The Freeze Cherished by U.S. Has Been Melted by the Middle East Heat

Neither the fire nor WikiLeaks has thwarted the progress of the talks, but the simple understanding that the cost does not justify the benefit.

No one outsmarted anyone in the last round of talks between Israel and the American administration. No one managed to fulfill the promises he gave, or use the compliments he bestowed as leverage to gain an advantage. Not Prime Minister Netanyahu, who will have to suffice with fire-fighting planes and postpone the dream of receiving the free fighter jets promised to his ministers. Israel will get these jets in due time. It will be done in an orderly manner, as a substantial component of the American commitment to preserve Israel’s strategic advantage in the Middle East arena — not as a reward for the worthless freeze’s three meaningless months.

But American President Barack Obama wasn’t exactly careful about his words either. On Nov. 14, less than a month ago, he said in these words: “I commend Prime Minister Netanyahu for taking I think a very constructive step … it’s a signal that he is serious.”

The resolution under discussion here is to freeze settlements for an additional three months. And so it passed that Netanyahu said “bombers” and Obama said “commend.”

Slomo Ben-Ami, who was the minister of foreign affairs in Ehud Barak’s government, has written an interesting article this week where he asserted, among other things, that “Obama’s problem lies not in his vision for America and the world, but in his deficient efforts to move from theory to practice.”

Ben-Ami mercilessly detailed these “efforts,” in which the president has fallen desperately short: improvement of relations with Muslims, a nuclear-free planet, Russia’s support in addressing global problems, containment of the growing power of China, ending of the two wars — Iraq and Afghanistan — and stopping the Iranian nuclear program.

Barak Exasperates

And while he was writing these details, his former boss, Ehud Barak, took off to Washington to join the group sit-down and to hear from the first lady of American diplomacy, Hillary Clinton, about the United States’ strategy to advance the peace process after the settlement freeze is off the agenda.

Barak managed to irritate the Americans when he explained that the negotiations over the settlement freeze had been suspended because the administration was too busy with WikiLeaks and North Korea. Elegantly, they countered these claims through the State Department spokesman, who made a point that Israel was the one “busy with fire.”

The truth is, being too busy has not prevented the two governments from reaching an agreement; rather, it is the late understanding that the cost does not justify the benefit. The freeze, the cornerstone of American policy in the first two years of Obama’s term, has been thawed in the Middle East khamsin [hot, dry and dusty desert wind in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula]. Faded away. And today, Clinton is off to a new path with a broader mandate. The president of the post-2010-elections really does not have time for all of this, and he decided to hand the case over to her, but only with a few tools and little credibility: She was the one to demand a “total freeze”; she was the one to praise Netanyahu on an “unprecedented step,” she was the one to say that it’s doable “within one year.” So she said.

Is Bush More Popular than Obama?

An interesting thing happened to George W. Bush — the man who was president for eight years, known as “worse than Nixon,” who left the White House defamed and battered. And this week he’s making a comeback to become a more popular president than Barack Obama, the president in power. It’s not a sensational development that carries a big headline — it’s no more than a blip concealed among the graphs that measure national fervor. And nevertheless, Bush is more popular than Obama — the one who was supposed to reunite America, to launch a new democratic age, to ameliorate the relations with the world, to fix the economy? The Bush of two wars, of the stock market crash, of Hurricane Katrina?

Yes, that very Bush. It’s not that he became truly popular. The memories are still fresh and the wars are not over yet. And nevertheless, 47 percent of American voters are positive that he performed his duties properly. Regardless, this still renders him as “the worst president” in the last 50 years, except for Nixon (29 percent). Even Lyndon Johnson, the president during the Vietnam War, has a slightly higher score than Bush (49 percent).

Here are the presidents ranked in ascending order of popularity: Nixon, Bush, Johnson, Carter, Ford, Bush the First, Clinton, Reagan and Kennedy. And where is Obama? He’s not in this poll, which only includes former presidents. But taking his percentage of popularity as a president in office, and incorporating it into the list, it would look something like this: Nixon, Obama, Bush, Johnson, Carter, Ford, Bush the First, Clinton, Reagan and Kennedy. As of Wednesday, Obama’s percentage of support was at 46 percent — a little less than Bush. Someone who came to the White House as the latest reincarnation of John Kennedy has retrograded to a dangerous proximity to Bush and Nixon.

Even in the political arena, Obama goes on resembling his predecessor. About Bush, they said he wasted seven years before he started tackling the peace process seriously. With Obama, one could already say with confidence that he wasted two years, and as the situation looks at the moment, there is no certainty that he will even have seven years to waste. Some kind of confession is tucked away in his administration’s decision to give up on the freeze: that it was all about wasting time — a recognition that the goal they have been reaching for is worthless.

Iran, U.S., Israel

And of course, this is one of Obama’s smaller problems; he has to take care of far more important things (the list of priorities: economy, terror, China, Iran). But this is the small problem that has embodied the Obama administration since January 2008: The administration is headed by a man who is too smart, so smart that he thinks he knows everything — and knows it better — than anyone else. So smart that he didn’t show enough interest in listening to others. And as a matter of fact, Obama heard but did not listen. There were some who already told him in the beginning that the advancement of the freeze is a foolish action. So they said.

Five senators have signed the letter addressed to President Obama, which was sent on Monday to the White House. One of them is Mark Kirk, the junior senator from the state of Illinois, elected only a month ago and now sitting in Obama’s former Senate seat. He is a Republican, just like two others who signed, Jon Kyl from Arizona and Bob Casey from Pennsylvania. There is one Democrat, too — Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior senator from the state of New York who now fills Hillary Clinton’s former Senate seat. And there is one independent — the elder of those signed — Joe Lieberman from Connecticut.

The timing of the letter was deliberate: It was the day of the opening of renewed talks between the members of the Security Council (plus Germany) and Iran. Its intention was also clear, though hidden in the last paragraph: a red card to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as these talks approach. Last week, Clinton announced in her speech in Bahrain that she recognizes Iran’s right to enrich uranium on its territory for civilian purposes. On this topic, the fellow senators disagreed. “For the foreseeable future,” they wrote, “given the government of Iran’s patterns of deception and noncooperation, its government cannot be permitted to maintain any enrichment or reprocessing activities on its territory” — “in any form.” This is where the possible bone of contention is hidden — not only between the administration and the Senate (and even more than that, the Republican House of Representatives), but also between the United States and the partners in talks (Europe, China, Russia), and between Israel and the United States.

The talks with the Iranians were apparently harder than the Iranians are willing to admit. At this stage, what came out of the talks was little but consent to continue them in January. Or then, the willingness of the Iranians to agree to a type of arrangement will be examined — but that’s exactly an arrangement the senators are warning about: enrichment in exchange for tight supervision. This is what Clinton meant to say in her speech in Bahrain and what is expressed by the words of the EU foreign minister, which she has chosen meticulously: “We recognize Iran’s rights, but insist it fulfils its obligations.”

Should Iran accept the offer, Israel would need to cope or to reconcile with the new state of affairs. It would have to rely upon international inspection to indeed control and prevent the Iranians from continuing nuclear development for military use.

And in the Israeli government of 2010, there are only few ministers, if any, who are ready to rely upon trustworthiness and credibility of such a control.