Bibi Netanyahu Must Wait

Which path leads to peace? An altercation looms between the USA and Israel.

Shimon Peres, the dove, had just been welcomed at the White House. Bibi Netanyahu, the hawk, had to wait for an official visit with Barack Obama. The order of the visits says something about President Obama’s priorities and partialities. The innocent explanation that Peres had been Israel’s president for two years while Netanyahu had only been prime minister since March 31st wasn’t quite sufficient to deflect sneers that Netanyahu deserved to be kept waiting.

Obama wants to get the peace negotiations quickly moving once more and is, like Peres, in favor of the two-state solution. Up to now, Netanyahu has refused to support the founding of a Palestinian state. He wants to stall the peace process.

It’s a new experience for Netanyahu to be put on hold whenever he wants an audience in the United States. He’s better connected to America’s politics and media than other Israeli leaders. Now he pretends, naturally, that the May 17th appointment he received was what he wanted all along. He wants, he claims, time to discuss Israel’s foreign policy course with his coalition partners. If you want to believe that, it’s true. At any rate, it hasn’t prevented his ultra-conservative foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman from already showing up today in Berlin.

The root of the conflict between Obama and Netanyahu is also based in timing and content: what deserves higher priority – Iran’s nuclear program or Near East peace? Netanyahu claims the threat from Tehran is precisely the reason he can no longer take risks with Israel’s security, whether it’s a question of Fatah in the West Bank, Hamas in Gaza, or the return of the Golan to Syria. Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t want to allow the Iran question to be an excuse for inactivity on all those other diplomatic fronts.

Netanyahu and Lieberman know they can’t remain obstacles forever, but they want to gain whatever advantages they can in other areas, even the already internationally established and accepted goal of a Palestinian state.

It’s tempting to let Netanyahu take the heat on this and let him spin his wheels because of his chutzpah. But is that a smart tactic? Even Europeans who reject Netanyahu’s policies don’t advise that route. They feel things can only worsen in the Near East unless negotiations soon begin.

The necessary pressure, if indeed there will be any pressure, has to come from the United States. Europe and the Near East quartette (Trans. Note: an organization comprised of representatives from the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia) have too little influence over Israel and the Arab states. Obama cannot expect to score political points in the form of measurable progress there. An Israel willing to negotiate still has no Palestinian partner at the moment that can reliably represent both Fatah and Hamas.

There’s only one possibility left in this age of television: travel and talk. But film of Obama meeting with government officials in the Near East would be small consolation if that’s the only thing peace in the region has going for it.