Back from the brink or into the abyss?
This posting has these items:
1) Reuters: Netanyahu arrives in U.S., signs of easing of tensions over Iran speech attempts to reduce tension but -;
2) NY Times: Obama and Netanyahu Play Down Rancor on Iran, but Views Still Differ Sharply;
3) WP: Netanyahu’s dicey bet. which way will it swing?;
4) Times of Israel: Netanyahu’s electoral trip to Washington, Arab states have so far been ignored in this dispute;
5) Ynet: Netanyahu’s speech – historic or hysteric? what is the deal with Iran?;
6) Haaretz; AIPAC delegates: Stand with Israel, not Netanyahu, because, says Don Futterman, the raison d’etre of AIPAC is to harvest bipartisanship;
7) Time: Commanders for Israel’s Security, a large group from all the security services, openly opposes Netanyahu’s speech, and position, as dangerous for Israel.
Netanyahu gets his pre-Congress boost by addressing a large audience organised by AIPAC. He reassured them his dispute with their president was merely a ‘family fight’ as if those aren’t the most unforgiving. Photo by Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Netanyahu arrives in U.S., signs of easing of tensions over Iran speech
By Matt Spetalnick and Dan Williams, Reuters
Mar 02, 2015
The United States and Israel showed signs of seeking to defuse tensions on Sunday ahead of a speech in Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he will warn against a possible nuclear deal with Iran.
Policy differences over the negotiations with Iran remained firm, however, as Netanyahu arrived in the United States on Sunday afternoon for a speech to Congress, which has imperiled ties between the two allies.
Israel fears that U.S. President Barack Obama’s Iran diplomacy, with an end-of-March deadline for a framework accord, will allow its archfoe to develop atomic weapons, something Tehran denies seeking.
By accepting an invitation from the Republican Party to address Congress on Tuesday, the Israeli leader infuriated the Obama administration, which said it was not told of the speech before plans were made public in an apparent breach of protocol.
A senior Israeli official told reporters on Netanyahu’s flight that Congress could be “the last brake” for stopping a nuclear deal with Iran.
Saying it was Israel’s impression that members of Congress “do not necessarily know the details of the deal coming together, which we do not see as a good deal,” the official said Netanyahu in his speech would give a detailed explanation of his objections to an Iran deal.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated Washington’s determination to pursue negotiations with Iran, saying on Sunday the United States deserved “the benefit of the doubt” to see if a nuclear deal could be reached.
Last week, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, said the partisanship caused by Netanyahu’s looming address was “destructive to the fabric of U.S.-Israeli ties”.
Asked about this on the ABC program “This Week”, Kerry said: “The prime minister of Israel is welcome to speak in the United States, obviously. And we have a closer relationship with Israel right now in terms of security than at any time in history.”
‘POLITICAL FOOTBALL’
He said he talked to Netanyahu on Saturday, adding: “We don’t want to see this turned into some great political football.” Israel and the United States agreed that the main goal was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, he said.
The senior Israeli official said the Netanyahu-Kerry conversation “shows the relationship continues.”
In remarks on Saturday at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, Netanyahu said: “I would like to take this opportunity to say that I respect U.S. President Barack Obama.” He added that he believed in the strong bilateral ties and said, “that strength will prevail over differences of opinion, those in the past and those yet to come.”
Netanyahu did not repeat those remarks as he departed on Sunday. The Israeli prime minister, who is running for re-election in a March 17 ballot, has framed his visit as being above politics and he portrayed himself as being a guardian for all Jews.
“I’m going to Washington on a fateful, even historic, mission,” he said as he boarded his plane in Tel Aviv. “I feel that I am an emissary of all Israel’s citizens, even those who do not agree with me, and of the entire Jewish people,” he told reporters.
Netanyahu is expected to use his speech to urge Congress to approve new sanctions against Iran despite Obama’s pledge to veto such legislation because it would jeopardize nuclear talks.
U.S. officials fear he is seeking to sabotage the Iran diplomacy, and critics have suggested his visit is an elaborate election stunt that will play well with voters back home.
With Obama past the midpoint of his final term, his aides see an Iran nuclear deal as a potential signature achievement for a foreign policy legacy notably short on major successes.
While White House and Israeli officials insist that key areas of co-operation, from counterterrorism to intelligence to cyber security, will remain unaffected, the divide over the Iran talks has shaped up as the worst in decades.
Previously, Israel has always been careful to navigate between the Republican and Democratic camps. The planned address, however, has driven a rare wedge between Netanyahu’s government and some congressional Democrats. Some two dozen or more of them plan to boycott the speech, according to unofficial estimates.
IRANIAN ACCUSATION
Speaking in Tehran on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused Netanyahu of trying to undermine the nuclear talks in order to distract from the Palestinians’ unresolved bid for an independent state.
