It’s a reminder to be careful, to avoid making even implied predictions.
For the latest edition of Hadassah magazine, I wrote an article on Barack Obama’s relation to Israel. The idea that Obama is less committed to Israel than his predecessors is a “misconception,” I said very politely. (English provides a more forceful term, but it is not printable in Hadassah or on this blog.) Obama has done much more for Israel’s security and diplomatic status than people realize, I said. If the relationship between him and Bibi Netanyahu has been fraught, I said, it’s precisely because of the president’s commitment to Israel’s future.
…First, some basic information that has received too little media play: The only change in United States military aid to Israel under Obama is upward. In May, the White House asked Congress for $205 million for Israel to finance the Iron Dome project, above and beyond regular defense aid. Iron Dome is an Israeli-produced high-tech system designed to intercept short-range rockets of the type that have been fired at Israel from Gaza and Lebanon. It should make Israelis living in border areas significantly safer.
On the diplomatic front, the Obama administration’s intense lobbying recently gained Israel acceptance to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the elite organization of the world’s most advanced economies. “It’s an economic security matter of highest order,” says Daniel Kurtzer, former United States ambassador to Israel and now a professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. “You can either be an object or a subject, and Israel is now a subject. They’re part of the rule-making body.”…
Between Bush’s watch and Obama’s, though, at least three things changed. The first is the return of Netanyahu to the prime minister’s office. As Itamar Rabinovich, former Israeli ambassador to Washington (1993-1996), notes, Bush enjoyed a strong personal relationship and close cooperation with Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert; Clinton enjoyed similar ties with three of the four Israeli prime ministers who served while he was president. The exception was Netanyahu.
The issue is political, not personal. “The moment an Israeli prime minister decides, on his own, that he wants to move forward on the peace process and only recruits the U.S. to help, that’s one kind of relationship,” Rabinovich posits. “The moment the prime minister stops the process and the United States finds itself having to pressure [Israel] to make progress, it’s a different kind of relationship.”…
The second change is that Obama is a diplomatic activist, in sharp contrast to his predecessor…. But the most important difference is that further delay has become too obviously dangerous to Israel itself. “If you follow the option of doing nothing, what really happens is that you get to the point where Israel can’t give up land,” says Liel. “[And then], in three years or five, the Palestinians say, ‘If you won’t give the land, give us our individual rights. Make us citizens.’” Israel will face immense international pressure to accede, and once it does, “That’s the end of the Jewish state.” Liel adds: “I believe that Obama understands this, strongly, in his guts.” If he doesn’t, his advisers do, says the veteran diplomat.
I wrote all of this just before the Obama-Bibi meeting in Washington. And the public message of that meeting – as I wrote afterward in the American Prospect – was that “Obama is no longer pressuring Netanyahu to make the policy changes needed for peace.”
I understand that the president has some other stuff on his desk, that we really are just a small country in the Middle East, that he’s got two wars going on, along with a domestic political fight with a Republican party detached from reality but skilled at rabble-rousing. I also understand that most diplomacy goes on behind the scenes, and we may be looking at an optical illusion carefully designed for domestic politics.
But if Obama has given up on pushing, shoving and dragging Bibi toward peace; if he has decided that kowtowing to AIPAC is essential before the November election – then he is not quite as committed to Israel as I’d thought, or he does not understand quite as strongly in his kishkes what needs to be done. I hope my pre-summit reading was right, and that entirely different things were said in the private meeting between Bibi and Obama than were said at the press conference afterward.
But I’m not making predictions. It’s Tisha Be’Av today. And the Talmud says that on the day that the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from prophets and given to fools and children.
The Administration did say, before that meeting but after the Gaza convoy, that “equal protection under the law” must be respected, which is a rather in your face comment on Israeli society. But, I must admit, seeing Obama and Bibi at the photo op reminded me of a parant afraid that if the wrong thing is done his child will explode again.
Frankly, given the immanent turn in American politics, it is had to castigate Israel as uniquely horrible. Perhaps Obama, radiant of radiants, predicts much as you; or perhaps he awaits an adequate event to force change. Or perhaps he has given up. America cannot change Israeli public opinion. Has to start at home.
I am afraid that Obama does not have fight in his “kishka” and Bibi, political animal that he is ( not a statesman for sure) smells it and is playing him like an instrument. Obama will be happy to report very small movement as success and give excuses such as you are giving about all the other things on his plate. I fear he is entirely submissive to AIPAC- which is what makes AIPAC in turn continue to be powerful.. even though we have another movement and viewpoint on Israel happening here.
Obama has not used his bully pulpit effectively since day one on the many issues on his desk. He voiced progressive views, then immediately moved himself to the center from where he now compromises. “Hope”, “Change”, openness, and “I will fight for you” don’t mean much- not at this point, from my point of view. I don’t see the courage needed to makes the moves needed to bring this conflict to it’s conclusion.