Prime Minister Netanyahu has no “newly declared opposition to a Palestinian state“. If the White House wants to use a badly framed statement by Netanyahu as an excuse for a change in American policy – if it wants, as the WH hinted, to “turn to the U.N. to help force a deal” with the Palestinians on Israel – it should not come as a great surprise. But Netanyahu's words are the excuse, not the reason, for the change. The reason is Netanyahu's victory and the administrations' vindictive mood toward him and toward the country that elected him.
A rocky road in US-Israel relations stretches ahead. And no one seems to be able to make it better.
Netanyahu said a couple of regrettable things in the last, desperate days of his brilliant campaign. The price of turning around an election that seemed close to lost was for him to run as an insurgency – as an outsider. Of course, there is something quite ridiculous about a three-time Prime Minister running as an outsider, but this is exactly what Netanyahu did. He was running against the establishment, against the media, against the old elites, against the big money from abroad, against western governments that wanted him replaced, against Obama too.
Netanyahu is comfortable in this outsider skin. Probably too comfortable. And so in the last days of the campaign, instead of sounding like a respectable, responsible Prime Minister, he sounded at times like a pariah candidate that has no obligation to weigh words and actions. When he was asked if a Palestinian state would not be established if he is reelected he answered with a “correct”. He also stated on the day of the elections that “right-wing rule is in danger” because of Arab voters that “are streaming in huge quantities to the polling stations”. A miserable statement.
In both cases, Netanyahu made an error. In both cases he was not making policy, or intending to hint that a policy is about to change.
The second statement was just a poor call for action for the right-wing voters. Netanyahu's record when it comes to policies aimed at integrating Arab Israelis into society is not bad.
The first statement was merely an assessment of the situation. Netanyahu did not say that he opposes the two state solution – he said that under current circumstances he doesn't see a Palestinian State established in his coming term as Prime Minister. And he is probably right in this assessment.
The Obama administration seems to want to use these two statements as a pretext for action against the new – democratically elected – Israeli government. The President did not call Netanyahu to congratulate him (update: he called late on Thursday). His spokespeople were quick to condemn his statements. White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters that Netanyahu’s statements are “deeply concerning and it is divisive and I can tell you that these are views the administration intends to communicate directly to the Israelis”. But more seriously, the administration now hints that is might use the UN against Israel. The New York Times reported: “several administration officials said that the Obama administration may now agree to passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution embodying the principles of a two-state solution that would include Israel’s 1967 borders with Palestine and mutually agreed swaps of territory”. Senior Israelis heard the same message in Washington in recent days.
This is not a good sign. It is a sign that Obama has not yet recovered from the supposed insult of Netanyahu's speech to Congress. It is a sign that Obama is disappointed not just with Netanyahu but also with Israel that chose to reelect him – the Israel that essentially ignored the fact that the White House wanted Netanyahu replaced. It is a sign that Obama does not see a constructive way to work with the next government – and wants to confront it rather than cooperate with it. It is a sign that the Obama administration is truly getting to the point of being willing to throw Israel under a bus. The UN – when it comes to fair treatment of Israel – is one big bus.
Netanyahu should make an effort to disarm the Obama administration by taking back and clarifying his statements. In fact, he already began doing that, in his victory speech that referred to both “Jews and non Jews”. And he should do the same with the statement on Palestinian statehood. It was, as Republican Senator Tom Cotton understood, “just a statement of fact. There is not going to be a Palestinian State in the short-term because there is not a serious interlocutor on the Palestinian side”.
But I suspect that such clarification is going to do little when it comes to calming the Obama team. The team wanted Netanyahu's head on a plate, and having failed to achieve that – in fact, there is a case to be made that Obama’s antipathy helped Netanyahu – the team now turns to plan B – Israel's head on a plate.
Involving the UN in a matter as delicate as the Israeli-Palestinian problem would only complicate the situation. The Palestinians are going to feel that they have an opportunity to harden their positions and achieve more with a friendly mediator (or, more accurately, a mediator unfriendly towards Israel). Israel is going to feel isolated and betrayed – and that is hardly a mood that makes it receptive to peace proposals and to concessions. The Obama administration is going to achieve nothing on the peace front with such a move. It will only weaken Israel's position and make another round of violence more likely.
There are enough smart people around Obama that could tell him this. So it is not unreasonable to suspect that his actual aim is not the peace front. What Obama seems to want is retribution for Netanyahu's speech, and general behavior, an in-your-face victory. He seems to want Israel to pay a heavy price for electing Netanyahu. He seems to want to signal to Israeli voters that next time they should only consider a Prime Minister that was vetted by the US administration.
Obama's post-election actions are no better – they are actually worse – than Netanyahu's unfortunate pre-election statements.
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