OBAMA BELIEVES: Jews control the key to Iran

Obama advisor: 2-state solution OBAMA BELIEVES: Jews control the key to Iranan mitigate Iran threat

Israel should work to advance the peace process with the Palestinians if it is worried about Iran, says National Security Advisor Jim Jones in interview with ABC
Yitzhak Benhorin Published: 05.10.09, 19:20 / Israel News



The Iranian threat can be reduced by the promotion of the two-state solution, US National Security Advisor James Jones said in an interview broadcast by ABC on Sunday.

Obama administration

Emanuel: This is Israel's moment of truth / Yitzhak Benhorin

On eve of Peres-Obama meeting and two weeks before Netanyahu's arrival, White House chief of staff tells AIPAC donors ability to confront Iran depends on ability to make progress on Palestinian front
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Jones, a retired general, emphasized that the Iranian nuclear program was a "top strategic issue" on the American agenda and that they intended to discuss it with the Israeli delegation, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, scheduled to arrive in Washington for a series of meetings on May 18.

Jones added that Europe and the Arab world had high expectations of the United States and its involvement in the Middle East, requiring American leadership and involvement at all levels of government in order to encourage the gradual advancement of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He then tied the two issues together, asserting that there are many ways of reducing the Iranian threat, one of which is to get closer to a two-state solution.

Jones' views echoed those voiced by US Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel at the recent AIPAC conference. Emanuel said that the ability to confront Iran depended on the ability to make progress on the Palestinian front. Solving the conflict, he said, would make it more possible to handle the threat posed by Iran.

Jones refused to discuss reports that the Obama administration communicated to European leaders that it intends to be more forceful with Israel than George W. Bush's administration had been.


Nonetheless, Jones did suggest that Obama's government intended to take a more hands-on approach, saying it would be fully involved in the process.

Later in the same segment Obama's rival for the presidency in 2008, Senator John McCain, expressed doubts as to the efficacy of placing this kind of pressure on Israel, but praised the Obama administration for its involvement in the region
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Last update - 10:30 11/05/2009


Obama is changing the rules of Mideast pressure


By Akiva Eldar


Tags: Israel News, Barack Obama



It is not hard to imagine what a tumult it would stir in Jerusalem if the United States decided to temporarily ease the pressure on Iran regarding its nuclear program. Or if President Barack Obama ordered a freeze, for the time being, on the sanctions against Syria. God help the U.S. administration if it even considers lifting the boycott on the Hamas rulers in the Gaza Strip before the Palestinian group agrees to a two-state solution within the 1967 borders. And how nice that Congress is delaying the emergency assistance package to the Palestinian Authority until a new government is formed in Ramallah, in order to ensure that it's one we like.

International pressure on neighbors has always been a welcome and even essential tool. Without pressure from the outside why would Iran give up, voluntarily, its nuclear capability? If the United States does not pressure Syria to disengage from terrorist groups, what reason does Damascus have to clash with Hamas and Hezbollah? Were it not for the pressure applied by the Reagan administration on the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Palestinian National Council would not have declared a cessation of the armed struggle against Israel and would not have adopted UN Resolution 242. Presumably Benjamin Netanyahu will not complain about pressure that the Obama administration might apply against the Palestinians; for example, to push them to recognize Israel as a state of the Jewish people.

However, the legitimacy of international pressure comes to an end when it has to do with Israeli interests, or more precisely, with what the politician at the wheel perceives as Israeli interests. Why should the European Union pressure Netanyahu to resume the negotiations on a permanent settlement? Where did this audacity come from, to condition upgrading ties with Israel on the commitment of its government to abide by a two-state solution? What are they thinking? Are we Arabs? When Israel promises the U.S. president to evacuate outposts and freeze settlement activity, it does not need any pressure to keep its promises. In our case, our word counts for something.
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Like a spoiled child, Israel is in no rush to willingly surrender real estate it holds and has settled for decades. (A survey by Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal and Dr. Eran Halperin found that 53 percent of Israelis consider the West Bank liberated territory and only a minority sees it as occupied territory?.) Even though the threat of Israel becoming a binational or apartheid state increases annually, such pressure is insufficient to make it pull out of the territories. Israeli decision makers have decided to give up the territories only if the price of the status quo, in foreign currency, is much higher than the price they will have to pay in local currency for the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of settlers and the division of Jerusalem.

Obama had already announced during the campaign for the presidency that a "friend of Israel" is not, in his opinion, synonymous with being a Likud member. In his first days at the White House he has made clear that whether a two-state solution is acceptable to a Likud government or not, that is the only formula up for negotiation. Moreover, according to Quartet envoy Tony Blair, the establishment of a Palestinian state is considered a U.S. national interest in Obama's eyes. This means that pressure on Israel to end the conflict with the Arabs will certainly not disrupt efforts to pressure Iran to halt its nuclear program, and may even contribute to it.

President George W. Bush enjoyed the title "friend of Israel" because he made do with paying lip service to pressure on Israel and passed around documents that lacked teeth. He taught the Israelis that it is possible to behave contemptuously and make a laughingstock of the road map, all the while preserving a most important strategic asset - special ties with the United States. Obama has already managed to alter the rules of the game of the U.S. in the Middle East; everyone, with no exception, is welcome to choose between understandings and sanctions, between carrots and sticks.

The question is not whether Obama will pressure Israel; the pressure is already there. There were times when an invitation to an Arab leader to Washington before an invitation to an Israeli prime minister was considered a serious offense. Once a visit by an American president to a neighboring Arab state, without a promise to also come to Israel, was interpreted as serious pressure.

The repertoire of pressure available to the president of the United States is extensive and multifaceted. It looks like we will have to learn about it the hard way.
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Israeli Intel: To Make Room for Iran and Syria, Obama May Jettison Israel
Susan Rosenbluth - May 01, 2009
The Jewish Voice and Opinion



The showdown between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the issue of a two-state solution has begun. At the very least, the President and his administration seem to be laying the groundwork so that the White House, the Pal­estinians, the European Union, and even perhaps Iran and Syria will be the winners.

The losers in Mr. Obama’s game plan are Mr. Netanyahu and Israel. There is even a ques­tion if, after negotiations, Israel will be recognized as “The Jewish State.”

But the tactic against Israel is just part of a much wider Obama administration policy. According to a classified in­telligence assessment relayed to Mr. Netanyahu, the White House has made a calculated decision to woo its former en­emies and drop its former friends and allies.

Making New Friends

According to reports at the end of April, the classified in­telligence assessment said Mr. Obama and his senior advisors intend incrementally to diminish US strategic cooperation with Israel that has developed over the last 20 years.

“Obama wants to make friends with our worst enemies and, until now, the worst en­emies of the United States,” said an Israeli source familiar with the intelligence assess­ment. “Under this policy, we are more than irrelevant. We have become an obstacle.”

Israeli sources said the Obama administration intends to reject Israeli intelligence on threats such as Iran and Syria while advancing the White House’s agenda to reconcile with these two countries, both of which are still listed as state sponsors of terrorism by the State Department.

Terrorist Funding

On April 20, Israeli mili­tary intelligence commander Maj Gen Amos Yadlin warned the Cabinet that Mr. Obama was prepared to allow Iran to retain its capability to assemble nuclear weapons and support Hamas and Hezbollah.

“Obama wants to advance the peace process in the direc­tion of realistic discussions with extremist elements,” said Mr. Yadlin.

According to the Israeli intelligence assessment, Mr. Obama will maintain his rec­onciliation policy with Iran and Syria through at least 2010. His reason for implementing this policy, a source told the London Telegraph, is that he is convinced it will enable a smoother US withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pressuring Israel

Part and parcel of the plan is to increase pressure on Israel, forc­ing the Jewish state to withdraw from Judea and Samaria.

“Obama will want to show Iran, Syria, and radical Muslims that the US could pressure Israel on a strategic level,” the source said. “The pressure has already begun and will intensity through­out the next year or two.”

According to Mr. Yadlin, Mr. Obama is actively courting the regimes of Syrian President Bashir Assad and Iranian Presi­dent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even though neither has reduced his support for insurgency groups throughout the region.

Mr. Yadlin said Mr. Assad hopes “to turn over a new leaf with” Mr. Obama.

“However, while Western powers are being hosted at the palace in Damascus, Syria is continuing to be used as the backyard of the axis of evil. Assad is letting Hezbollah and Iranian forces freely conduct their affairs in Syria and use its territory for Hezbollah de­ployment,” he said.

Living with Nukes

According to DEBKAfile, a private Jerusalem-based in­telligence agency, Mr. Obama has “set his sights and heart on friendship with the rulers of the Islamic Republic of Iran and their radical allies.”

According to DEBKAfile, the decision that the US can ac­cept a nuclear-armed Iran was probably first taken by the Bush administration.

The administration also sent a high-ranking delegation, headed by Jeffrey Feltman, former ambassador and princi­pal princi­pal deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, to the Syrian independence day celebration at Washington’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

According to DEBKAfile, “the thaw in relations has gone so far that some Washington wags are calling Assad’s capital ‘Syria on the Potomac.’”

Tossing Arab Allies

As upsetting as all this is to Israel and her supporters, accord­ing to Mr. Yadlin, Mr. Obama’s policies have generated dismay among Arab allies of the US. He said Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are now concerned that US reconciliation efforts will encourage Tehran and its proxies to intensify de­stabilization efforts.

Last month, Egypt re­ported a Hezbollah cell op­erating in Cairo and the Sinai Peninsula. Forty-nine agents were arrested. According to the Arab press, three of them were charged with attempting to smuggle arms from Sudan to Hamas in Gaza, using Egyp­tian territory.

