If it’s true that Obama and Netanyahu are at the point of no return, then it’s clear that Netanyahu and his ultra-right allies must go. With the U.S. military flatly asserting that Israel is a security and diplomatic burden to our national interests in the Middle East, the Israeli government must respond. And they cannot respond with bullshit like this:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday said that he is building in Jerusalem on his own accord and not because coalition partners are pressuring him to do so, senior officials told Haaretz.
In closed talks, Netanyahu clarified that he has no intention of breaking up his rightwing coalition to form a more moderate centrist alliance, despite continuing pressure from the United States for a compromise over Israeli building in east Jerusalem.
“I do not need coalition partners to pressure me into continuing to build in Jerusalem,” he said. “I, myself, plan to continue building in Jerusalem as all previous prime ministers did before me.”
Netanyahu added: “I am not building in Jerusalem just because [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman or [Interior Minister Eli] Yishai are pressuring me to do so.”
The administration claims that they don’t want Netanyahu’s coalition to collapse, but that’s ridiculous. Of course they do.
In Israel, officials said they could not imagine how Mr. Netanyahu could agree to a substantial reduction in building in Jerusalem and still expect to hold on to his office. “The expectation and demand that there be no more construction in Jerusalem is unreasonable,” said Limor Livnat, culture and sports minister and a member of Likud, on Israel Radio. “It is an expectation that the Israeli prime minister cannot accede to.”
Given that, there is no way forward until not only Netanyahu goes, but the far-right lunatics he needs to form a majority go, too. Consider:
The Arab League is scheduled to meet this weekend in Libya and is likely to repeat demands for a freeze on Israeli building in occupied areas before giving a final endorsement to the return of the Palestinian Authority to peace talks with Israel. Mr. Abbas, the Palestinian president, has sought pan-Arab cover for his decision to return to the talks.
With Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak recovering from surgery and unable to attend the Arab League talks, and with our Gulf allies (and Britain) still furious about the Mossad assassination team unleashed on Dubai, the administration must show naked resolve and displeasure with Israel in order to have any credibility whatsoever. Not to mention, humiliating Joe Biden when he traveled to Israel was bound to be returned in kind two-fold by a president who knows how to watch his number two’s back.
After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.
“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.
The actions of the President of Equatorial Guinea don’t put the lives of our soldiers and civilians at needless risk. After Netanyahu’s recent actions and in light of his continued intransigence, he’s lucky he wasn’t treated worse.
“The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came,” the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz said.
In their meeting Mr Obama set out expectations that Israel was to satisfy if it wanted to end the crisis, Israeli sources said. These included an extension of the freeze on Jewish settlement growth beyond the ten-month deadline next September, an end to building projects in east Jerusalem and a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions held before the second intifada in September 2000.
Newspaper reports recounted how Mr Netanyahu looked “excessively concerned and upset” when he pulled out a flow chart to show Mr Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known that the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built would be made when Mr Biden arrived in Jerusalem.
Mr Obama then suggested that Mr Netanyahu and his staff stay at the White House to consider his proposals so that if he changed his mind he could inform the President right away. “I’m still around,” the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot quoted Mr Obama as saying. “Let me know if there is anything new.”
There wasn’t anything new. Netanyahu went home and doubled-down on the bullshit. The people of Israel need to wake up. Our military brass is out of patience and our president doesn’t have time to deal with Bibi’s nonsense. East Jerusalem may not be a settlement, but it isn’t part of Israel either.
