Some believe that the description by US President Barack Obama of Netanyahu’s speech as a step forward is because no one in the West confronts Israel openly. It is the state of Holocaust victims and everyone applauds a bad speech with nothing new in it except the position of Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist, right-wing government.
Others believe that Obama’s description of Netanyahu’s speech as a step forward represents an American welcome that precedes real pressure on Israel to enter negotiations.
Advocates of this theory say that the progress that took place with Obama’s arrival in the White House is the following: American pressure is now actually being put on Israel, in a way that happened only during the term of former Secretary of State James Baker, under George HW Bush.
Now, for the first time, Obama is pressuring Israel. For the first time, there is support for him from Congress and the Jewish community, and this is something completely new. The Americans are serious about negotiations; they begin by saying that Netanyahu has taken a step forward and congratulate him, as if they did not hear the conditions contained in his speech. In other words, they do ignore and disapprove of these conditions.
An Arab diplomat who took part in the negotiations with the Americans called it the style of US negotiations. It begins with praise for using the word “state;” then pressure as part of a negotiation track that will apparently take time. The Arab diplomat offered the settlement issue as an example of this. US envoy George Mitchell said to the Israelis that he came with instructions to begin negotiations with Israel about borders. The diplomat indicated that if Washington was negotiating with Israel about borders, then this means that it had begun a track to lay down the borders of a Palestinian state, which means that whatever is inside the Palestinian state cannot be considered to be Israel, and therefore, the issue of freezing settlements would be overcome in this way.
There are serious US intentions for the first time; even the Israeli newspaper Haaretz mentioned that the Americans told the Israelis that because of the Israeli conditions, it would be difficult to see positive steps taken by the Arabs.
Advocates of the theory of American seriousness say that despite their welcoming of Netanyahu’s speech, which produced nothing new, the White House understands completely that the speech represents obstruction of these demands and an attempt to escape the conditions set down by Obama. However, Washington is determined to pressure the Israeli prime minister. This theory is logical, without being optimistic, because the success of the US policy is not guaranteed.
There is a fundamental transformation in US policy, represented by Obama’s peaceful persona and the international and popular support he enjoys. However, the essence of the American position today, a position that might not last, is that America’s interest lies in moving forward because of a purely US interest, and not concern with Israel, the Arabs, or the Palestinians.
The purely American interest today is that they can no longer continue in the same way.
Obama told Netanyahu that his stance expressed progress, to be able to drag him to serious negotiations, despite the conditions he set down, and Obama is acting as if he did not hear them. Netanyahu will visit Europe this week and arrive in France on the 24th of the month; then he will head to Brussels, and on to Washington.
The purely American interest today, along with the fear of the fall of Pakistan, Washington’s preparations for withdrawing its forces from Iraq in light of the disastrous consequences of former President George Bush’s policies in the region, and the Iranian elections and their aftermath, involves stability in the region.
If the US does not move now to pressure Israel, it is not because Washington does not have an interest in doing so. It is true that Netanyahu gave a speech that aborted hopes of peace, as Egyptian President Husni Mubarak said, and it is true that Arab states cannot go along with the US request to open up to Israel. It is also true that no one in the Arab world expected anything else from Netanyahu in his speech, only his racism against Israeli Arabs and his designation of an occupied Palestinian state submitting to Israel’s whims. But it cannot be the case that Obama read the speech as a sign of progress. The American pressure is coming, but the result is not certain, and this is the true wager here.
Will the US negotiation track succeed? Will the White House be able to go farther than it should with the extremist Israeli government that the world fears to punish, because it is permitted to do anything it wants? This is what we will see in the coming weeks and years of Obama’s first term as president.
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