End of a Non-Existent Friendship

Israel’s prime minister has turned his antipathy toward President Obama into a kind of no-confidence vote on his Middle East policy. That will only discourage Obama from engaging further in the Middle East.

One could dismiss this speech as a rhetorical masterpiece designed to send simple minds into ecstasy. If it had appeared in a cookbook, the recipe would go something like this: Take a Holocaust reminder (Never Again!), the struggle for survival, an eternal threat to existence, an island of freedom surrounded by a sea of enemies, the only democracy in the Middle East, a warning against fundamentalism (Iran and Hamas), a demonstrated desire for peace and toss in a few personal anecdotes and expressions of solidarity. And there you have a speech by an Israeli prime minister to an American congress.

But what Benjamin Netanyahu accomplished on Tuesday even managed to do one better.

In, of all places, America’s very center of power, he turned his personal antipathy toward Barack Obama into a kind of no-confidence vote on the president’s Middle East policy. He duped Obama and played him for a fool to the thunderous applause of mostly Democrats, who, perhaps while gritting their teeth, are nonetheless frightened of being branded anti-Israel. He deepened the mistrust of the Arab world and accelerated the alienation of European nations, many of which will now closely reconsider their coming U.N. vote on a Palestinian state that may occur this coming autumn. That’s a steep price to pay for an hour of applause from the U.S. Congress and for the glory of being hailed as a hero at home for having forced the most powerful man in the world to his knees with his tough talk.

How much dinnerware do you have to break unnecessarily before you’re even invited to sit down at the table? What happened? First of all, Obama delivered his typically intelligent but unusually Israel-friendly speech. He had given up calling for a halt to Israeli settlement building, categorically rejected the Palestinian plan to seek U.N. approval for the founding of their state and renewed his demand that Hamas recognize the state of Israel as a prerequisite for peace negotiations. All he added was that the 1967 borders (actually the armistice lines drawn in 1948/49) be used as a starting point for negotiations, something that is totally uncontroversial.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu chose to humiliate Obama because of this objectively harmless comment, and he did so for good reasons or bad or just out of conscious stupidity. Whenever America expects a conciliatory gesture from Israel toward the Palestinians, Netanyahu responds with a diversionary ploy. Syria, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the lack of Palestinian unity, too much Palestinian unity: There’s always something else that’s far more important. In this case, what Netanyahu found more important than negotiating compromise with his coalition was delighting his home audience by scoring points against Obama in an exhibition match. Is that too banal to serve as a factual explanation? Unfortunately, the explanation is as banal as the actual facts.

What remains is an Obama who, after losing the settlement argument, has again emerged as the loser in this duel with Netanyahu: disappointed, weakened and embittered. That will serve to feed his reluctance to engage further in the Middle East. There’s a cartoon that shows Obama and Netanyahu shaking hands. Obama says, “Yes, we can.” And a satisfied and smiling Netanyahu responds, “Yes, weak hand.”

Whoever has such a friend has no friend at all.