While at first, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasral­lah denied that his organization had cells operating outside of Lebanon, it later turned out the arrested men had been assigned by Hezbollah to observe and collect intelligence from the villages along the Egypt-Gaza border, tourist sites in the Sinai, and the Suez Canal.

Motives

Hezbollah had several motives. It is still seeking re­venge for the assassination of its second in command, Imad Mugniyeh, 14 months ago. But even more important, the terror group is eager to undermine the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak.

Some observers say that the next intifada, mounted by Islamists, will not be against Israel, but, rather, against the secular government in Cairo.

A few days later, it was revealed that Iran had been behind the planning of the thwarted terror attacks in Egypt by Hezbollah.

Two employees of an Iranian satellite TV channel planned the attacks, which were meant to be perpetrated simultane­ously at a number of locations across the country.

According to the Egyptian paper Al-Alram, the code name for the attacks was mentioned in the last speech delivered by Mr. Nasrallah.

“The Arab world is start­ing to understand that Iranian proxies are a threat to the re­gion,” said Mr. Yadlin. “The Hezbollah activity in Egypt is not an isolated incident. Iran has infrastructures across the world seeking to perpetrate ter­ror attacks against Israel.”

Restricting Arms

According to the intelli­gence assessment, the Obama administration is expected to restrict US arms exports to Israel in an effort to deny the Jewish state systems that could be used in any attack against Iran or Syria. The intelligence sources said this policy was implemented during the last year of the Bush administration and was expected to intensify under Mr. Obama.

While the Obama admin­istration’s chief reason for dis­carding Israel is its desire to build new relationships that would be difficult to maintain if Israel were also an ally, the administration has its more respectable explanation ready: frustration that the Jewish state has not yet evacuated Judea and Samaria so that the Palestinians can have their state.

The Obama administra­tion insists that the Netanyahu government accept President George Bush’s vision of two states living side by side in peace and security. The prob­lem is that, after 16 years of Palestinian intifadas, terrorist violence, and the refusal to compromise, many Israelis, including Mr. Netanyahu, be­lieve the time has come to look for different solutions mostly because Mr. Bush’s vision just does not seem viable.

Land for Terror

Some nationalists in Israel cringe at the very idea of giving away holy land that, according to Jewish tradition, was given to the Jewish people by G-d. Mr. Netanyahu’s concerns, however, seem more strategic than spiritual.

According to a source close to Mr. Netanyahu, the Prime Minister is hesitant about cre­ating a Palestinian State within the borders of Judea and Sa­maria, because, after the Gaza experience, he is concerned that Hamas or another terrorist Pal­estinian faction could take over any vacated land, just as Hamas overran Gaza in 2007.

According to the source, Mr. Netanyahu has stressed that it is important to learn from past mistakes and that no one wants to see a situation in which Israel cedes more terri­tory only to have it taken over by extremist elements.

“No one wants to see a Hamastan in the West Bank,” said the source.

Fairness

There is also the issue of fairness. “If Israelis can’t build homes in the West Bank, then Palestinians shouldn’t be al­lowed to either,” he said.

He said he has no plans to build new communities in Judea and Samaria, but he also has no in­tention of halting existing ones.

“If someone wants to build a new home in an existing com­munity, I don’t think there’s a problem,” he said.

He characterized Judea and Samaria as “disputed ter­ritory” over which negotiations must be held. He said it is not occupied.

Never Again

Israel’s foreign minister, Av­igdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, said the Israeli gov­ernment would have to formulate new ideas and a new approach to deal with the Palestinians.

According to sources in the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Lieberman explained that the traditional ap­proach to the peace process, taken by previous governments, has proven futile, leaving the pro­cess deadlocked despite the fact that Israel has made dramatic concessions.

The sources said Mr. Ne­tanyahu and most of his govern­ment are determined never to repeat the experience of Israel’s withdrawal from territory only to have it controlled by terrorists who regularly lob missiles into civilians’ homes and schools.

Security Interests

Mr. Netanyahu has told Mr. Obama’s Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, that Israel wants to move forward to create a sus­tainable peace with the Pales­tinians, but this peace, he said, must take into account Israel’s vital security interests.

Ministers from Shas and Likud have let Mr. Mitchell, know that they, too, are cat­egorically opposed to a Pal­estinian state.

While their argument reso­nates with many Israelis through­out the political spectrum as well as Israel’s supporters, it did not move Mr. Obama, who personally and through his representatives repeatedly insisted that the only response he was willing to consider was the two-state solution.

To buy some extra time to work through this problem, Israeli and US officials agreed that they would characterize Mr. Netanyahu’s government as “still in its policy review stage.” The phase is expected to be com­pleted by the end of May, when Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to come to Washington.

Two Palestinian States

The irony of the current frenzy to restart the “peace talks” is that even if Messrs Netanyahu and Lieberman were to have a change of heart, the Palestinians themselves are nowhere near ready to build anything. At present, Mr. Ne­tanyahu could be forgiven for not knowing with whom he was supposed to negotiate.

Currently, the Palestinians comprise two separate political entities, or mini-states. Fatah, which recognizes Israel within the pre-1967 borders and has agreed to negotiations, rules in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank. Hamas, which does not recognize Israel at all and still refers to the Jewish state as “the Zionist entity,” controls Gaza. Fatah and Hamas act and deal with one another like two sepa­rate, hostile countries.

Two years ago, Hamas overran Gaza and forced Fatah leaders to flee. The attempts at reconciliation handled first by Saudi Arabia and then Egypt have been notoriously unsuccess­ful. The groups are no closer to forming a unity government than they were two years ago.

While PA President Mah­moud Abbas has indicated he wants the Netanyahu govern­ment pressured to accept the two-state solution, the Palestinian disarray is such that there is no point in resuming talks.

Blaming Israel

Mr. Abbas, of course, blamed the futility of talks at the pres­ent time on the current Israeli government for opposing an independent Palestinian state, delivered to exact Palestinian specifications. The PA demands every square inch of land in Judea and Samaria won by Is­rael during the 1967 Six-Day War, including all of eastern Jerusalem, which, they claim as the capital of their yet-to-be born state. They want an end to all Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, Jewish homes demolished, and hundreds of thousands of Jews expelled from their communities. They want all Arab houses built in Jerusalem, whether legally or not, to be left alone.

The real reason there is no point to talks is that Hamas and Fatah are so far apart on their own issues, they have canceled plans to hold another round of negotiations.

Mr. Abbas’s Fatah-PA

According to Arab-Israeli journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh, if Mr. Obama were serious about promoting the two-state solution, he would focus on helping the Palestinians solve the dispute between Fatah and Hamas.

“The divisions among the Palestinians, as well as failure to establish proper and cred­ible institutions, are the main obstacle to the realization of the two-state solution,” said Mr. Abu Toameh, writing in the Jerusalem Post.

New Friends

Last month, Mr. Netanyahu cautioned Mr. Mitchell that any “two-state solution” will require the cooperation of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, states that would border Palestine, which, like Gaza, may well become another terrorist state.

According to Mr. Netanyahu, those three countries should be part of the peace process, because they now understand the dangers posed by Iran and its extremist proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It is also true that those three states, all threatened by Mr. Obama’s new friends in Iran and Syria, have never been as close psychologically to Israel.

Growing Rift

The growing rift between Israel and the US began as soon as Mr. Netanyahu and his out­spoken Foreign Minister, Mr. Lieberman, won the Israeli elec­tions. The Obama administration had clearly supported their more left-wing opponents.

Despite the fact that Israeli voters selected a right-wing gov­ernment for a reason, White House and State Department spokesmen declare that the administration is completely committed to the rapid establishment of a Pales­tinian state, regardless of how Israelis feel about it.

“We’re going to pursue that two-state solution because we believe it’s in the best interests of all the parties in the region,” said State Department spokes­man Robert Wood.

Not Easy

The Obama administra­tion does not expect this to be easy. To prepare for criticism from traditionally pro-Israel Democratic politicians, at the beginning of April, members of the administration report­edly made a point of briefing Democratic congressmen on the peace process and the po­sitions Washington expects Israel to adopt.

According to some reports, the purpose of the preemptive briefing was to foil the possi­bility that Mr. Netanyahu might succeed-as he did when he was last Prime Minister in 1996-in bypassing the administration by rallying support in Congress, where his popularity is certain to be greater than it will be in the White House.

Some observers have sug­gested that the highly tout­ed Passover seder held in the White House last month may have been nothing more than a stunt, designed to soften up Jewish Democrats, an attempt to show that even though he is about to turn against Israel, he is not antisemitic.

Snubbing the General

Just two weeks before Pass­over, the Obama administration made its position clear when Israel’s IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi came to Washing­ton. His mission was to meet with senior American officials to discuss what Israel sees as the growing, existential Iranian threat to their country. Accord­ing to reports, Mr. Ashkenazi brought new intelligence on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Mr. Ahmadinejad has repeat­edly threatened Israel, warning that the Jewish state should be wiped off the map.

But no one from the Obama administration would meet with Mr. Ashkenazi. And when he finally secured a meeting with National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, the session focused only on US demands that Is­rael lift military restrictions in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.

According to Middle East military analyst and former intel­ligence officer Rick Francona, it was clear that the new adminis­tration had completely revamped American foreign policy.

“This administration appears to have determined that forging a new relationship with Iran may come at the expense of the close relationship with Israel that goes back decades,” he said.

No Time Limit

A clear hint that the US rela­tionship with Iran was undergoing a major shift was that the admin­istration set no time-limits on the talks between the Obama admin­istration and the Iranians.