“Netanyahu is opposed to any sort of solution,” Zarif said.
Hard-line U.S. supporters of Israel say Netanyahu must take center-stage in Washington to sound the alarm over the potential Iran deal, even at the risk of offending long-time supporters.
But a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the “politicized” nature of his visit threatened “what undergirds the strength of the relationship”.
As one former U.S. official put it: “Sure, when Netanyahu calls the White House, Obama will answer. But how fast will he be about responding (to a crisis)?”
Last month, U.S. officials accused the Israeli government of leaking information to the Israeli media to undermine the Iran negotiations and said this would limit further sharing of sensitive details about the talks.
“What the prime minister is doing here is simply so egregious that it has a more lasting impact on that fundamental underlying relationship,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group aligned with Obama’s Iran policy.
Netanyahu will address the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC on Monday. Even as he makes his hard-line case against Iran, he is expected to try to keep tensions from spiraling, mindful that Israelis are wary of becoming estranged from their superpower ally.
Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Mark Hosenball and Dan Williams in Washington and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem
Obama and Netanyahu Play Down Rancor on Iran, but Views Still Differ Sharply
By Peter Baker, NY Times
March 02, 2014
WASHINGTON — President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel offered radically divergent approaches to the perils of a nuclear-armed Iran on Monday even as they tried to cool down the personal nature of a long-distance dispute that has inflamed relations between the United States and Israel for more than a month.
On the eve of Mr. Netanyahu’s hotly debated address to Congress, the two leaders separately disclaimed personal animosity while laying out what amounts to the biggest policy schism between the two countries in years. Mr. Obama defended his diplomatic efforts to negotiate a deal with Iran while Mr. Netanyahu presented them as dangerously naïve.
“I have a moral obligation to speak up in the face of these dangers while there is still time to avert them,” Mr. Netanyahu told thousands of Israel supporters in Washington. “For 2,000 years, my people, the Jewish people, were stateless, defenseless, voiceless.” He added: “Today, we are no longer silent. Today, we have a voice. And tomorrow, as prime minister of the one and only Jewish state, I plan to use that voice”
President Obama said in an interview on Monday that the dispute was a distraction and not “permanently destructive.” Credit Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
In an interview a few hours later, Mr. Obama said that he and Mr. Netanyahu had a “substantial disagreement” over how to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But he suggested that Mr. Netanyahu was an alarmist, saying that the Israeli leader had been unduly skeptical of a preliminary accord intended to slow the Iranian nuclear program during negotiations aimed at a longer-term resolution.
“Netanyahu made all sorts of claims — this was going to be a terrible deal, this was going to result in Iran getting $50 billion worth of relief, Iran would not abide by the agreement,” Mr. Obama told the Reuters news agency. “None of that has come true.”
Mr. Obama said that any deal would have to ensure that Iran was not capable of building a nuclear weapon in less than a year, and that the agreement must stand for at least 10 years. “If they do agree to it,” he said, “it would be far more effective in controlling their nuclear program than any military action we could take, any military action Israel could take, and far more effective than sanctions will be.”
The Netanyahus arrive in New York to some awkward questions from journalists. Screenshot from Channel 2.
Mr. Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, coming just two weeks before Israeli elections and three weeks before a deadline in the Iran talks, has polarized politicians in both countries. The prime minister’s speech to a joint meeting of Congress on Tuesday — arranged by Speaker John A. Boehner without consulting the White House — immediately took on a partisan flavor, and Mr. Obama refused to meet with Mr. Netanyahu because his visit comes so close to the Israeli elections.
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and more than 50 Democratic lawmakers plan to skip Mr. Netanyahu’s speech. While the White House has not publicly encouraged a boycott, it sent an email late Monday inviting House Democratic aides to a trade meeting at the White House on Tuesday at a time that would make it hard for them to attend the speech. Advocates on both sides have published incendiary newspaper ads in recent days, including one attacking Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser.
The president expressed grievance about the speaking invitation, which the White House has interpreted as a way of bashing Mr. Obama and undercutting the Iran talks. In the Reuters interview, Mr. Obama said it would be as if Democrats in Congress invited the French president to speak after opposing President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. “I guarantee you that some of the same commentators who are cheerleading now would have suggested that it was the wrong thing to do,” he said.
But the president and his team also seemed intent on tamping down the intensity of the dispute. Secretary of State John Kerry, in Geneva for more talks with Iran, made a point of defending Israel before the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday. And Mr. Obama sent Ms. Rice and Samantha Power, his ambassador to the United Nations, to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington.
“This is not a personal issue,” Mr. Obama said. “I think that it is important for every country in its relationship with the United States to recognize that the U.S. has a process of making policy.” Even though Ms. Rice said last week that the issue could be “destructive” to bipartisan support of Israel, Mr. Obama said Monday that it was a distraction and would not be “permanently destructive.”
