The First Challenge for the New President

Even though the Security Council’s resolution called for a cease-fire and did not call for a decisive end to the aggression in Gaza, the leaders of Israel’s government are vying with one another to show the influence they wielded behind the scenes at the Security Council in order to affect the outcome of what were Arab attempts to stop the aggression and to hold Israel accountable for it.

The foreign minister, Tsipi Livni, made an urgent phone call to the American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and received assurances that Washington would not allow a resolution hostile to Israel through the Security Council, and that any such suggestion would be met with an American veto.

But the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, refused to remain silent over the statements of the foreign minister (and his expected successor to the presidency of the Kadima party). He stated that he personally contacted President George Bush and asked him to check Condoleezza Rice’s actions and guarantee that no resolution against Israel would be passed. Bush promised him this, and in response, informed Rice to exercise the right of veto against any proposal that would criticize Israel. Rice disobeyed Bush’s instructions and abstained from voting!

Tsipi Livni said that she didn’t travel to New York to attend the deliberations about the “grievances” in order not to give legal recognition to the anticipated resolution. She added that Condoleezza Rice had promised her – but betrayed George Bush and the Government of Israel when she refrained from exercising the veto.

Before the ink was dry on Livni’s and Olmert’s statements, George Bush and his Secretary of State “thanked” Olmert and Livni kindly for the respectful language in their statements. Bush said that he did not tell Olmert that he obeys his orders. And Condoleeza Rice said that Olmert’s statements were 100% not true.

These statements are beneficial, especially in revealing to all concerned in the United States and the rest of the world, that the government of Israel wasn’t just the tail of the lion, wagging to and fro, but just the opposite: the Israeli tail itself wagged the lion residing in the White House, it picked it up and dropped it, it flipped it on its back and turned it head over heels!

The first question that comes to mind these days is: Why did Olmert decide to bid farewell to George Bush with such an insulting scandal on the eve of his departing the White House?

Is it an attempt on the part of the Government of Israel to flex its muscles in the face of the new American president Barack Obama? Most think that this is more likely than not. In the premiere Israeli fortress in the United States, on top of “Capitol” hill in the Washington, D.C., members of the Congress and Senate renewed their loyalty to Israel with overwhelming majorities. This was an attempt to indicate to the new administration in the White House that the representatives of the people in the United States saw no need to change their support for Israel or stop acting in accordance with its instructions.

The first question, which is seeking an answer, is: Will Barack Obama ignore this challenge and give obeisance, or will he rebel against this groupthink at first chance?

Indications are that Barack Obama does not intend to bend under Israeli pressure. Before he settled in place at the White House, the new president’s team announced that the Government of the United States intends to reduce the amount of financial guarantees to the Government of Israel by an amount of not less than one billion dollars as a punishment for its negligence in battling “unlawful” settlement building, as the Government of Israel had promised to in years past; it was doing just the opposite, it was encouraging and financing these settlements. Will the United States continue along these lines, or is it signaling the Government of Israel not to persist in its transgression, and embroiling the United States in crises that have no beginning and no end?

No doubt we are experiencing a transitional phase that could become our exit from the abyss, but what we need now – and before anything else – is a Palestinian unity supported by the majority of the Arab countries, in order to convince the beneficial powers of the world (and in the White House) that their interest lies in cooperating with us to transition from a state of despair to a state of hope.