“We’ve said we’re willing to have a direct dialogue with Iran, and if they come up with some new package with regard to their nuclear program, we’ll have to take a look and see what it is,” said Mr. Wood.

Zalman Shoval, who served as foreign policy advisor to Mr. Netanyahu before he was sworn into office, said the feeling in the Prime Minister’s camp was that while the Obama proposal to negotiate with Iran was sig­nificant, it was important for there to be a definite time limit, “otherwise the Iranians would continue with their nuclear program, even as the talks continued.”

Mr. Shoval said that while Israel was in favor of a short period, something along the lines of two months, there were voices in the US advocating more time.

Worried Congressmen

Not everyone in Mr. Obama’s party is pleased with the switch. In March, two Democratic mem­bers of Congress, wrote to Mr. Obama, urging that he adopt a deadline for engagement with Iran, and that he apply strong sanctions if the talks fail.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MK) and House Foreign Affairs Committee chair­man, Howard Berman (D-CA), wrote that “engagement must be serious and credible, but it cannot be open-ended.”

“We cannot allow Iran to use diplomatic discussions as a cover for continuing to work on its nuclear program,” said Mr. Hoyer.

But, for now, State Depart­ment officials are refusing to put any deadline on US attempts to negotiate. “We are pursuing di­rect diplomacy at the moment,” said one official.

The State Department said it recognizes that it is engaged in a two-track approach. The first part is engagement; the second is sanctions. “But we are focused on the engagement track for now,” said the State Department spokesman.

Important Gesture

Some analysts said that overtures by Mr. Obama, such as the videotaped Iranian New Year greeting, might actually persuade the Iranians to sit down with the administra­tion for serious negotiations. Equally important, they said, the gestures might convince the Europeans and other members of the international commu­nity to go along with the US if tougher sanctions are neces­sary in the future.

According to this logic, the Obama administration will be able to say it made a seri­ous effort at engagement. If the Islamists do not accept it, the Europeans should see that it was the Iranians who ultimately rejected the out­stretched hand.

The analysts said a de­finitive timeline would limit the possibility that something could be accomplished.

The fact that it was Israel who asked for the timeline also complicates matters. If the Obama administration ad­opted the suggestion, it could be seen as kowtowing to Israel at Iran’s expense.

By the middle of April, the Obama administration publicly mentioned that it was consider­ing dropping a long-standing US demand that Iran immediately shut down its nuclear facilities as a precursor to engaging in talks. This proposal would allow Tehran to continue enriching uranium during the talks.

The Obama administra­tion pointed out that enriching uranium can produce fuel for a nuclear power plant or, if puri­fied to a much higher degree, provide material for an atomic bomb. The West suspects Iran’s nuclear program is a cover for building an atomic bomb, but Tehran says it is to generate electricity.

High Stakes

If the stakes were not so high, the diplomatic dance between the new Israeli and American governments might almost be a Purimshpiel. Mr. Obama, using the mouth­piece of his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, informed Israel that, whether the Jewish state cooperates or not, there will be a Palestin­ian state by the end of Mr. Obama’s term.

According to Yediot Achronot, Mr. Emanuel told an American-Jewish leader that a PA state would be “forced down Israel’s throat.”

“In the next four years, there will be a final-status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, based on ‘two states for two peoples,’ and we couldn’t care less who the prime minister is,” Mr. Emanuel was quoted as saying.

No Free Concessions

Mr. Emanuel’s statement was coun­tered by Israel’s new Foreign Minister Lieberman, who, in no uncertain terms, said the era of Israeli concessions in re­turn for nothing is over.

Mr. Lieberman announced that he did not consider the Annapolis process, named for the peace conference held in 2007, binding on Israel because its provisions were never ratified by the Knesset.

He did, however, accept the “Road Map.” Written in 2003 by representatives of the US, Russia, the European Union, and the UN (the so-called “Quartet”), the “Road Map” requires many incremental steps, each of which must be fulfilled by both sides before further progress. For example, negotiations are conditioned on Palestinian efforts to end incitement against Israelis and Jews on its government-controlled media and to dismantle terror organizations. The PA has never even at­tempted to accomplish either task.

Core Issues

The Annapolis process, on the other hand, expects Israel to move ahead to negotiations on final “core issues,” before the Palestinians fulfill any of their prior obligations.

The term “core issues” of the negotia­tions between Israel and the PA usually re­fers to: 1.) the final borders to which Israel would be forced to retreat; 2.)the status of the Temple Mount and Jerusalem; 3.) the Pal­estinians’ demand that Israel allow millions of Arabs-all those who fled from Israel in 1948 and 1967 and their descendants-to flood back into Israel as “refugees” entitled to the so-called “right of return.”

For Israel’s supporters, the “right of return” is generally considered a means for the Arabs to destroy Israel, certainly as a Jewish state, without resorting to violence. The sheer number of potential Palestinian “refugees” would overwhelm Israel, allow­ing Arabs to far outnumber Jews. These new Arab citizens would then simply vote the Jewish state out of existence.

Essentials

According to a recent poll carried out by One Voice Palestine, the “right of return” is only one of several impossible demands held by the vast majority of Pal­estinians. The poll shows the almost un­bridgeable gap between the demands of the Palestinian street and anything even close to what Mr. Netanyahu-or any Is­raeli prime minister-could deliver.

For example, 59 percent of Palestin­ians said they consider it “essential” for “historic Palestine” to contain everything from the Jordanian River to the Mediterra­nean (which means all of Israel) as part of the Islamic Waqf, or Muslim holy space; 71 percent want the same acreage, but it doesn’t have to belong to the Waqf.

Other “essentials” covered by the poll were: 87 percent demand the “right of re­turn;” 96 percent say Palestinians should have control of their energy, minerals, and airspace; 92 percent demand all of eastern Jerusalem with all the Holy Sites, including the Kotel, under Palestinian sovereignty; and 91 percent want all of Jerusalem.

The poll also surveyed a category called “unacceptable”: 75 percent said it is unaccept­able for the number of Palestinian refugees returning to Israel to be limited to family members and numbers agreed between Is­raeli and Palestinian negotiators; 91 percent said it would be unacceptable for Palestine to be denied an army; 62 percent said it was unacceptable for Israel, even for an agreed period of time, to have observations posts in the Palestinian state for security reasons; 76 percent said it was unacceptable for the Jewish parts of the Old City of Jerusalem to be under Israeli control; and 78 percent said it was unacceptable to proceed with the agreement if everything was agreed upon except for Jerusalem.

Endless Talks

Dr. Aaron Lerner of the IMRA news agency said that, while discouraging, these numbers should not deter negotiators, if en­gaging in talks serves Israel’s national inter­ests. But, he said, it should be recognized, a priori, “that for the foreseeable future it is impossible to conclude a viable, durable, long-term deal with the Palestinians.”

“Talk, yes, But without precondi­tions or timetables designed to march Israel down a negotiations gangplank,” said Dr. Lerner.

Most of the Palestinians’ demands, including the “right of return” are integral parts of the so-called Saudi Peace Plan, which Mr. Obama has praised. The plan, originally written in 2002 and then resur­rected in 2007, calls for Israel to relinquish all land won during the 1967 Six-Day War, including the Old City of Jerusalem and the Golan, and allow the Palestinians “the right of return.” In exchange, Israel would gain normal ties with the Arab world and, presumably, an end to the conflict.

No Israeli government, no matter how left-wing, has ever suggested acquiescing to the “right of return,” which is seen as an unac­ceptable demand that would signify the end of the Jewish state. No Palestinian leader has ever suggested abandoning the so-called “right of return” in the name of peace with Israel.

Saudi Peace Plan

Many supporters of Israel feared that Mr. Obama’s bow to Saudi King Abdullah at the G-20 summit in London last month was an indication that the President sup­ported the Saudi “peace plan.” By the end of April, it appeared that the President had indeed decided to make the Saudi plan the one he will try to impose on Israel.

When he first discussed the plan on Arab television shortly after he was sworn into office, Mr. Obama said he did not sup­port every detail in it. The Saudis, however, have repeatedly stressed that their plan is not a “starting position.” They say it is not open to negotiation, alteration, or modi­fication. They insist the Israelis have the choice of taking it as it is or not accepting it and being branded as anti-peace.

Israel’s supporters fear that may be the same treatment the Jewish state will be accorded by the Obama administration, although there are some indications that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton does not view the Saudi plan as a take-it-or-leave-it initiative.

Regional Plan

According to Mr. Shoval, Mrs. Clin­ton said she intended to ask the Arabs to show Israel what elements of the plan they could put into action immediately.

According to some reports, this would be the first step in following a regional peace plan, based on the Saudi initiative.

If adopted, the Arabs would be asked to proceed with normalization of ties to Israel while, at the same time, nego­tiations were held on the Palestinian and Syrian tracks.

Tit for Tat

But Mr. Netanyahu has other issues as well. When he asked for progress on Iran as a precursor to meeting with the PA, Mrs. Clinton promptly informed him that any US efforts regarding Iran would have to go “hand-in-hand” with progress on establishing a Palestinian state.

“For Israel to get the kind of strong support it’s looking for vis-à-vis Iran, it can’t stay on the sidelines with respect to Palestinians and the peace efforts, that they go hand-in-hand,” she said.

Mr. Emanuel took an even more extreme view. If Israel wants US help to defuse the Iranian threat, then get ready to start evacuat­ing settlements in the West Bank, he report­edly told a Washington Jewish group.

According to DEBKAfile, Mr. Eman­uel’s statement was “cynical claptrap.”