Mr. Netanyahu, appearing before an estimated 16,000 supporters of Israel at the Aipac conference, characterized the disagreement over Iran as a “family” fight that would ultimately be overcome, and he expressed gratitude to Mr. Obama for his support of Israel over the years.
“My speech is not intended to show any disrespect to President Obama or the esteemed office that he holds,” Mr. Netanyahu told the crowd, which greeted him with standing ovations. “I have great respect for both.”
He said he was sorry if anyone interpreted his visit as a political shot at Mr. Obama. “The last thing anyone who cares about Israel, the last thing that I would want, is for Israel to become a partisan issue,” he said, “and I regret that some people have misperceived my visit here this week as doing that. Israel has always been a bipartisan issue. Israel should always remain a bipartisan issue.”
But he emphasized that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran looked different from Jerusalem than it does from Washington. “American leaders worry about the security of their country,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.”
Some supporters said they hoped Mr. Netanyahu’s measured language might defuse some of the anger of recent weeks. “I think he did well and lowered the temperature,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who had called on Mr. Netanyahu to cancel the speech because of the fallout. “He could have pepped them up. He did not. It was an important message.”
Opponents of Mr. Netanyahu said he had done lasting harm. “I’m here to do damage control,” said Erel Margalit, a Labor member of Parliament who attended the Aipac conference. “I’m here to say we, too, are very concerned about Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state, but we’re interested in getting the discussions back to where they were.”
Republicans maintained that it was Mr. Obama who had done the damage by making a fuss over a speech rather than paying attention to the substance of Mr. Netanyahu’s message. “The address is an opportunity for you to hear from the leader of one of our closest allies about the grave threats we face from radical Islam and Iran,” Mr. Boehner’s office said in an email.
The tension of the moment was reflected at the Aipac conference before Ms. Power’s speech, when the audience was advised to “treat all our speakers as guests in our home.” Ms. Power and Ms. Rice both used their speeches to reaffirm Mr. Obama’s support for Israel and his determination to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
But Ms. Rice encountered skepticism when she laid out the argument for a possible deal, with the audience applauding the goal of barring Iran from nuclear enrichment altogether even as she called that unrealistic. “Sound bites won’t stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Ms. Rice said. “Strong diplomacy backed by pressure can.”
By Jackson Diehl, Washington Post
March 01, 2015
Three times in the past 20 years, an Israeli prime minister has headed into an election while openly battling a U.S. president. The first two times the incumbent lost, establishing the Israeli political maxim that endangering relations with Washington was ruinous. In 1999, the loser was Benjamin Netanyahu, who calculated, wrongly, that he could outmaneuver President Bill Clinton by appealing to Congress. Remarkably, a politician known for his caution has now bet his career, and the future of the U.S.-Israel alliance, on the same strategem.
Netanyahu may view his address to Congress on Tuesday primarily as a Churchillian appeal against President Obama’s prospective deal with Iran. But it is also a calculation that something fundamental has changed in Israeli politics, and in U.S.-Israeli relations, in the past 15 years. Netanyahu’s gambit supposes that Obama’s Mideast policies have so alienated Israelis that he will be rewarded rather than punished in the March 17 election for a frontal attack on the White House.
By some measures, the wager looks risky. According to research by Jonathan Rynhold of Israel’s Bar Ilan University, 90 percent of Israelis say close relations with the United States are “vital to Israel’s security.” A majority says Israel should not take military action against Iran without U.S. support — and 54 percent in a recent poll were critical of Netanyahu’s decision to speak to Congress.
To be sure, Israelis also oppose Obama’s policies: A majority says he is wrong about Iran and about the conflict with the Palestinians. This president’s popularity in the Jewish state has never approached that of Clinton, or George W. Bush. But Obama’s administration hasn’t changed underlying attitudes. Only the Israeli army outranks ties to the United States in importance when Israelis are asked what guarantees their safety.
“A big majority of Israelis don’t like Obama’s policy,” Rynhold said last week during a discussion at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But they do not support breaking with the United States over it.”
The White House undoubtedly is aware of those numbers; they help explain why national security adviser Susan Rice and Secretary of State John Kerry have directly attacked Netanyahu in the past week. Obama clearly is hoping that, like Clinton and George H.W. Bush in 1992, he can swing an Israeli election against a right-wing incumbent. Netanyahu, who made no secret of his support for Mitt Romney in 2012, can hardly complain.
Netanyahu, however, may have a better grasp of Israeli politics. Victory in elections there depends not on a party winning a majority of votes but on finishing first in a crowded field and then assembling a coalition. At the moment, polls show Netanyahu’s Likud Party running neck and neck with the leftist bloc led by Isaac Herzog, but the two combined probably will capture fewer than 50 of the 120 Knesset seats. Either might be able to cobble together a coalition from the nine other parties and blocs expected to win seats. So it’s crucial which one wins more seats and the first chance to cut deals.
