Jonathan Freedland: Progress is doomed if Obama is merely a cleverer version of Bush
[Jonathan Freedland has been a columnist for the Guardian since 1997.]
Binyamin Netanyahu can comfort himself with one thought as he heads to Washington next week. At least when he stands alongside a popular US president who radically disagrees with him on the future of the Middle East, it will not be the first time. Netanyahu will be able to draw on the memory of a similarly tense encounter back in 1996 – the day, shortly after his election victory, when he had to make nice with a visibly chilly Bill Clinton, who had all but campaigned for Bibi's opponent.
So presidential froideur is no novelty for the new-old Israeli prime minister. He is used to dealing with Democrats who would much prefer not to be dealing with him. He knows his job is to ignore all that and make next Monday's meeting work. There is nothing that matters to Israeli leaders more than their relationship with Washington. Screw it up and they can end up out of a job (as Bibi's mentor, Yitzhak Shamir, found out the hard way when he clashed with the first George Bush). People often like to criticise Israel as a law unto itself. But the reality is there's one voice that Israel listens to intently: the one located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. London doesn't carry quite the same weight, as David Miliband might discover today when he meets Israel's new hardline foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
So the stakes could not be higher for the first Netanyahu-Obama summit. At last we should learn exactly how the Likud leader plans to manage the Israel-Palestine conflict – and, more important, we should discover the same about Barack Obama.
There has been plenty of hyperventilating talk of a "showdown" in DC. That is unlikely. Neither side needs that right now; and Netanyahu is skilled enough a PR man to make sure things look good. Journalists will do their best to prise the words "two-state solution" from Bibi's lips, given that he has still not committed to it. He will certainly win big headlines if he utters the magic formula, but he's a canny enough operator to wriggle out of the question.
Still, even if the leaders do their best to conceal it, there can be no denying that Israel and the US stand further apart now than at any time in the last eight years. For those of us who believe that George Bush was a disaster for Israeli-Palestinian peace, any break from that era counts as good news.
Witness the speech that Joe Biden, the vice-president, gave to the pro-Israel lobby Aipac last week. "You're not going to like my saying this," he began, demanding that Israel work for a two-state solution and build no "more settlements, dismantle existing outposts, and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement". Nor would Biden be content with mere promises. "This is a 'show me' deal – not based on faith – show me …"
Or take the leaked word of the national security adviser, James Jones, promising that the new administration would be "forceful" with Israel. Note too the Israeli angst that Obama will next month deliver a speech detailing his vision for the Middle East not in Jerusalem but in Cairo – with no promise to visit Israel either before or afterwards. It may not sound like much, but the Israeli high command had grown used to different treatment: in the Bush years, they were consulted constantly. Now they are getting a very different message.
"The attention we're giving Middle East peace is a change," one senior administration official told me yesterday, recalling Bush's 2001 decision to put the entire issue on ice. "Holding both sides equally to account is a change," he adds. Above all, Obama rightly believes that true backing for Israel does not consist in repeated declarations of support. "Part of helping Israel is solving this goddamn problem," says that official, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
All that is encouragingly un-Bush. But some in Israel suggest these actions are mere variations in the mood music, confident that the underlying US position will not shift. They draw comfort from that. The rest of us should be alarmed.
This conflict will not be solved by simply implementing the old Bush approach with more skill. Obama mustn't be Obama on the outside and Bush on the inside. The approach itself has to change and change radically...
Read entire article at Guardian (UK)
Binyamin Netanyahu can comfort himself with one thought as he heads to Washington next week. At least when he stands alongside a popular US president who radically disagrees with him on the future of the Middle East, it will not be the first time. Netanyahu will be able to draw on the memory of a similarly tense encounter back in 1996 – the day, shortly after his election victory, when he had to make nice with a visibly chilly Bill Clinton, who had all but campaigned for Bibi's opponent.
So presidential froideur is no novelty for the new-old Israeli prime minister. He is used to dealing with Democrats who would much prefer not to be dealing with him. He knows his job is to ignore all that and make next Monday's meeting work. There is nothing that matters to Israeli leaders more than their relationship with Washington. Screw it up and they can end up out of a job (as Bibi's mentor, Yitzhak Shamir, found out the hard way when he clashed with the first George Bush). People often like to criticise Israel as a law unto itself. But the reality is there's one voice that Israel listens to intently: the one located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. London doesn't carry quite the same weight, as David Miliband might discover today when he meets Israel's new hardline foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
So the stakes could not be higher for the first Netanyahu-Obama summit. At last we should learn exactly how the Likud leader plans to manage the Israel-Palestine conflict – and, more important, we should discover the same about Barack Obama.
There has been plenty of hyperventilating talk of a "showdown" in DC. That is unlikely. Neither side needs that right now; and Netanyahu is skilled enough a PR man to make sure things look good. Journalists will do their best to prise the words "two-state solution" from Bibi's lips, given that he has still not committed to it. He will certainly win big headlines if he utters the magic formula, but he's a canny enough operator to wriggle out of the question.
Still, even if the leaders do their best to conceal it, there can be no denying that Israel and the US stand further apart now than at any time in the last eight years. For those of us who believe that George Bush was a disaster for Israeli-Palestinian peace, any break from that era counts as good news.
Witness the speech that Joe Biden, the vice-president, gave to the pro-Israel lobby Aipac last week. "You're not going to like my saying this," he began, demanding that Israel work for a two-state solution and build no "more settlements, dismantle existing outposts, and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement". Nor would Biden be content with mere promises. "This is a 'show me' deal – not based on faith – show me …"
Or take the leaked word of the national security adviser, James Jones, promising that the new administration would be "forceful" with Israel. Note too the Israeli angst that Obama will next month deliver a speech detailing his vision for the Middle East not in Jerusalem but in Cairo – with no promise to visit Israel either before or afterwards. It may not sound like much, but the Israeli high command had grown used to different treatment: in the Bush years, they were consulted constantly. Now they are getting a very different message.
"The attention we're giving Middle East peace is a change," one senior administration official told me yesterday, recalling Bush's 2001 decision to put the entire issue on ice. "Holding both sides equally to account is a change," he adds. Above all, Obama rightly believes that true backing for Israel does not consist in repeated declarations of support. "Part of helping Israel is solving this goddamn problem," says that official, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
All that is encouragingly un-Bush. But some in Israel suggest these actions are mere variations in the mood music, confident that the underlying US position will not shift. They draw comfort from that. The rest of us should be alarmed.
This conflict will not be solved by simply implementing the old Bush approach with more skill. Obama mustn't be Obama on the outside and Bush on the inside. The approach itself has to change and change radically...