No easy resolution likely as Obama pressurises Israel

OPINION:There's no denying it: Israel is taking a beating on the diplomatic front

IF ANYONE thought that the current breach between Israel and the United States would quickly subside, the recent visit to Washington by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has shown quite the opposite.

The rift started during vice-president Joe Biden’s recent visit when a junior Israeli official decided that this was the best time to announce plans to build more than 1,000 new homes in East Jerusalem. Apologies and conciliatory gestures from Netanyahu were brushed aside by the Obama administration to the dismay of Israel and to the delight of its enemies. All proportion seemed aside, prompting the Wall Street Journal to describe US foreign policy towards Israel as “our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze”.

Just how much of these ill winds is Israel’s doing and how much is due to the shifting sands on the international stage?

The Israeli media has been depicting Netanyahu’s government as stumbling from one blunder to the next, and a recent Tel Aviv University poll shows a marked decline in his popularity. Still, to be fair, Israelis have always been highly critical of their government and Netanyahu is not faring much worse than his predecessors. Many Israelis shrug their shoulders and attribute the current wave of hostility to either diplomatic manoeuvring or ingrained prejudice towards the Jewish state.

Interestingly, opinion polls indicate that most Israelis are still behind the two-state solution, though the violence from Gaza has certainly blunted their enthusiasm. Netanyahu’s popularity is plummeting partly because of his West Bank settlement freeze. This is due to the sizable minority among Jewish Israelis who oppose a Palestinian state and have become disillusioned with Netanyahu who, they believe, is bending to US pressure.

While there is certainly a new wind blowing from Washington, the recent diplomatic spat should not be exaggerated. US support for Israel remains strong as indicated by a recent Gallup poll (63 per cent of Americans are supportive of Israel compared to 15 per cent who sympathise with the Palestinians), and support for Israel remains strong in the US Congress. Probably what is most revealing is that in the midst of all these very publicised disagreements, Israel and the US signed a quarter of a billion dollar military contract, just before Netanyahu got on a plane home.

Still, Israelis are concerned about the status of their country’s special relationship with the US and are bracing for more pressure from the Obama administration and more courting of the Palestinians.

The confounding point is, though, that the best Obama can hope to achieve is a return to the deal negotiated in 2008 with the Palestinians by Israel’s previous government led by former prime minister Ehud Olmert. The two sides agreed on a Palestinian state on the West Bank (with the removal of Jewish settlements), in the Gaza Strip and in Arab East Jerusalem, and compensation for the descendants of refugees. About 5 per cent of the West Bank along the proposed border where most of the Jewish settlements are located, would be swapped for territory from Israel proper. Washington cannot reasonably expect to achieve a better deal than that.

The problem is that this plan, arising from talks that followed the Annapolis conference launched in November 2007 by president Bush, was subsequently rejected by the Palestinian leadership, just as they had done before in the days of their former leader, Yasser Arafat.

The late Abba Eban, former foreign minister of Israel, once stated that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. A comment on a talkback site last week from a British merchant who trades with the Palestinians is revealing. He related how he was having dinner with a Palestinian grower near Nablus, in the occupied West Bank. Although no friend of Israel, with a son-in-law in an Israeli prison, the Palestinian grower said that the only thing that would satisfy the Palestinian leadership would be the destruction of Israel, and even then, they’d still find an excuse to say no.

Obama needs to rethink his strategy of applying pressure not where it is needed, but where it can easiest be applied. In Hebrew it’s called looking for the penny under the street lamp.

Edwin Bennatan is an Israeli commentator who writes a blog for The Jerusalem Post