That’s where Netanyahu’s speech to Congress might help him. His electoral strategy has been aimed at poaching voters from small parties to the right of Likud. While even the far right in Israel is strongly pro-American, nationalist voters are more likely to support Netanyahu’s tough stand on Iran. Moreover, Rynhold says, the personal nature of the Obama-Netanyahu feud has meant that Israelis aren’t convinced that the overall relationship is at stake.
They — and Netanyahu himself — may be wrongly supposing that Americans are as united as Israelis in supporting the alliance. In reality, Rynhold’s research shows a wide gap opening between the U.S. parties on Israel even before the furor over the speech. For example, while 62 percent of Republicans say the United States should support Israel if it attacks Iran, only 33 percent of Democrats agree. Similarly, 68 percent of Democrats say the United States should “get tough” with Israel over its settlement construction in the West Bank vs. 29 percent of Republicans.
Netanyahu’s speech may well get him the votes he needs to form a new government. But he may also widen that gap between U.S. Democrats and Republicans. Already, some Democrats who have been sympathetic to the Israeli view of Iran, such as Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, have said they won’t attend the speech; those could be swing votes in any attempt by Congress to block a deal.
If Netanyahu is defeated, U.S.Israeli relations may return swiftly to comity, as happened after the 1999 and 1992 elections. If the election produces a centrist coalition of the Likud and Labor parties, tensions might also drop. But if Netanyahu succeeds in breaking the past pattern and forms another right-wing coalition, an alliance that has been the heart of American engagement in the Middle East will, like the U.S. relationship with Iran, be headed toward an upheaval.
Netanyahu’s electoral trip to Washington
The PM’s address to Congress on Iran next week won’t move Obama one inch, but he ignores the West Bank to Israel’s peril
By Avi Issacharoff, Times of Israel
February 28, 2015
In four more days it will happen. On Tuesday, March 3, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the US Congress and try to save an entire nation from the disaster unfolding before us: A nuclear Iran.
Netanyahu could not have imagined a better issue for him to tackle on the eve of Israeli elections, at least not until House Majority Leader John Boehner came to his aid, and initiated a move that could help him greatly against Isaac Herzog come election day. But at what cost? Some argue that this maneuver will cause significant damage to the relations between Israel and the United States, if it hasn’t done so already.
What’s more, the chances that the Democrats will stand by Israel’s side and against President Barack Obama on the nuclear negotiations issue are nil. As such, what we may be witnessing is a showdown by Netanyahu and the Republicans against Obama and the Democrats.
US-Israel relations, which were always based on bi-partisan support, will experience one of the most significant fractures to date, and so will the pro-Israel Jewish organizations in America. Whether they want to know it or not, they will be seen as supporters of Netanyahu and opponents of Obama, even though this may not at all be true.
Everyone in Washington knows that the chance of Netanyahu’s speech changing Obama’s policy is a big, fat zero. This is not the way to convince the administration, nor is it the way to influence Congress; the successes of Israel and the pro-Israel lobby in Washington have usually come about through cautious moves and quiet contacts.
Netanyahu’s claim that he is going to the US to convince the Americans that the agreement taking shape between the P5+1 powers and Iran is a disaster, is like throwing sand in the eyes of Israeli voter, even though the agreement is indeed bad.
And this is perhaps the important point that many Arab leaders understand. The way negotiations with Tehran have been handled by the US and the five other world powers has been problematic in their eyes, to say the least. Washington has been holding conversations for many months with Tehran without the use of sticks, only carrots. As it appears, the emerging agreement will allow Iran to remain a nuclear threshold state.
The lack of seriousness, or even disregard, with which moderate Arab states are treating Netanyahu’s trip to Congress, does not derive from conciliatory attitudes toward the negotiations. Quite the opposite. It is mostly that they understand that the speech won’t accomplish anything. Arab leaders also understand that any connection with Netanyahu will harm them politically in their own countries.
In many ways, Arab countries are treating the possibility of a bad deal with Iran with more gravity than Israel. Most Arab leaders fail to understand Obama’s handling of foreign policy, especially toward Iran. The prevailing approach in Riyadh, Cairo, Amman and the UAE, is that one must not conduct negotiations at all with Tehran. For moderate Arab states, the US should only be brandishing the stick; no carrots.
A nuclear Iran presents a strategic threat to these states – militarily, because of the fear of ballistic missiles and terror attacks, and domestically because of Iranian subversion in these countries, and in other places like Yemen. For moderate Arab countries, Iranian nuclear capabilities, or that of Shiites in general, mean a threat that will be impossible to stop or handle. They will have to develop a response, either a nuclear weapon or threshold capability.