“Even if every single settlement were to be removed and Israel lined up with Obama’s quest for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the US President would not drop Tehran or help Israel strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. He has already ceded Tehran’s uranium enrichment program-and therefore its drive for nuclear arms-and would forcefully oppose any Israeli military action,” said DEBKAfile.

A Jewish State

Mr. Netanyahu, however, had one other demand, and it could be a deal-breaker. In the middle of April, he told Mr. Mitchell, that his government would not discuss Palestinian statehood until the PA recog­nizes Israel as a “Jewish state.”

“Israel expects the Palestinians to first recognize Israel as a Jewish state before talking about two states for two peoples,” a senior official in Mr. Netanyahu’s office quoted the premier as telling Mr. Mitchell.

The Palestinians have already said they will never recognize Israel as a Jew­ish state. To do so would impact on their “right of return,” the object of which is to wrest the land away from the Jews.

Mr. Abbas said he would not recog­nize a “Jewish State” because it would be insulting to Israel’s Arab citizens.

“Israel should be the state of all its citi­zens,” said Mr. Abbas.

Double Standard

The PA’s double standard is shocking even by Middle Eastern standards. In Gaza, Hamas will not even recognize Israel as a state, let along a Jewish one. In the terri­tory controlled by Mr. Abbas, it is a capital crime to sell a Jew property.

Nevertheless, PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh slammed Mr. Netanyahu’s demand as a “provocation” and charged the Israeli government with placing obstacles before “the solution” the US is promoting.

Mr. Rudeineh said the idea of Israel as a Jewish state would have a “poison­ous effect” on the region.

Azzam al-Ahmed, a confidant of Mr. Ab­bas and a senior Fatah official also rejected the Jewish state, saying the demand “illustrates the racist nature of [Israel’s] government.”

No Progress

For his part, Mr. Netanyahu said he had been misunderstood. He said he had not pre­conditioned meeting with the Palestinians un­til they recognize Israel as Jewish state, but, rather, any progress made during those talks would be dependent on this recognition.

Mr. Netanyahu’s reasoning is that he will not recognize a nation-state provid­ing Palestinian self-determination if the Palestinians don’t recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

He said the requirement that the Palestin­ians recognize this is “a fundamental demand in any negotiations on a final settlement.”

They Must Know

Asked if he was using the demand sim­ply as a means to scuttle the negotiations, he offered several other reasons, First, he said, it is a counterweight to the demand that Israel recognize “Palestinian rights.”

Second, he said, he is concerned that if the Palestinians refuse this recognition as part of the negotiations, they will re­frain from telling their constituency, in Arabic, that Israel is the state of the Jewish people. Unless the Palestinians are aware of this, Mr. Netanyahu believes they will continue to pursue the conflict even after a settlement is reached.

Thirdly, he said, recognition of a Jew­ish state will “neutralize” the Palestinian demand for the “right of return” of Pal­estinian refugees.

Political Reason

Mr. Netanyahu said he also has a po­litical reason for insisting on this recogni­tion. To mobilize support for his positions from the Israeli and American public and the US Congress, especially in light of possible pressure from the Obama ad­ministration, he feels he needs to build a “common denominator across party and factional lines.”

“The principle of the ‘Jewish State’ enjoys wide support among relevant sec­tors of the public, and it is must easier to mobilize support for this than for a policy opposing, say, withdrawal from territories and evacuation of settlements,” he said.

A few days later, word came from the State Department that recognition of Israel as “the Jewish State” as a condition for renewing peace talks was unacceptable to the US.

The State Department ruled that the issue should be part of the negotiations.

Taking It to the White House

Therefore, when he goes to the White House, he will have to discuss a Palestin­ian state that may be next to impossible to implement and action against Iran, which Mr. Obama may not want to hear.

Mr. Netanyahu said he intends to discuss “The Jewish State” issue with Mr. Obama as well as the “limitations on sovereignty” that he feels will have to be imposed on any Palestinian state.

While the vast majority of Palestinians believe it is “essential” that they have an army and control of their own airspace. Mr. Netanyahu said that keeping the PA demili­tarized is a red line for Israel. The PA will be prohibited from maintaining an army or forging military agreements or alliances.

“Can you imagine the result if Pal­estine were to sign an alliance with Iran? We could have Ahmadinejad on our door­step,” he said.

Monitor

In addition, Israel will have the right to monitor the Palestinian state’s external borders, airspace, and electromagnetic spectrum.

With all these restrictions, Mr. Netanyahu once said that what he could offer the Palestinians was “Autonomy-Plus” or “State-Minus.”

According to Mr. Netanyahu, his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, tried unsuc­cessfully to secure a guarantee from the Bush administration concerning the need for Israel to be recognized as “The Jewish State.” Despite having proposed a with­drawal from almost all of Judea and Sa­maria, Mr. Olmert and “The Jewish State” were turned down.

Demolishing

Probably the hardest issue he will have to face is to determine which, if any ges­tures, Israel will make to the Palestinians. He will also have to respond to demands to freeze construction in the Yesha, vacate outposts, and remove roadblocks. Mr. Netanyahu said that before he goes to the White House, he will raise the settlement issue in his Cabinet for a decision.

On the issue of Iran, he plans to ex­plain to Mr. Obama that, following the Holocaust, the existence of Israel is the only guarantor of the continued existence of the Jewish people. Therefore, it is ex­tremely important that nuclear weapons not fall into the hands of those who deny the existence of the Jewish state.

Mr. Netanyahu said he would prefer if the US dealt with the Iranian threat. “If Obama asks what Israel would be willing to give in return, I will show great interest in the subject,” he said.

Doing It Alone

If he receives no support from the US regarding Iran, one of Israel’s options is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own. Last month, Vice President Joseph Biden tried quickly to shoot that down.

“I don’t think that Prime Minister Ne­tanyahu would do that. I think he would be ill-advised to do that,” said Mr. Biden on CNN when that option was suggested.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried to downplay the effectiveness of any potential Israeli action. He told a group of Marine Corps students last month that an Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear facility would probably delay Tehran’s program by only one to three years.

Risky

But such an attack, he said, would “cement” Iran’s determination to own a nuclear program and would “burn” an un­dying hatred of whomever hit them into the whole fabric of the country.

Mr. Gates maintained that Tehran’s acquisition of a bomb can be prevented “only if the Iranians themselves decide it’s too costly.”

He said other nations need to empha­size to Iran that the bomb would diminish rather than improve the country’s security, “particularly if it launches an arms race in the Middle East.”

According to DEBKAfile, Mr. Gates’s statements confirm the fact that the Obama administration has decided not to be con­cerned about the Iranian nuclear threat.

Acting Unilaterally

Despite Iran’s threats to obliterate Is­rael. Tehran has registered a protest with the Security Council, accusing the Jewish state of issuing “unlawful and insolent” threats. The complaint says Israel’s threats violated international law and the UN Charter.

But Mr. Francona said the Obama ad­ministration’s attitude toward the Jewish state, exemplified by the cold shoulder ex­tended to Mr. Ashkenazi and the curt lack of understanding from Mr. Biden, may well convince the Israelis that a military strike against Iran is all they can do.

“If Israel cannot get some assurance of support from the US, it will feel compelled to act unilaterally,” said Mr. Francona.

Many pundits saw in Mr. Biden’s comment the summation of the Obama administration’s policy shift away from Israel.

“Israel is a sovereign nation whose people face the prospect of another Holocaust. Yet the mes­sage from the leader of a nation who has, in the past, been its best friend is…what? Drop dead?” said Ed Lasky, writing for the on-line American Thinker.

Sacrificing Israel

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Carolyn Glick claimed there have been more than enough signs to indicate that Mr. Obama “is sacrificing the US’s alliance with the Jewish state in a bid to appease the Arabs and especially Iran.”

The indications she saw included: Mr. Obama’s asser­tions that Israel must support the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state; his declara­tions of support for the so-called Saudi “peace plan,” and his “continuous and increasingly frantic appeals for Iran to ‘en­gage’ his administration.”

Mr. Biden’s statement, she said, makes clear that “from the administration’s perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable that a nuclear-armed Iran.”

“That is, the Obama ad­ministration prefers to see Iran become a nuclear power than to see Israel secure its very existence,” she said.

Coalition

Fortunately, she said, Israel is not the only American ally Mr. Obama has betrayed. Speeches made during his recent trip in­dicate that Japan will have to face North Korea and China alone; the Czechs, Poles, and their fellow former Soviet colo­nies will be left to “Moscow’s tender mercies;” Iraqi and Arab leaders will be sacrificed as he makes overtures to Iran; and India will be on its own to face nuclear-armed Pakistan.

She suggested that Israel and at least some of the other “betrayed democratic allies” form a coalition that would benefit from Israel’s technologi­cal capabilities and intelligence and military expertise.

Israel, she said, could play “a vital role in shoring up these countries’ capacities to contain the rogue states that threaten them,” at least until “America’s foreign policy reverts to stra­tegic rationality.”

Arabs and Israel

While the Obama admin­istration clearly wants to lure Israel into relinquishing its se­curity vis-à-vis the Palestinians in exchange (maybe) for help with Tehran, the administration’s problem is that Israel is not the only country that would benefit from a defanged Iran.

Speaking to the House Ap­propriations Committee in Wash­ington Wash­ington at the end of April, Mrs. Clinton said every Arab official with whom she has met “wants very much to support the stron­gest policy toward Iran.”

But, she said, “they believe that Israel’s willingness to reenter into discussions with the Palestin­ian Authority strengthens them in being able to deal with Iran.”

The point seemed to be that in order to justify a position that essentially would benefit their own governments as much as it would help Israel, the Arab leaders must pretend that that they will endorse a strong stand against Iran only if, somehow, it makes Israel suffer.

