palestinians .

oh and also :

Obama: 'No crisis' in U.S. ties with Israel

United States President Barack Obama said Thursday that there was 'no crisis' in ties with Israel, despite a high-profile diplomatic feud between the allies over the Netanyahu administration's plans to build Jewish homes in east Jerusalem.

"Israel's one of our closest allies, and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that's not going to go away," Obama said in an interview on Fox News Channel's Special Report with Bret Baier.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1157109.html

Thu Mar 18, 2010 3:07 am » by **Lowsix**

proto wrote: the freeze does not apply to Jerusalem ,
further then that this houses are going to be build in Jewish neighborhood , not on the
expanse of the Palestinians

Fair nuff.

Thu Mar 18, 2010 4:00 am » by **Reinaul**

Israeli Rightists prepare banner declaring Obama as 'PLO agent'

Chaim Levinson
Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:17 EDT

Rightist: "[W]e will teach those Leftists what democracy is," he added. "Obama is anti-Semitic, pro-Arab, an agent of the PLO and we stand behind what the poster says."

Israeli-Occupation Archive Editor: Hardly - but there's no reason for the Israeli Right not to try pushing Netanyahu further to the right. This latest, made-in-Israel diplomatic crisis is reminiscent of the Bush-Baker-Shamir mini-crisis. We know how quickly the US bounced back to letting Israel carry on with the Occupation and inflict a great deal more damage to the Palestinians.

A group of far-right activists on Tuesday announced their plan to hang hundreds of posters across the country depicting U.S. President Barack Obama under the headline "agent of the PLO." The banner is already on display in the office of National Union MK Michael Ben Ari.

"The poster is within the limits of the country's freedom of speech act," said Ben Ari's aide, Itamar Ben Gvir.

"I pity those who clapped during [U.S. Vice President] Joe Biden's speech," said Ben Gvir, referring to Biden's address to the Israeli people at Tel Aviv University last week.

"By the end of Ben Arie's cadency we will teach those Leftists what democracy is," he added. "Obama is anti-Semitic, pro-Arab, an agent of the PLO and we stand behind what the poster says."

Shortly after taking office last year, Obama made a key address to the Muslim world during a visit to Cairo, Egypt. The much anticipated 55-minute address touched on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S.-Arab ties and confronting terrorism.

The "Cairo speech" stirred tension in Israel and the U.S. regarding the president's new policy towards the Middle East, and created the impression that he was bias towards Arab countries, as he began with the Arab saying "salaam alaykum."

Following the speech, Obama made a personal phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, guaranteeing that the U.S. would always support Israel.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/20487 ... PLO-agent-

Sat Mar 20, 2010 9:49 am » by **Chashmere**

Am I the only one who thinks that the misspelling of the "defense" is becoming epidemic lately? When I see it spelled "defence" I keep thinking of defeet of deduck went over defence before detail. Then, I have a hard time concentrating on the rest of the article.

:think:

Sat Mar 20, 2010 12:40 pm » by **Svaha**

I think that we, as the reporters that write the articles, have no clue what is going on, because there is no transparency, nobody tells you what they actually agreed on, what their plan is.
What we can see here is that some thousands of bombs were transported to Diego Garcia.

Sat Mar 20, 2010 8:31 pm » by **Ogmios**

Chashmere wrote:Am I the only one who thinks that the misspelling of the "defense" is becoming epidemic lately? When I see it spelled "defence" I keep thinking of defeet of deduck went over defence before detail. Then, I have a hard time concentrating on the rest of the article.

It depends where you are. When I see you spelling it that way it doesn't seem right to me. I blame that pesky revolution you lot had across the water. After that it seems you decided to start spelling things differently. Over here "defence" is the proper spelling. Colour, aluminium, centre, arse, moustache, traveller and pyjamas are a few of the other words you butchered.

Sun Mar 21, 2010 12:31 am » by **Ridee**

this article is daydreaming on hard drugs ...

Israel is going down the toilet hand in hand with the US , Europe is blowing up and the so called journalist talks about houses ...

The only thing to do is kill the mad dog if you ask me , if the US wait another month at this rate it will be world wide chaos and Russia / China will be more than happy to step in .

And we all know by now ho the real 2 headed boss is in this game