The threat a nuclear Iran poses to Arab countries is staggering, no less than the threat Israel would face. This is a broad camp against Iran, the biggest imaginable as long as no one declares it publicly.
But despite the shared fate regarding Iran, there is a still a deep disagreement between the moderate Arab states led by Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sissi and Israel — the Palestinian issue. To them, this is one of the most important factors to prevent further regional escalation, and Jerusalem’s policies on this matter have been mystifying at best, even harmful.
Playing with fire and electricity in the West Bank
On August 31, 2010, a dinner was held in the IDF’s Judea and Samaria Division to mark the end of the Ramadan fast. Israeli and Palestinian commanders gathered to celebrate the meal together. The division commander then was Brig.-Gen. Nitzan Alon, currently the outgoing head of the Central Command. With Alon were many other officers, and of course all the heads of the Palestinian Security Services like Ziad Habariah and Majed Faraj, and the Palestinian interior minister.
Just before the start of the meal, news was received of a terrorist attack at the Bnei Naim junction near Hebron. Four Israelis were killed, Yitzhak and Tali Ames, and two passengers in their car, Kochava Even Chaim and Avishai Schindler, all residents of the Beit Hagai settlement.
The notice of the brutal attack put an end to the meal. Demonstratively, the Palestinians put their forks down and emphasized how seriously they saw the incident. One of those present said that, “This was not a show, this was real.”
The heads of the security services said immediately that it was their intention to do their duty and catch the murderers. About five weeks later, two of those involved in the attack, Hamas members from Hebron, were eliminated by an IDF and Shin Bet force. Rumor had it that the intelligence on their location came from the Palestinian security forces.
Since then a lot of bad blood has flowed between the PA and Israel. The negotiations stopped. The PA asked to join the International Criminal Court. Israel stopped transferring tax money. And despite it all, security coordination continued. But those who know the subject intimately explain that the coordination is no longer at its height, and it’s hard to say how long it will last.
Yes, the PA still carries out arrests of Islamic Jihad and Hamas members. But the real desire to fight the terrorist groups is gone, mostly because of the suspension of the tax transfers and the payroll problems. It’s hard to think of a situation that is more problematic for maintaining quiet in the West Bank.
It’s the security forces, of all people, those who go out to stop terror attacks against Israeli targets and angry demonstrations that could slide into an intifada, who are not likely to receive their salaries at the beginning of March because of the Israeli decision to stop the money transfers.
For the past two months, they have only received part of their salaries.
Did anyone in the Israeli government think about this in depth, and consider its consequences? Did anyone understand fully the potential impact of 180,000 PA workers, who support more than a million people, being unable to make a living?
The Israeli defense establishment opposes the suspension of the tax transfers, decided on by the political leadership as reprisal for the PA joining the ICC (International Criminal Court). The prime minister, defense minister and their staffs thought it would be wise to take the step, but there is a price to the move.
Still, it must be said, the Palestinian leadership is not rushing anywhere. It doesn’t want an escalation now, certainly not on the eve of the Israeli elections. It will likely wait patiently until the elections in order to see if Netanyahu intends to transfer the money or not.
If Israel does transfer the money, a new target date will appear on the horizon – the creation of a new Israeli government around May. In the meantime the PA will prepare a petition for the international courts and the Security Council. Even then, it doesn’t mean the end of security coordination or the dismantling of the PA.
Ramadan starts in June and ends in late July. What happens before, or right after Ramadan, is hard to say. There are so many variables that could contribute to instability: terrorist attacks, burning mosques, soldiers who feel mortal threats during operations, any number of factors could cause an escalation before the summer.
For a while it seemed the issue of electricity could be added to the list of possible catalysts. The Prime Minister’s Office claimed earlier this week that the decision to cut off Nablus and Jenin from power did not come from the political leadership, but rather from the Israel Electric Corporation. And to its credit, it moved on Thursday to resolve the problem. Netanyahu also approved the much-delayed connection of the new West Bank city Rawabi to the water supply. On the eve of his highly politicized visit to the United States, welcome steps indeed. More are needed.
Netanyahu’s speech – historic or hysteric?
Op-ed: Most Congress members don’t know much about foreign policy, but they do know politics; they will assume it’s Netanyahu’s performance in the polls and not Iran that brought him over at this time.
By Nahum Barnea, Ynet news
March 03, 2015
WASHINGTON – “There is no sacred date for an agreement between the world powers and Iran,” a senior member of the prime minister’s entourage said in a press briefing Sunday night, several minutes after landing in Washington.
He added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had chosen to address the two houses of Congress after estimating that the world powers and Iran were close to signing an agreement. He is familiar with the details of the agreement and has come to the conclusion that it’s a bad agreement.