Running Out of Time

But time may be running out for those Arab leaders as well. According to a UPI report, it is now assumed that if Israel bombs Iran itself, the Islamic Republic will retaliate against Persian Gulf states such as Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Netanyahu believes the Iranian threat provides Israel with an unprecedented opportunity.

“For the first time since 1920, moderate Arab states share the same strategic as­sessment,” he said.

For that reason, Iran will be central to the plans he intends to bring to Mr. Obama.

Fighting Both Fronts

Many observers believe that Mr. Netanyahu’s position-take care of Iran first and then allow Israel to approach the Palestin­ians-makes the most sense.

“Realistically, we need to keep Iran at bay,” said Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Dan­ny Ayalon, a member of Mr. Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party. “If we want to have a real political process with the Palestinians, then you can’t have the Iranians undermin­ing and sabotaging.”

In a reference to the World War II Jewish policy regarding fighting the British for the right to allow Jewish immigration while, at the same time, fight­ing the Nazis on the side of the British, Mr. Ayalon said, “We should continue on the path of peace with the Palestinians as if there were no Iranian threat, and, simultaneously, move forward on stopping Iran as if there were no Palestinian issue.”

No Palestinian State

If none of Mr. Netanyahu’s nuanced plans for negotiations are accepted, he may go back to the table, but will not be pressured to do what is too dangerous. The fact that Israel is even contemplating forgoing negotiations with the Palestinians has rendered some members of the Obama admin­istration apoplectic.

Mr. Obama has made it clear to Congress that he in­tends to insist that Mr. Netan­yahu accept the principle of a Palestinian state, freeze all settlement activity, dismantle and evacuate “illegal” out­posts, and provide economic and security assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

While administration offi­cials have reportedly told Con­gressman that the Palestinians will also be required to fulfill their obligations spelled out in the various documents signed by their leaders, those details have never been of much con­cern to Washington no matter which party is in power.

Stubborn Naïveté
Some observers say the Presi­dent’s display of stubbornness on this issue is nothing more than another example of the adminis­tration’s foreign policy naïveté. Others say it represents some­thing much more sinister.

“If a two-state solution could not be advanced under the Bush administration, when you had an Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister who wanted it to happen, how on earth does Obama think it is going to hap­pen when there are personali­ties who are not too eager for it at all?” said the official in Mr. Netanyahu’s office.

Mr. Netanyahu, who has avoided using the term “two-state solution,” said he is commit­ted to conducting negotiations aimed at giving the Palestin­ians “all the authority needed to govern themselves.”

Economic Peace

He has discussed implement­ing measures geared to improving the economic status of the Pales­tinians, after which, he has said, they should be ready to conduct productive negotiations.

“Economic peace,” he said, could achieve the quiet and sta­bility that, thus far, have been elusive, but the Obama adminis­tration is still stuck on the two-state solution, which has failed for more than a decade.

The Palestinians, however, have rejected the economic model proposed by Mr. Netanyahu.

“There is no economy without peace and no eco­nomic stability without genu­ine negotiations. Another 500 laborers working in Israel will not make the Palestinians give up their demands and will not get us to accept never-ending negotiations where the Israelis continue to do what they have done over the past years, stall for time,” said an official in Mr. Abbas’s office.

Won’t Be Forced

Israel’s Interior Minister, Eli Yishai (Shas) said that regardless of what Mr. Obama might demand, Israel was not going to be forced down a path that was either dan­gerous or unrealistic.

“The preferable course of diplomatic action at the time is two economies for two peoples and not two states for two peoples,” Mr. Yishai told reporters. “The American emissary also knows that forcing the region will not work.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres, a left-wing politician who has long favored estab­lishing a Palestinian state, told Mr. Mitchell that while Israel has always been interested in achieving peace in the region, it would not be at the expense of her own security.

Confrontation

Thus far, none of the alter­native plans interest Mr. Obama, prompting many people close to the situation to predict that a confrontation between Messrs Netanyahu and Obama is “all but inevitable.”

“You’d have to be blind not to see the writing on the wall,” he said.

But that view is not uni­versal in Mr. Netanyahu’s new government. Mr. Ayalon, for ex­ample, said he did not believe Mr. Obama’s speech in Turkey was necessarily a warning that Israel under Messrs Netanyahu and Lie­berman would have to abandon the principles which appealed to voters who elected them.

“Anyone who bothered to pay close attention could see that Obama said nothing in fa­vor of the Annapolis process,” said Mr. Ayalon.

He maintained that, in men­tioning the word “Annapolis,” Mr. Obama was arguing for a commitment to the “Road Map” as was stated in Annapolis.”

Most people who heard Mr. Obama’s speech, however, concluded that he was referring as much to the new agreements that came out of Annapolis as he was to the Road Map.

Pleasing the People

Another senior official in the Israeli government said, it did not matter whether Mr. Obama favored Annapolis over the Road Map. The official said he believed the US and Israel would find a way to avoid a dispute and, in the process, set new guidelines for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

“The US has no choice. It will have to acknowledge the political reality that Israel’s new government has a differ­ent agenda than the one Olmert had,” he said.

Polls indicate this might be true. According to all surveys, the American people favor Israel’s position and are more sympathetic to the Israelis than they are to the Palestinians.

Waiting for the Blow

Nevertheless, Israelis worry. According to some polls, 55 per­cent of Israelis are expecting Mr. Obama to pressure Israel harshly if the Jewish state does not toe Washington’s line. Among the Arabs, however, 51 percent be­lieve the administration will never come down hard on Israel.

According to some press reports, several administration officials and Washington-based Middle East experts are con­vinced Mr. Obama is girding for a protracted showdown with Mr. Netanyahu over the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Nationalist Israelis who voted for Mr. Netanyahu worry that the pressure may become too great. Although the prime min­ister has a hawkish reputation, Israelis remember that, in 1998, during negotiations at the Wye River Plantation, he conceded the area in northern Samaria which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon then unilaterally withdrew from in 2005. Israel received nothing for that concession, and very soon afterwards, Mr. Netanyahu’s government fell.

The question this time around is whether Mr. Netanyahu would rather stand up to Mr. Obama, or face his own right-wing govern­ment and voters and risk being out of office again.

Illegal Homes

There are some indications that Mr. Netanyahu has already begun to cave. In early April, under intense American pressure, the Netanyahu government de­cided de­cided not to bulldoze a series of Palestinian homes which had been built illegally on Jewish-owned property in Jerusalem.

The 80 homes are located in Silwan, an eastern Jerusalem neighborhood that is close to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem’s Old City. The Palestinians are claiming all of that area as the capital of their future state. Sil­wan is adjacent to the City of David, a massive archeologi­cal site which regularly yields Temple-era artifacts.

Like thousands of other Arab housing projects throughout eastern Jerusalem, the houses in Silwan were illegally construct­ed, and the Israeli government ordered their demolition.

Interference

But during a visit to Israel in early March, Mrs. Clinton got wind of the planned bulldozing and demanded that it be stopped.

“Clearly this kind of ac­tivity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the Road Map,” she said. “It is an issue that we intend to raise with the government of Israel and the government at the municipal level in Jerusalem.”

In fact, while the Road Map calls for Israel to freeze Jewish settlement expansion in Judea and Samaria, it does not bar the demolition of illegally built Pal­estinian homes in Jerusalem.

Lobbying

After Mrs. Clinton’s visit, the US mounted an intensive lobbying campaign to convince the Israeli government not to tear down the illegal Pales­tinian homes in Silwan. The campaign included letters from the Middle East section of the State Department addressed to various Jerusalem officials, with copies sent to Messrs Netan­yahu and Lieberman.

In the name of peace, the letters demanded that Israel allow the illegal Palestinian homes in Silwan to remain standing.

The US interference was successful. The illegal homes, built on Jewish-owned land, are still up. However, a source in Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the issue of the homes is not resolved and will be revisited.

“This was very frustrating to us. Can you imagine if a foreign government came in and told a city official in the US not to tear down a house that was illegally constructed on someone else’s property,” the source said.

Monitoring

Especially galling, the source said, was the fact that Mrs. Clin­ton made it clear that the Obama administration will be carefully monitoring Jewish construction in the eastern neighborhoods of Jeru­salem and has already protested to the highest levels of Israeli govern­ment about evidence of housing expansion in those areas.

This is a demand that has been issued by Mr. Abbas. He insists that Israel stop building homes in Judea and Samaria, and that illegally built Arab houses in Jeru­salem be allowed to remain.

Mr. Mitchell said he is committed to closely monitor­ing eastern Jerusalem neighbor­hoods on a daily basis.

According to the source in Mr. Netanyahu’s office, Mr. Mitchell blasted the efforts of nationalist Jewish groups to purchase property in Jerusa­lem’s Old City. This seems to indicate that he, like the Pal­estinians, consider Jerusalem to be “a settlement.”

Jews, No; Hamas, Yes

And Jewish settlements are a problem for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, who have made it clear it is going to be hard to present a counterargument in their favor. Other administrations have tried to push the “peace process”, but Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama seem to have a special grievance against the Jews of Yesha.

There is even a suggestion that these Jews will become pariahs while Hamas is resurrected.

While the Bush administra­tion adamantly refused to deal with Hamas until the terrorist group recognized Israel and fore­swore violence, it is less clear that will be the position of the Obama administration.

