This story originally appeared on themedialine.org.
More than two weeks after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted an invitation from Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, Netanyahu insists he will not back out despite a wave of criticism in both the US and Israel. President Barack Obama said he would not meet the Israeli Prime Minister as it is too close to the Israeli election, and Vice President Joe Biden said he would not attend the speech to Congress because of “scheduling difficulties.”
The address is to focus on Iran and Israel’s efforts to stop any deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Netanyahu said over the weekend he would work in any way possible to stop a “bad and dangerous agreement that will cast a heavy cloud over the future of the State of Israel,” although he did not refer directly to his upcoming trip.
Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress, set for just two weeks before the Israeli election, has sparked controversy in both the US and Israel. Netanyahu’s opponents have charged he is endangering Israel’s primary strategic asset – Israel’s relationship with the US – to try to make sure he is re-elected as Prime Minister
US Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, insisted that the relationship between the two allies remains strong.
“We will over come this and continue working together regardless of the debate about Netanyahu's speech to Congress,” said Shapiro on Monday. “Our goal is to reach a diplomatic agreement that would ensure Iran does not require nuclear weapons.”
A poll published by Army Radio found that 47 percent of Israelis thought Netanyahu should cancel the speech, while 34 percent said it should go ahead as planned.
Some Israeli analysts played down the extent of the tension between the two allies.
“We’ve been through this before,” Amiel Unger, a commentator and journalist told The Media Line. “There are ebbs and flows in every relationship. Netanyahu has to go to warn against a deal that sounds like it will leave Iran a screwdrivers turn from a nuclear weapon.”
He said that if Netanyahu decided to cancel the trip now, it would “pull the rug out from under Boehner and anger the Republicans.”
Other Israeli analysts said that Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, whether or not President Obama was informed of the invitation before Netanyahu accepted, has done damage to the US-Israel relationship.
“It has done significant damage because it has moved Israel from being a bipartisan issue to being a partisan conflict between the Republicans and the Democrats,” Reuven Chazan, a professor of political science at Hebrew University told The Media Line. “There’s no way we can come out of this positively. If Netanyahu goes, he angers the Democrats who are forced to choose between supporting Israel and supporting their President. If he doesn’t go, after the Republicans have put so much into this trip, he angers them. It is a lose-lose situation we should never have walked into.”
Yet the tiff with the US does not seem to be affecting Netanyahu’s support in Israel. Polls continue to show his Likud party running neck-and-neck with the Zionist Camp as the leading party.
Reuven Chazan says part of that is because President Obama is seen critically in Israel, especially when it comes to Iran.
“Most in Israel including on the dovish left-wing do not understand how you can negotiate with Iran in good faith and how you can consider at all lowering the sanctions that are having some effect on keeping iran from becoming a nuclear power,” Chazan said. “Netanyahu is fighting with a president who is perceived as not having Israel’s interests at heart.”
Both Netanyahu and Zionist Camp leader Yitzhak Herzog say they will not join a coalition with the other, although their promises are not being taken seriously. In the end, both parties want to be part of the ruling coalition, and polls show the public prefers a unity government. At this point, it looks like it will be easier for Netanyahu to form either a center-right coalition that includes the ultra-Orthodox parties, than it will be for Herzog to form a center-left coalition, since the Arab parties are not expected to join.
Although the election is just five weeks away, a significant portion of Israeli voters remain undecided. Many of them will decide based on events in the two weeks preceding the elections.