Nonetheless, according to the senior government official, Netanyahu never said that he was against the agreement. He is in favor of an agreement that will eliminate the nuclear capabilities being developed by the Iranians.
The senior official tried to downplay the sense that Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington has created a full-on confrontation between the Israeli government and the White House.
“We have a lot of respect for President Barack Obama,” he said. He added that Netanyahu had spoken to Secretary of State John Kerry on the telephone on Saturday.
The official’s comments were made after the prime minister’s previous statements created the impression that he is coming to Washington to prevent an agreement to be signed on March 24. The current assumption is that the sides are unlikely to reach any agreement by that date, and that it’s not an agreement but “a comprehensive and joint action plan” – in other words, a draft for continuing negotiations.
There may be no escape from concluding that the only sacred date we are talking about right now is March 17, Election Day in Israel.
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Secretary of State Kerry is leaving for Geneva for another round of talks with Iran. Will an agreement be reached during this round? The American administration doesn’t think so, and neither do the professional ranks in Israel. The gaps are too wide. It’s true that in the past two weeks the American side has seen a number of encouraging signs, but Tehran must reach a real turning point – and that has yet to come.
There has been so much talk about the internal political games in Israel and the internal political games in Washington that we have forgotten about the third angle in this triangle – Iran. During the discussions with the Iranians, the Americans learned that there is an internal game taking place in Iran which is as fiery as the one taking place in the US.
In Iran, there are key elements that profit from the continuation of the sanctions: They are involved in smuggling and in other businesses related to the sanction economy. There are, as expected, conservative circles which fear that the agreement will expose Iran to foreign influences and threaten their rule. I doubt that the Iranian delegation has a mandate to reach an agreement.
The details of the negotiations are confidential. According to what we know right now, the gaps have to do with three main issues: First of all, the depth of the international supervision on the Iranian project; second, what restrictions which will be imposed on Iran after 10 or 15 years, when the agreement expires; and third, what will happen to Iran if it turns out that it is violating the agreement.
These issues are far from being marginal. President Obama knows that in order to guarantee that the Congress will not sabotage the agreement with Iran, he must at least convince the members of the Democratic minority in the two houses of Congress that he has reached a reasonable agreement, which is not a fig leaf concealing an American acceptance of a nuclear bomb. The key is in the Democrats’ hands.
From this aspect, Netanyahu is coming to the right place: The state of mind in the Congress could affect the agreement’s clauses, and maybe even its actual existence. The president can suspend the sanctions, but he can’t cancel them without the Congress’ support. Moreover, the Congress can impose new sanctions.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu made his move in a way and timing which destroy what he is allegedly seeking to fix. Instead of convincing the Democrats, he is pushing them into a loyalty test, the results of which are known in advance – and he is doing it two weeks before the elections in Israel.
Most Congress members don’t know much about foreign policy, but they do know about politics. Netanyahu will address them on Iran, but they will assume that it’s not Iran which brought him over at this time, but rather his situation in the election polls.
There is evidence here and there that supports this cynical interpretation. On Monday, for example, Netanyahu will address the Jewish lobby in the AIPAC Policy Conference. I have been present in most speeches delivered by Israeli prime ministers in this conference. This time, Netanyahu will speak at 10 am local time, 5 pm Israel time. His real audience won’t be his American listeners but his Israeli voters. He will bombard them with barrages of applause.
Not to mention his visit to the Western Wall over the weekend.
The Prime Minister’s Office has distributed a video showing his hand, the left hand, writing the draft for his speech. This documentation is aimed at creating a historical impression: As if the entire world will roll over at the stroke of a single speech in one place.
Netanyahu will deliver two speeches during his visit: One at the AIPAC conference and one at the Congress. It’s not difficult to guess what he will say in them. Netanyahu will praise the United States excessively. He will laud the alliance between the two countries and promise that it’s eternal. He may even praise the security aid America gave Israel during Obama’s term as president.
And then he’ll move on to Iran, quoting all of Iran’s threats to destroy Israel and all the horrible things the Iranians have said about the Americans over the years. America saved the world twice, he may say, in World War I and in World War II. It’s the only country that can save it a third time. He will present some kind of gimmick, something for the social media, and conclude his speech with a Bible verse.
The Republicans in the Congress will rise from their seats as one and applaud. Twenty times, 30 times, as much as he wants. Some of the Democrats will join them. What will happen next? They will all go to have lunch.
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Robert Kagan is one of the outstanding writers in the US neoconservative camp, a camp which usually adopts the Israeli government’s policy unconditionally and treats Netanyahu with fondness reserved for one of them. Over the weekend, Kagan wrote a harsh article in the Washington Post against Netanyahu’s invitation to address the Congress. Not because of Iran, because of the precedent.