Already the European Union has begun showing enthusiasm for opening formal ties with Hamas at Israel’s expense.
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Leaning on Israel won’t bring Middle East peace
OUR VIEWS Obama’s new direction
Comments 33
Buzz up!
THE OKLAHOMAN EDITORIAL

Published: May 8, 2009
IT’S understandable a new U.S. president coming into office, frustrated by the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, might figure the key to breaking the impasse is getting tougher with Israel. That’s where President Barack Obama and his administration seem to be heading.
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Vice President Joe Biden talked tough this week at a Washington meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the big pro-Israel lobbying group. "Israel has to work toward a two-state solution,” Biden said, suggesting Israel hasn’t been doing so.
Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Israel risks losing Arab support for combating threats from Iran if it rejects peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

The London Times’ online edition reports that National Security Adviser James Jones told a European foreign minister the White House is ready to lean on Israel. "The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question,” Jones reportedly wrote in a confidential telegram. "We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel” than the Bush administration.

This fits with an administration worldview, unfolding since Obama’s inauguration, that the United States is to blame for intractable global problems. Or, in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, blame goes to America’s proxy, Israel.

Certainly the Obama administration views the election of a more conservative Israeli government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with trepidation. Netanyahu is scheduled to visit Washington in a couple of weeks, and we can only assume there’ll be a good deal of arm-twisting.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, interviewed by The Jerusalem Post, called Obama’s Middle East policies "very dangerous for Israel” and the "clearest adoption of weakness since Jimmy Carter.” Gingrich said there’s "almost an eagerness to take on the Israeli government to make a point with the Arab world.”

The trouble with the administration’s position is it assumes Israel has a willing partner for peace and that peace would result if Israel quit building new settlements and forcing the Palestinians to pass through checkpoints on their way into Israel.

This buys into the Israelis-as-oppressors argument served up by left-wing advocacy groups. It ignores the fact the Palestinians — their government largely controlled by the terror group Hamas — won’t commit to the existence of a Jewish state. That’s a non-starter for Netanyahu, just as it would be for any Israeli prime minister.

The Obama administration shouldn’t pressure Israel in this way to gain a flawed peace. Israel won’t comply and shouldn’t. There is a problem in the Middle East, but it’s not America and it’s not Israel.


Related Topics: Political Policy, Politics, U.S. Politics, World Politics, Diplomacy, International Relations, Israeli Politics, Middle East Politics
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Column One: Obama's green light to attack Iran

May. 7, 2009
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
Arctic winds are blowing into Jerusalem from Washington these days. As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's May 18 visit to Washington fast approaches, the Obama administration is ratcheting up its anti-Israel rhetoric and working feverishly to force Israel into a corner.

Using the annual AIPAC conference as a backdrop, this week the Obama administration launched its harshest onslaught against Israel to date. It began with media reports that National Security Adviser James Jones told a European foreign minister that the US is planning to build an anti-Israel coalition with the Arabs and Europe to compel Israel to surrender Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

According to Haaretz, Jones was quoted in a classified foreign ministry cable as having told his European interlocutor, "The new administration will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question. We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush."
He then explained that the US, the EU and the moderate Arab states must determine together what "a satisfactory endgame solution," will be.

As far as Jones is concerned, Israel should be left out of those discussions and simply presented with a fait accompli that it will be compelled to accept.

Events this week showed that Jones's statement was an accurate depiction of the administration's policy. First, quartet mediator Tony Blair announced that within six weeks the US, EU, UN and Russia will unveil a new framework for establishing a Palestinian state. Speaking with Palestinian reporters on Wednesday, Blair said that this new framework will be a serious initiative because it "is being worked on at the highest level in the American administration."

Moreover, this week we learned that the administration is trying to get the Arabs themselves to write the Quartet's new plan. The London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi pan-Arab newspaper reported Tuesday that acting on behalf of Obama, Jordanian King Abdullah urged the Arab League to update the so-called Arab peace plan from 2002. That plan, which calls for Israel to withdraw from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights and accept millions of foreign Arabs as citizens as part of the so-called "right of return" in exchange for "natural" relations with the Arab world, has been rejected by successive Israeli governments as a diplomatic subterfuge whose goal is Israel's destruction.

By accepting millions of so-called "Palestinian refugees," Israel would effectively cease to be a Jewish state. By shrinking into the 1949 armistice lines, Israel would be unable to defend itself against foreign invasion. And since "natural relations" is a meaningless term both in international legal discourse and in diplomatic discourse, Israel would have committed national suicide for nothing.

To make the plan less objectionable to Israel, Abdullah reportedly called on his Arab brethren to strike references to the so-called "Arab refugees" from the plan and to agree to "normal" rather than "natural" relations with the Jewish state. According to the report, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was expected to present Obama with the changes to the plan during their meeting in Washington later this month. The revised plan was supposed to form the basis for the new Quartet plan that Blair referred to.

But the Arabs would have none of it. On Wednesday, both Arab League General Secretary Amr Moussa and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas announced that they oppose the initiative. On Thursday, Syria rejected making any changes in the document.

The administration couldn't care less. The Palestinians and Arabs are no more than bit players in its Middle East policy. As far as the Obama administration is concerned, Israel is the only obstacle to peace.

To make certain that Israel understands this central point, Vice President Joseph Biden used his appearance at the AIPAC conference to drive it home. As Biden made clear, the US doesn't respect or support Israel's right as a sovereign state to determine its own policies for securing its national interests. In Biden's words, "Israel has to work toward a two-state solution. You're not going to like my saying this, but not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow the Palestinians freedom of movement."
FOR ISRAEL, the main event of the week was supposed to be President Shimon Peres's meeting with Obama on Tuesday. Peres was tasked with calming the waters ahead of Netanyahu's visit. It was hoped that he could introduce a more collegial tone to US-Israel relations.

What Israel didn't count on was the humiliating reception Peres received from Obama. By barring all media from covering the event, Obama transformed what was supposed to be a friendly visit with a respected and friendly head of state into a back-door encounter with an unwanted guest, who was shooed in and shooed out of the White House without a sound.
The Obama White House's bald attempt to force Israel to take full blame for the Arab world's hostility toward it is not the only way that it is casting Israel as the scapegoat for the region's ills. In their bid to open direct diplomatic ties with Iran, Obama and his advisers are also blaming Israel for Iran's nuclear program. They are doing this both indirectly and directly.

As Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel made clear in his closed-door briefing to senior AIPAC officials this week, the administration is holding Israel indirectly responsible for Iran's nuclear program. It does this by claiming that Israel's refusal to cede its land to the Palestinians is making it impossible for the Arab world to support preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Somewhat inconveniently for the administration, the Arabs themselves are rejecting this premise. This week US Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the Persian Gulf and Egypt to soothe Arab fears that the administration's desperate attempts to appease the mullahs will harm their security interests. He also sought to gain their support for the administration's plan to unveil a new peace plan aimed at isolating and pressuring Israel.
After meeting with Gates, Amr Moussa - who has distinguished himself as one of Israel's most trenchant critics - said categorically, "The question of Iran should be separate from the Arab-Israel conflict."

Just as the administration is unmoved by objective facts that expose as folly its single-minded devotion to the notion that Israel is responsible for the absence of peace in the Middle East, so the Arab rejection of its view that Israel is to blame for Iran's nuclear program has simply driven it to escalate its attacks on Israel. This week it opened a new campaign of blaming Israel directly - through its purported nuclear arsenal - for Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Speaking at a UN forum, US Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller said, "Universal adherence to the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea... remains a fundamental objective of the United States."

As Eli Lake from The Washington Times demonstrated convincingly, by speaking as she did, Gottemoeller effectively abrogated a 40-year-old US-Israeli understanding that the US would remain silent about Israel's nuclear program because it understood that it was defensive, not offensive in nature. In so doing, Gottemoeller legitimized Iran's claim that it cannot be expected to suspend its quest to acquire nuclear weapons as long as Israel possesses them. She also erased any distinction between nuclear weapons in the hands of US allies and democratic states and nuclear weapons in the hands of US enemies and terror states.

The Israeli media are largely framing the story of the US's growing and already unprecedented antagonism toward Israel as a diplomatic challenge for Netanyahu. To meet this challenge, it is argued that Netanyahu must come to Washington in 10 days' time with an attractive peace plan that will win over the White House. But this is a false interpretation of what is happening.

Even Ethan Bronner of the The New York Times pointed out this week that Obama's Middle East policy is not based on facts. If it were, the so-called "two state solution," which has failed repeatedly since 1993, would not be its centerpiece. Obama's Middle East policy is based on ideology, not reality. Consequently, it is immune to rational argument.

The fact that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, all chance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and the Arab world will disappear, is of no interest to Obama and his advisers. They do not care that the day after Hamas terror-master Khaled Mashaal told The New York Times that Hamas was suspending its attacks against Israel from Gaza, the Iranian-controlled terror regime took credit for several volleys of rockets shot against Israeli civilian targets from Gaza. The administration stills intends to give Gaza $900 million in US taxpayer funds, and it still demands that Israel give its land to a joint Fatah-Hamas government.

REGARDLESS OF the weight of Netanyahu's arguments, and irrespective of the reasonableness of whatever diplomatic initiative he presents to Obama, he can expect no sympathy or support from the White House.

As a consequence, the operational significance of the administration's anti-Israel positions is that Israel will not be well served by adopting a more accommodating posture toward the Palestinians and Iran. Indeed, perversely, what the Obama administration's treatment of Israel should be making clear to the Netanyahu government is that Israel should no longer take Washington's views into account as it makes its decisions about how to advance Israel's national security interests. This is particularly true with regard to Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Rationally speaking, the only way the Obama administration could reasonably expect to deter Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear installations would be if it could make the cost for Israel of attacking higher than the cost for Israel of not attacking. But what the behavior of the Obama administration is demonstrating is that there is no significant difference in the costs of the two options.

