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World Jewish News
For Bibi, A Perilous Balancing Act
10.06.2009
In his much-anticipated response to President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech and demand that Israel stop all settlement growth, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected Sunday to stress Israel's close ties with the United States and to embrace Obama’s quest for peace in the region.
But most analysts doubt Netanyahu will advance the peace process. Few believe he will even address the issue of a total freeze on settlement expansion or a two-state solution, proposals Obama called for in his June 4 Cairo speech.
"He is going to try to push different messages and deflect the main issues," suggested David Newman, a professor in the Department of Politics and Government at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. "He
will outline a plan of regional economics, but it will be nothing more than general platitudes."
Eyal Zisser, head of the department of Middle Eastern and African history at Tel Aviv University, offered a similar assessment.
"I don't think he will say anything significant," he said. "He will try to maneuver between the demands of the United States, the Israeli public and his largely right-wing coalition. I think it is important for him to send a message to Obama of what he can and can't accept while Obama is consolidating his own ideas."
And Nathan Brown, director of Middle East Studies at George Washington University, said he too believes Netanyahu will offer nothing new.
"I would expect that he would try to postpone the matter a little bit," he said. "At some point he may have to make a decision, but it is not clear if Obama will continue to forcefully press the issue [or] what the Obama administration would do if the Netanyahu government continues with policies it doesn't like."
Shortly after Netanyahu's speech next Sunday, Khalid Meshaal, the exiled leader of the terrorist group Hamas, has scheduled a speech to present his group's own demands for restarting the peace process.
Hamas controls the Gaza Strip; the Palestinian Authority and its largest party, Fatah, controls the West Bank.
The London-based Arabic-language al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Tuesday that Obama has told both Netanyahu and Egyptian Intelligence Minister Omar Sulleiman that he plans to unveil his own plan to relaunch the peace process in six weeks.
The paper said Egypt has invited Hamas and Fatah leaders to Cairo in an effort to make one more effort at hammering out an agreement for a unity government by July 7. Previous attempts failed over Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel.
In addition, the paper said Egypt has asked for a meeting of Arab foreign ministers on June 17 in the belief that Obama is serious in forging ahead with his peace plan.
But Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, said that although "there is a whole lot of movement, there is no substance yet and there may not be.
"The purpose of the movement is to avoid dealing with the substance," he said. "The substantive issue is that Hamas and Fatah can have a paper agreement, but they are killing each other. How long is it [the agreement] going to last? And if there is a unity government, will it be a Hamas government and will Israel be asked to negotiate with Hamas? How will Netanyahu sell that [to the Israeli public]?"
Asked about the reported Obama peace proposal that is in the works, Steinberg said he does not believe it.
"Every indication is that there is no plan to unveil and that there will just be a push for the two sides to reach agreement," he said.
But the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said it had learned that Obama’s plan calls for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord in two years — a time limit imposed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
A proposal now under discussion would be to start Israeli-Palestinian talks focused on nothing but establishing Israel’s border. Once a border is established, there no longer would be a settlement issue because Israel would be free to build in its own country.
That proposal appears to be preferable to Netanyahu than arguing over a settlement freeze, Steinberg said. But he said such a negotiation is time consuming, "and what happens between now" and when an agreement is reached?
In a meeting with regional reporters after his Cairo speech, Obama said he understood the pressures Netanyahu is under and that he is ready to give him some breathing room.
"It took some time to put that coalition together," said the president. "That means that politics are complicated."
Asked whether he would pressure Netanyahu to agree with his positions, Obama pointed out the "unbreakable" bond between the two countries and that Netanyahu took office only two months ago.
"So we maybe might just want to try a few more months before everybody starts looking at doomsday scenarios," Obama said. "This is difficult and it's going to take some time."
The Dahaf Institute poll taken ahead of Obama’s Cairo speech found that 53 percent of Israelis believed Obama’s policies are not good for Israel and just 26 percent approved of them. But it found that 56 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu should give in to Obama’s demands, although 56 percent do not believe Netanyahu would ever allow the creation of a Palestinian state.
JTA reported Tuesday that Israel has proposed to the United States that it would provide reports on the expansion of existing settlements that the U.S. would be free to verify in return for lifting its demand for a settlement freeze.
But Aaron David Miller, an adviser to six former U.S. secretaries of state, said on Monday that Netanyahu doesn't want a "formal agreement that would be subject to a monitoring committee that would go around the West Bank looking at what the Israelis are doing [in the settlements]. That is not what he wants."
"If he is smart," Miller said, "he will censor himself [regarding settlement expansion]. He will impose restraints on himself and not his government. He should frame this as something he wants to do for the president and not out of a sense of pressure. But I don’t see how in a public speech he can lay out such a strategy on settlements."
But Miller said it is possible that Netanyahu would advance the peace process by expressing "a willingness to negotiate on the basis of a two-state solution — that the outcome at the end of the conflict with the Palestinians is a two-state solution."
Such a move would make it easier for the U.S. to agree to natural growth of the settlements, Defense Minister Ehud Barak reportedly said after meeting with Obama and other senior administration officials in Washington last month.
Miller's view is shared by Alon Ben-Meir, a professor of International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University, who said he believes Netanyahu has "no choice" but to announce his acceptance of a two-state solution.
"I don't think he can find a way out of it," he said. "He can address it any way he wants to, but a two-state solution is the only viable option" to achieve Palestinian-Israeli peace.
Asked how an agreement can be achieved with the Palestinians when Hamas leaders repeated this week their determination never to recognize Israel or to cease their violent attempt to destroy Israel, Ben-Meir replied: "To suggest nothing can happen without Hamas is ridiculous. Hamas is being used as an excuse to do nothing."
Ben-Meir said he believes Netanyahu has come to realize that "he is going nowhere with this [Obama] administration and that congressional leaders have told him they are not going against the president. ... No Israeli government will go head-to-head with the United States because it knows it will not survive."
But Zisser of Tel Aviv University said he saw no way Netanyahu "could accept a Palestinian state because it would be suicidal — taking into account his coalition — and Netanyahu is not brave and courageous. ... I don't expect anything out of this speech."
Barak is also reported to have said there were no personal problems between Obama and Netanyahu and that the U.S. would not try to topple his government. Rather, Barak said Obama's positions are based on his desire to win the support of moderate Arab nations as he withdraws American troops from Iraq, tries to end the war in Afghanistan and to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Источник: The Jewish Week
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