“Is anyone thinking about the future?” he asked. He mentioned a series of foreign leaders who disagreed with US presidents. Nonetheless, the Congress leaders avoided inviting them.
“Today, bringing a foreign leader before Congress to challenge a US president’s policies is unprecedented,” he wrote. “After next week, it will be just another weapon in our bitter partisan struggle.”
AIPAC delegates: Stand with Israel, not Netanyahu
Before you give him a standing ovation, think of whether the Israeli prime minister is leading the kind of Jewish state you support.
By Don Futterman, Haaretz
March 02, 2015
This week, delegates to the annual AIPAC conference will host Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose address to the U.S. Congress will perhaps do more to undermine AIPAC’s operating strategy than any single act by an Israeli leader since AIPAC was established. AIPAC’s main mission, as a video on its conference website makes clear, is to ensure bipartisan support for the State of Israel.
But Netanyahu is blatantly colluding with the Republican Party to publicly embarrass the Democratic president of the United States, while also snubbing leading senators of the Democratic Party – the political home of 70 percent of Jewish-American voters – and evoking a troubling degree of enmity from the U.S. administration.
Netanyahu is a regular speaker at AIPAC – the pre-eminent gathering of pro-Israel supporters in America – and routinely ignites the crowd. He knows his buzzwords – security, solidarity, the only democracy in the Middle East, terrorist threats, rising anti-Semitism, ISIS, Iran, Iran, Iran; he has the look – dour and determined; and he has the cadences for talking tough – even to our closest and most important ally up the road from this year’s gathering in Washington D.C.
The joke in Israel for years has been that Netanyahu heads to AIPAC or to Congress because no one else will give him a standing ovation. He certainly doesn’t get them in Israel. While delegates are cheering Israel’s prime minister, I hope some will ask themselves whether Netanyahu’s vision of Israel in any way accords with theirs.
Almost four years ago, 450,000 Israelis took to the streets because they could not afford the cost of living in Israel. The 294-page State Comptroller’s report issued last week, which warns that Israel’s middle class is in danger of collapsing, blames the housing crisis squarely on Netanyahu, who spent six years building homes for West Bank settlers, while apartment prices inside Israel rose by a whopping 36 percent. Much of Netanyahu’s Israel is poor. More than 1.6 million citizens live below the poverty line, including 756,000 children, according to the National Insurance Institute. According to UNICEF, Israel ranks fourth in child poverty in the developed world. Still, Netanyahu always finds money for settlements.
The economic inequalities are nothing compared to the ethnic and social divides Netanyahu cultivates. During last summer’s Gaza War, a wave of unprecedented physical and verbal violence was unleashed against Israel’s Arab citizens, which continued through the fall. President Reuven Rivlin spoke out in horror against the “disease” of racism. But our prime minister kept silent.
If Netanyahu was largely passive while Arab citizens were being assaulted, he led the demonization campaign against the 47,000 African refugees and asylum seekers who entered Israel without permits. Despite reducing the number of refugees entering Israel to practically zero, thanks to the Sinai fence, he continues to lock up thousands of these desperate people – who, like our own Jewish ancestors, sought to escape persecution and poverty. Netanyahu’s policies flout Jewish values, and have been overturned multiple times by the High Court as immoral and unjustified. But they play well to his xenophobic base.
Likud-led fear and hatemongering hardly stops with our non-Jewish minorities. Progressives, civil rights activists, leftists, the judiciary and anyone who criticizes the occupation have all been accused of being enemies of the state. So much for Jewish solidarity or democratic discourse.
And oh yes, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories will soon enter its 48th year, and the resolution of our conflict has rarely seemed more remote.
This week’s Netanyahu drumbeat claims that the Iranian threat trumps all traditional diplomatic considerations. But those who, like me, believe that Iran is an existential threat to Israel, and fear that the agreement currently being negotiated will be too forgiving and trusting of Iran need to acknowledge that Netanyahu has blown it.
His anti-Obama tirades, his support for West Bank settlements over all other considerations, his efforts to undermine the Palestinian Authority, his expropriation of 988 acres of Palestinian land at the end of the Gaza War not only wasted the new diplomatic opportunities he promised toward the war’s end, but alienated and antagonized the very European leaders who, along with U.S. President Barack Obama, are the partners necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
AIPAC delegates may tell themselves they are saluting the office of the prime minister and not necessarily paying tribute to the man when they rise to cheer Netanyahu, but the world misreads this as complete Jewish-American endorsement of his positions.
Netanyahu plays the statesman abroad, but back home he is known for his paranoia, his self-aggrandizement, and his lashing out against the courts, the universities and the media. Netanyahu aspires to be Israel’s Churchill, but in nurturing a nation divided against itself he has become our Nixon.