By blaming Israel for the absence of peace in the Middle East while ignoring the Palestinians' refusal to accept Israel's right to exist; by seeking to build an international coalition with Europe and the Arabs against Israel while glossing over the fact that at least the Arabs share Israel's concerns about Iran; by exposing Israel's nuclear arsenal and pressuring Israel to disarm while in the meantime courting the ayatollahs like an overeager bridegroom, the Obama administration is telling Israel that regardless of what it does, and what objective reality is, as far as the White House is concerned, Israel is to blame.
This, of course, doesn't mean that Netanyahu shouldn't make his case to Obama when they meet and to the American people during his US visit. What it does mean is that Netanyahu should have no expectation that Israeli goodwill can divert Obama from the course he has chosen. And again, this tells us two things: Israel's relations with the US during Obama's tenure in office will be unpleasant and difficult, and the damage that Israel will cause to that relationship by preventing Iran from acquiring the means to destroy it will be negligible.

caroline@carolineglick.com
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How Obama's America Might Threaten Israel
Norman Podhoretz

May 2009



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Is there a threat to Israel from the United States under Barack Obama? The question itself seems perverse. For in spite of the hostility to Israel in certain American quarters, this country has more often than not been the beleaguered Jewish state’s only friend in the face of threats coming from others. Nor has the young Obama administration been any less fervent than its last two predecessors in declaring an undying commitment to the security and survival of Israel.

Nevertheless, during the 2008 presidential campaign, friends of Israel (a category that, speculations to the contrary notwithstanding, still includes a large majority of the American Jewish community) had ample reason for anxiety over Obama. The main reason was his attitude toward Iran. After all, Iran under its current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was vowing almost on a daily basis to “wipe Israel off the map” and was drawing closer and closer to acquiring the nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that would give the ruling mullocracy the means to do so. And yet Obama seemed to think that the best way to head off the very real possibility this posed of another holocaust was by entering into talks with Iran “without preconditions.” Otherwise, except for campaign promises, his record was bereft of any definitive indication of his views on the war the Arab/Muslim world has been waging against the Jewish state from the day of its founding more than sixty years ago.
Still—lest we forget—Obama did have a history of involvement with associates whose enmity toward Israel was unmistakable. There was, most notoriously, his longtime pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In addition to honoring the blatantly anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan, Wright was on record as believing that Israel had joined with South Africa in developing an “ethnic bomb” designed to kill blacks and Arabs but not whites; he had accused Israel of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians; and he had participated in a campaign to get American companies to “divest” from Israel. None of this, however, nor all of it together, had elicited so much as a peep of protest from Obama, never mind provoking him into leaving Wright’s congregation. He remained a member for twenty years, during which time Wright officiated at his marriage and baptized his children.

Then there was Rashid Khalidi, holder of a professorship at Columbia named after his idol, the late Edward Said. As befitted a reverential disciple of the leading propagandist for Palestinian terrorism, and himself a defender of suicide bombing, Khalidi regularly denounced Israel as a “racist” state in the process of creating an “apartheid system.” Nevertheless, Obama had befriended him, had publicly acknowledged being influenced by him, and, as a member of the board of a charitable foundation, had also helped to support him financially. And there was also one of Obama’s chief advisers on national security and the co-chairman of his campaign, General Merrill McPeak, who subscribed to the canard that American policy in the Middle East was dictated by Jews in the interests not of the United States but of Israel. Others said to be advising Obama included a number who were no more notable than McPeak for their friendliness toward Israel: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power.

True, as the campaign proceeded, Obama either distanced himself from or repudiated the ideas of such associates. Yet he only got around to doing so when the political exigencies of his candidacy left him no prudential alternative.

Not surprisingly, a fair number of Jews who had never voted for a Republican in their lives were disturbed enough to tell pollsters that they had serious doubts about supporting Obama. Faced with this horrific prospect, Obama’s Jewish backers mounted a vigorous effort of reassurance. No fewer than three hundred rabbis issued a statement declaring that his “deep and abiding spiritual faith” derived from “the teachings of the Hebrew Prophets.” Several well-known champions of Israel also wrote articles explaining on rather convoluted grounds why they were backing Obama. There was, for example, Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School: “The election of Barack Obama—a liberal supporter of Israel—will enhance Israel’s position among wavering liberals.” And Martin Peretz of The New Republic: “Israel’s conflict with the Arabs . . . is mostly about history, and Obama is a student of history.” And Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution: “I believe Obama passes the kishke [gut] test.”
The small community of politically conservative Jews did what it could to counter this campaign, but to no avail. In the event, Obama received 78 percent of the Jewish vote. This was a staggering 35 points higher than the pro-Obama white vote in general (43 percent), and it was even 11 points higher than the Hispanic vote (67 percent). Only with blacks, who gave him 95 percent of their vote, did Obama do better than with Jews. The results were just as dramatic when broken down by religion as by race and ethnicity: Protestants gave 45 percent of their vote to Obama (33 points less than Jews), and Catholics gave him 54 percent (24 points less than Jews).
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But if the forecasts of a Jewish defection from Obama were all wrong, the prediction of his Jewish opponents that he would be less friendly toward Israel than George W. Bush has turned out to be more accurate than any “kishke test.” Bush’s friendliness manifested itself in various ways. One of the most important was his backing for the measures Israel had been taking to defend itself against suicide bombing—the building of a wall and the institution of checkpoints that would make it harder for suicide bombers to get through from the West Bank and into Israel proper. These measures were denounced almost everywhere as oppressive in themselves and as a species of apartheid, while the accompanying assassinations of the leaders who recruited, trained, and supplied the suicide bombers were routinely condemned as acts of murder. But Bush—that is, the Bush who emerged after 9/11—would have none of this. So far as he was concerned, suicide bombing was a form of terrorism and therefore evil by definition. Israel had an absolute right to defend itself against this great evil, and in fighting it, the Israelis were struggling against the same enemy that had declared war on us on 9/11.

A similar logic guided Bush’s view of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in 2006 and of its attack on Gaza in 2008. Since, contrary to the confident assurances of their opponents, the wall, the checkpoints, and the targeted assassinations had all but eliminated suicide bombing, the terrorists were now resorting to a different tactic. From its redoubt in Lebanon, Hizballah rained rockets into the north of Israel, and from its base in Gaza, Hamas fired them into the south. In each of these cases, when the Israelis finally responded, they were furiously accused by most of the world of using “disproportionate” force that allegedly resulted in the wholesale “slaughter” of innocent civilians. But Bush would have none of these egregious defamations either. Both in 2006 and 2008, he again affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorist assault, and he worked to fend off efforts by the UN to stop the Israelis before they could finish the job they had set out to do.
To be sure, Barack Obama (while still President-elect) said about the then impending Israeli incursion into Gaza, that
If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything in my power to stop that and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.
This sounded very much like Bush. But whereas an altogether new conception of how to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians undergirded Bush’s support for the tactics Israel had been using to defend itself against terrorist attack, there was nothing in Obama’s record or in his past statements or in his history to suggest that he shared, or even was aware of, this conception.
George W. Bush was the first American President to come out openly in favor of a Palestinian state. But he also decided to attach a codicil that was even more novel. “Today,” he declared on June 24, 2002,
Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.
To this he added the requirement that they elect “new leaders, not compromised by terror,” which amounted to an implicit demand that Yasser Arafat be replaced.

Of course, Bush also challenged Israel “to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state.” Yet he most emphatically did not follow the usual practice of blaming Israel for the persistence of the war against it. Instead, in an entirely unprecedented move, he placed the onus on the Palestinian leaders and the Arab states backing them up. By saying up front that “there is simply no way to achieve . . . peace until all parties fight terror,” he was blaming the absence of peace on the Arab states and the “Palestinian authorities” (who were “encouraging, not opposing, terrorism”), and he was exonerating the Israelis (who were being “victimized by terrorists,” not supporting them).

Nor was this all. Two years later, in an addendum to his codicil, Bush said that “as part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders,” and that these must include “already existing major Israeli population centers.” To put it plainly, the United States rejected the almost universally accepted idea that a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian state was the forcible removal of every last Jew from the West Bank. In all other contexts, this is known as ethnic cleansing and regarded as a great crime. But in this context alone, and by a process of reasoning that has always escaped me, it has been magically transmuted into the exercise of a sacred human right. Not, however, to Bush.
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Now, on a number of issues—most notably Iraq—Obama as President has surprised many people by in effect signing on to Bush’s policies (while claiming to be reversing them). Yet even though he will certainly follow Bush in pushing for the establishment of a Palestinian state, it would be nothing less than astounding if he were also to accept the conditions prescribed by the Bush codicil and its addendum. For neither Obama himself nor those of his appointees who will be involved in the “peace process”—his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton; his special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell; his national security adviser, Gen. James Jones; and his Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, although she made the right noises at her confirmation hearing—have ever so much as suggested that it is the Palestinians and not the Israelis who are blocking the way to the holy grail of a two-state solution. On the contrary, Obama and his team are all great worshipers at the shrine of “even-handedness,” which has long served as a deceptive euphemism for pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions to Palestinian demands.

No wonder, then, that the Obama administration is already reverting to the old pre-Bush assumptions that have repeatedly been discredited in practice: that Israeli “intransigence” is the main obstacle to ending the conflict with the Palestinians; that “restarting” the “peace process” therefore requires putting the onus back on Israel; and that this in turn necessitates forcing Israel back to the 1967 borders. In other words, Jerusalem must be redivided and the major centers of Jewish population in the West Bank that Bush had promised would remain part of Israel must also be evacuated and the West Bank as a whole be made Judenrein.

