AMERICA:Twice in the past year, Netanyahu has forced Obama into humiliating come-downs, writes LARA MARLOWE
ONE OF Barack Obama’s first pledges as president was to foster peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Listening to the American leader in the Rose Garden on Wednesday evening, you wondered if he still believes it’s possible. “I know these talks have been greeted in some quarters with scepticism,” Obama said. “We are under no illusions.” An hour and a half later, in the East Room of the White House, Obama read over Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s shoulder as Netanyahu delivered his speech. “One thing there’s no shortage of, Mr President, are sceptics,” Netanyahu said, turning to look up into Obama’s face. The president flashed a guilty grin.
Twice in the past year, Netanyahu has forced Obama into humiliating come-downs. In September 2009, the president dropped his demand that Israel freeze colonisation of the West Bank completely before negotiations.
Obama snubbed Netanyahu in Washington on March 22th, to show anger over the construction of 1,600 new Israeli homes in East Jerusalem. But four months later, Obama gushed over Netanyahu at the White House, the settlements forgotten.
You could almost hear Obama’s top advisors, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, saying: “Don’t you want to get re-elected? You have to make up with him or AIPAC [America’s pro-Israel lobby] will destroy you”. At dinner in the White House with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair, on Wednesday evening, Obama was the Middle East novice.
“I have gone through wars and hostilities,” Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak said in his pre-dinner remarks. Mr Mubarak (82) was recently hospitalised in Germany and is grieving over the death of a grandson. His dyed hair and pale face accentuated his frailty, as did the presence of Mr Mubarak’s son and chosen heir Gamal. Egyptian-Americans held a press conference to denounce his pharaonic ways.
Egypt’s president-for-life for the past 29 years, noted that: “Settlement activities on the Palestinian Territory are contrary to international law.”
Mubarak promised Mahmoud Abbas that “Egypt will continue its faithful support to the patient Palestinian people and their just cause . . . We will stand by you”. During Israel’s last assault on the Gaza Strip, Egypt closed its border with Gaza. Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan left Washington immediately after Obama’s dinner. So much for standing by Abbas during Thursday’s negotiations with Netanyahu. With his suntan and the watery blue eyes he inherited from his English mother, Abdullah looked like he’d just stepped from the pages of a celebrity magazine. He didn’t mention settlements in his perfunctory speech.
Netanyahu was the smoothest, most telegenic customer, punctuating his speech with the word “peace” 32 times in three languages. But if the Israeli leader wants peace so badly, one couldn’t help wondering, why doesn’t he stop taking Palestinian land? Netanyahu reverted to the Palestinians-as-terrorists-in-waiting mindset for just two paragraphs. “We want the skyline of the West Bank to be dominated by apartment towers – not missiles. We want the roads of the West Bank to flow with commerce – not terrorists . . . We want to ensure that territory we’ll concede will not be turned into a third Iranian-sponsored terror enclave aimed at the heart of Israel,” Netanyahu said.
In his previous term as prime minister, Netanyahu did his utmost to scupper the Oslo Accords. He’s back to his old habits, forcing the Palestinians to jump through more hoops, piling new demands onto the already long list of concessions demanded of them. At the State Department on Thursday morning, Netanyahu told Abbas, “We expect you to be prepared to recognise Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.” Netanyahu’s other demand, couched in the language of “achieving security”, is that any future Palestinian state be demilitarised.
Poor Mahmoud Abbas, unloved at home, bullied by all and sundry. A year ago, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Abbas was seen to clutch Obama’s hands and plead with him before they met with Netanyahu. Palestinian sources say Senator George Mitchell, the Middle East envoy, had to telephone Abbas three times to inveigle him to attend this week’s meetings. As Obama stood over Abbas in the East Room, his face seemed to express beneficence and pity.
The Palestinians recognised Israel when they signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, Abbas reminded Netanyahu. “Our intentions are good, our intentions with respect to recognising the state of Israel,” he said. Abbas also made a pathetic attempt to satisfy Israel’s demand for security, by vaunting his government’s role as policemen for the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. His security forces “are doing everything that is expected of them”, Abbas said. “We condemned the [Hamas] operations . . . We also followed the perpetrators and we were able to find the car that was used and to arrest those who sold and bought the car. And we will continue all our effort . . . in order to find the perpetrators . . .”