Don Futterman is the program director for Israel of the Moriah Fund, a private American Foundation working to strengthen civil society in Israel. He can be heard weekly on TLV-1’s The Promised Podcast.
How Israel Sees Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress
By Ilene Prusher , Time
March 02, 2015
Jerusalem–Israelis are divided on the prime minister’s trip to Washington, just two weeks before they go to the polls
If recent history is any indication, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to receive a number of standing ovations when he speaks before Congress on Tuesday to warn lawmakers about what he predicts will be a “bad deal” on Iran’s nuclear program.
But just as members of Congress are voting with their feet whether to attend the controversial speech that the Obama administration has deemed “destructive” to U.S.-Israel ties, Israeli voters are preparing to vote with their ballots as they narrow down their choices ahead of national elections exactly two weeks later, on March 17.
The diplomatic tempest over Netanyahu’s address, which comes at the invitation of Republican House Speaker John Boehner without any coordination with the White House, is also casting a cloud over Israel’s internal debate, with politicians and pundits speaking about little else.
Some analysts say the storm of attention may actually help Netanyahu, who has built himself a reputation as “Mr. Security” since he took the premiership for the second time in 2009 (He was elected for a third term in 2013). Conservative voters who feel Israel must never compromise its defense by relying too heavily upon others believe that even the so-called “special relationship” with the United States should be kept in check. This rightist constituency likes the idea of a leader who will defy what they perceive as pressure from Washington and Europeans capitals to make concessions, whether to the Palestinians next door or to the Iranians in a deal on nuclear enrichment.
“He’s actually speaking the language this audience wants to hear,” says Professor Reuven Hazan, the chair of the political science department at the Hebrew University. “It’s beautiful politicking … Two weeks before the election he is setting the agenda on Iran, which is where he wants it, and not on housing prices. It is increasingly perceived in this audience that Obama wants to reach an agreement at all costs, and Netanyahu will get a free hour of prime time across all the networks to broadcast that message.”
But it’s not just political expediency driving Netanyahu to Washington, says Gideon Rahat, a senior associate at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem. “It’s his deep belief that Obama doesn’t understand the cruel world outside and he’s trying to be too nice.”
No matter how pure Netanyahu’s ideological motives are for speaking to Congress, the speech could end up hurting him. Critics in Israel and elsewhere say Netanyahu’s decision to speak Tuesday is turning support for Israel into a partisan issue, pitting Democrats against Republicans and threatening the relationship with Israel’s most valued ally. Among these are Commanders for Israel’s Security, a group of more than 200 retired officers who chimed into the chorus of critique over Netanyahu’s plans to address Congress against the wishes of the Obama administration. On Sunday they held a press conference at which they said Netanyahu had gone off course.
Commanders for Israel’s Security [above], a group of former senior commanders from the IDF, Mossad, Shin Bet and Israel Police, held a press conference Sunday, in which they warned that Netanyahu’s security and diplomatic policies were destroying the alliance with the US, ruining Israel’s power of deterrence and serving to bring Iran closer to obtaining nuclear weapons. More on this story from JPost. Photo by Avshalom Sassoni.
“We decided that we need to publicly give our opinion — that the prime minister’s current policy is destroying the covenant with the United States,” said Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amnon Reshef. “The way to stop a nuclear Iran is by strengthening ties between countries, between the U.S. and Israel, between Israel an the international community.”
Amiram Levin, a former northern commander in the IDF, offered that he’d known Netanyahu as a young soldier and had taught him how to navigate while serving in an elite army unit. “I tell him now, Bibi you are navigating incorrectly,” Levin said, using the prime minister’s nickname. “The target is Tehran, not Washington.”
Such censure must surely sting, but Netanyahu left for the U.S. capital Sunday smiling and insisting that his was a “fateful, even historic, mission.” Indeed, his own political fate could be determined by this speech, just days before a national ballot that he himself called when he fired several of his ministers last November. Recent polls show that his rivals in the Zionist Union, an alliance of the Labor Party under the leadership of Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni of Hatnua, have a slight lead over Netanyahu’s Likud. Two centrist parties are siphoning away support from Netanyahu’s Likud base, as are parties further to the right of him led by Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman.
The strained U.S.-Israel relationship and the Iran nuclear issue are not the only factors weighing on Netanyahu’s popularity, though. The premier has suffered from a string of mini-scandals pointing to excessive spending at his official and private residences, and personal use of public funds. Meanwhile, a report released last week indicated that a housing crisis in Israel is even more severe than previously realized, and found two consecutive Netanyahu administrations coming up short on solutions. Apartment prices jumped 55% from 2008-2013, the study found.
When asked for a reaction, the prime minister immediately turned back to his favorite subject. “When we talk about housing prices, about the cost of living, I do not for a second forget about life itself,” he tweeted. “The biggest threat to our life at the moment is a nuclear-armed Iran.”