Indeed, during Hillary Clinton’s first trip as Secretary of State to Israel, she went evenhandedly out of her way to castigate the Israelis over the issue of Arab housing in Jerusalem while making a great show of the $900 million the U.S. has pledged to Gaza.
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It is too early to tell whether the return to this approach will go so far as to substantiate the fear expressed by the former UN ambassador John R. Bolton, who foresees “pressure on Israel to acknowledge the legitimacy of [Hamas and Hezbollah], and to negotiate with them as equals (albeit perhaps under some artful camouflage).” But it is not too early to tell that nothing will come of a reversion to the pre-Bush assumptions. Nothing will come of it with the Israelis because they—even most of the doves among them—have learned that withdrawing from previously occupied territories means the creation of bases from which terrorists will rain rockets on Israeli towns. Thus, when in 2000 they withdrew from the security zone they had established in southern Lebanon, Hizballah moved in, and then their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 resulted in a takeover by Hamas—eventuating in both cases not in peace or even improved prospects for peace but in war and more war. Furthermore, the withdrawal from Gaza, entailing as it did the dragging of some 8,000 Jews out of their homes, was so painful a national trauma that doing the same to more than thirty times that many Jews living in the West Bank has become unthinkable.

Nor will anything come of the old approach with the Palestinians. The writ, such as it is, of Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority extends only to the West Bank, not to Gaza, so that even if he were to reach an agreement with Israel, he lacks the power to deliver on it.

But a deeper reason may be at work here as well. When people quote Abba Eban’s famous quip that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, the opportunity they have in mind is the achievement of statehood. And it is true that on at least three occasions when they could have had peace and a state of their own for the asking—in 1947, under the UN partition plan; in 2000, under the extremely generous terms proposed jointly by Israel under Ehud Barak and the United States under Bill Clinton; and in 2005, after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza—the Palestinians rejected statehood and chose war instead.

May it not be, then, that they failed to seize these “opportunities” because they have never really wanted a state of their own?
Giora Eiland, a retired general and the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, argues that this is indeed the case. He writes:
The Palestinian ethos is based on values such as justice, victimization, revenge, and above all, the “right of return.” . . . It’s true that the Palestinians want to do away with the occupation, but it’s wrong to assume that this translates into a desire for an independent state. They would prefer the solution of “no state at all”—that is, the State of Israel will cease to exist and the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River will be divided among Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.
Adding to the plausibility of this theory is the most recent polling data showing that a large majority of Palestinians would reject the two-state solution even after “the settlement of all issues in dispute,” and would be unwilling to accept a state of their own even with its capital in East Jerusalem and an unlimited “right of return.”

But whether or not Eiland is right—and I for one think that he is, at least about the “no-state” solution—the futility under current conditions of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is so obvious that even devout American “peace processers” like Aaron David Miller and Martin Indyk acknowledge it. Hence (along with certain high-placed Israelis) they now advocate shifting to the “Syrian track.” But nothing will come of this either. Even under the delusion that, in exchange for the Golan Heights, Syria would be ready to give up the dream of wiping Israel off the map that it shares with its closest ally Iran, it is hard to see how the Israelis would be willing to do unto the 20,000 Jews living there what they did to the 8,000 who lived in Gaza.1

When I say that nothing will come of renewed American pressure on Israel to accept the demands that are the precondition of a deal with the Palestinians and/or the Syrians, I mean that nothing will come of it on the ground. It is, however, likely to result in the same souring of relations that developed in the 1990s when George H.W. Bush was in the White House and Yitzhak Shamir was Prime Minister of Israel, and that then carried over to their successors, Bill Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu. Unpleasant as this would be, it does not rise to the level of a threat.

But what surely does rise to the level of a threat is American policy toward Iran. In making the ridiculous boast during his presidential campaign that he could talk Iran into giving up its quest for nuclear weapons (and the missiles to deliver them), Obama was careful to add that the military option remained available in case all else failed. But everyone, and especially the Iranians and the Israelis, had to know that this was pro forma, and that if elected Obama would pursue the same carrot-and-stick approach of the Europeans who had been negotiating with Iran for the past five years. He would do this in spite of the fact that the only accomplishment of the European diplomatic dance had been to buy the Iranians more time; in spite of the fact that they had spurned the carrots they were offered and defied the sanctions put in place by the Security Council; and in spite of the fact that the Russians and the Chinese—who had prevented stronger sanctions from being adopted—were still determined to veto measures like a blockade or a cutoff of gasoline imports that could conceivably do the trick.

How much time do we have? Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at first said that Iran was still five years or more away from the bomb. This estimate relied on the CIA, in which Gates worked for more than 25 years, including a stint (1991-93) as its director. But the CIA does not exactly have a brilliant record of tracking nuclear proliferation. It was wrong in 2007 about Iran’s suspension of its nuclear program; wrong in 2003 about Syria’s nuclear program; wrong in 2002 about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction; and wrong in exactly the opposite direction before the First Gulf War in 1991, at whose end UN inspectors discovered that the Iraqi nuclear program was far more advanced than the American intelligence community had thought. By contrast, an increasing number of experts (possibly—to judge by hints he has thrown out—the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, among them) agree with the head of Israeli military intelligence, who warns that the Iranians have already “crossed the nuclear threshold.” Perhaps this is why, in an interview with the Financial Times, Gates has now backed away from his complacent five-year estimate (“How much more time [we have] I don’t know. It is a year, two years, three years”). Admit it or not, then, the awesome choice of bombing Iran or letting Iran get the bomb is hard upon us.

Although it is certain that Obama has removed American military action from the table, it is difficult to tell whether he still thinks that he can talk Iran into giving up its nuclear program. On the one hand, his Secretary of State reportedly admits that this is “very doubtful,” but on the other hand she invites the Iranians to a conference on Afghanistan, then Obama himself sends a videotaped message proclaiming his “respect” for the brutal and tyrannical regime in Tehran, and finally it is announced that the U.S. will now join the Europeans, the Russians, and the Chinese in the farcical negotiations with Iran we had previously shunned. Naturally the mullahs, seizing this gift of an opportunity to buy yet more time for reaching their nuclear goal, welcome the renewal of “constructive dialogue.”

Yet to Obama’s offer of a “new day” in the relations between us, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of that regime, responds in a speech heaping scorn on the United States to the accompaniment of an audience chanting “Death to America.” And far from having leaped at Obama’s old offer of direct talks without preconditions, the Iranians have rebuffed it and insisted on a few preconditions of their own, beginning with an apology for all the “atrocities” we have committed against them and a promise of “deep and fundamental” change in our policy.

In order to avoid this humiliation, Obama (we learn from the New York Times) has chosen the slightly lesser humiliation of “seeking an understanding with Syria.” The idea here, according to the Times, is that through the Syrians, “the United States could increase the pressure on Iran to respond to its offer of direct talks.” And to compound the double foolishness of expecting the Syrians to lend us a helping hand with Iran and the Iranians to join with us against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Obama expects that
such an understanding [with Syria] would also give Arab states and moderate Palestinians the political cover to negotiate with Israel. That, in turn, could increase the burden on Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, to relax its hostile stance toward Israel.
Well, compared to this concatenation of wishful delusions, the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the end of days when the lion will lie down with the lamb is a piece of hardheaded realism.
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The upshot is that, barring military action by Israel (or a miracle), Iran will get the bomb, and sooner rather than later. What then? For some time now, many pundits with the ear of the Obama administration have finally recognized that neither carrots nor sticks nor any combination of the two can work. But instead of going on to support military action, they have fallen back on the position that we can “live with” a nuclear Iran.In line with the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), they soothingly tell us, the mullahs can be deterred by the fear of retaliation much as the far more heavily armed Soviets and Chinese were deterred during the cold war. They also say that Ahmadinejad—who in his fanaticism admittedly sounds as though he can hardly wait to use nuclear weapons against Israel—neither runs the regime nor speaks for it.

What they forget to mention, however, is that Ahmadinejad could never have issued his threats without permission from the Ayatollah Khamenei, who does run the regime, and who has himself described Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that must and will be excised. Besides, even Ahmadinejad’s predecessor as president and the current Speaker of the Assembly of Experts, the Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, known far and wide as a “moderate,” has declared that his country would not be deterred by the fear of retaliation:
If the day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession . . . application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.
If this is the position of even a reputed Iranian moderate, how could Israel depend upon MAD to keep the mullahs from launching a first strike? Much anxiety has been voiced over the nuclear arms race that would be triggered throughout the region if Iran were to get the bomb, but in all truth we would be lucky if there were enough time for such a race to develop.For consider: if the Iranians were to get the bomb, the Israelis would be presented with an almost irresistible incentive to beat them to the punch with a preemptive strike—and so, understanding this, would Tehran. Either way, a nuclear exchange would become, if not inevitable, terrifyingly likely, and God alone knows how far the destruction would then spread.

Measured against this horrendous possibility, even the worst imaginable consequences of taking military action before the mullahs get the bomb would amount to chump change. But to say it again, with American military action ruled out, the only hope is that such action—which could at the very least head off the otherwise virtually certain prospect of a nuclear war—will be taken by Israel.

Forget about the Palestinian and Syrian “tracks”: if there is a threat to Israel coming from Obama, it is that, having eschewed the use of force by the United States, he will follow through on his Vice President’s declaration that the Israelis would be “ill-advised” to attack the Iranian nuclear sites and will prevent them from doing the job themselves.

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Footnotes
1There are also other factors at play here that Bret Stephens brilliantly spells out in “The Syria Temptation—And Why Obama Must Resist It” (Commentary, March 2009).

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Norman Podhoretz’s twelfth book, Why Are Jews Liberals?, will be published by Doubleday in the fall.