According to Netanyahu, We are No Patsies

On Monday, the Israeli news channels reported on a scandalous- scandalous!- remark made by Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff. In a private event held for AIPAC’s biggest donors, Emanuel said, supposedly, that the progress of the Iranian issue depends on the progress of the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

If he indeed said so, there’s a problem: Emanuel is essentially using an Iranian whip to threaten Israel’s government. But Emanuel did not say what has been attributed to him. He said, and this of itself can be debated, that it would be easier to enlist the Arab countries against Iran if there would be a simultaneous development in the peace process. That is to say: the United States needs Israel’s cooperation in order to ease the task of recruiting the Arabs.

Emanuel is a seasoned and tough politician, but foreign policy is not his expertise. This week he was invited to attend Barack Obama and Shimon Peres’s meeting- primarily because he is Jewish. Emanuel, along with senior political advisor David Axelrod. The both of them were in the room although they are not directly connected to the issues at hand. But they are both Jewish. Even the two others who were in the room-National Security Advisor James Jones and his Mideast advisor Daniel Shapiro- one is Jewish (Shapiro, for those of you that couldn’t guess).

Obama is a man who plans his meetings carefully. If this was the team he chose to attend the meeting, he was obviously trying to convey a message to Israel: I have backup from the Jewish Israel-supporters in America. And indeed he’s got backup, only it’s not exactly clear why. Obama stuck with the two-state solution because there is no other plan in existence. He adhered to the demand to freeze settlement expansion because it is a traditional American demand that does not require much negotiation before it is brought up again. Therefore, it is hard to claim Obama is presenting new or outrageous demands.

The United States is Not Particularly Busy Making Peace

Nevertheless, there are unresolved issues between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu did not say “two states for two peoples.” One might think it’s creating nothing but unnecessary tension between the two governments; or one can see it as a shrewd political move by Netanyahu. All of the sudden, even getting him to say such a standard sentence requires much effort, perhaps even something in return.

The White House does not like this kind of conduct, but some people in the Netanyahu camp feel that if Obama’s clerks keep proclaiming how the administration plans to be “tougher” with Israel than its predecessor, it is important to make it clear that Israel, however small, dependant and fragile, can be tough as well.

Obama and Netanyahu’s meeting will produce many headlines, and in Israel there is a feeling that the American government is busy trying to make peace between them and the Arabs. That is a far cry from reality.

Obama is knee-deep in the economic crisis and the even more urgent problem of Pakistan, which gets first priority over Iran. In regards to Iran, there is a true gap between the United States and Israel. An unavoidable gap between two countries with different margins of error than they can afford.

The United States does not want a nuclear Iran, but is getting used to the idea. Israel does not want it and refuses to get used to it, at least publicly. In an interview given in the United States this week, Shimon Peres said that between making the mistake of an overreaction and the mistake of lack of reaction (in regards to a nuclear Iran), he would rather make the mistake of overreaction. A good answer of an Israeli. However, an American in the post-Iraq war era will most likely give a different answer.

Given all of the above, the disagreement between Obama and Netanyahu comes down to priorities: what’s urgent and what’s plain important, what’s on fire and what’s cooling off, what comes before what and in which order. The connection America is making between the Iranian issue and the regional peace process is obsereved in Israel as well. Only in the American map, the road to Tehran begins in Ramallah, while in the Israeli map, the road to Ramallah begins in Tehran.