Subscribe to Print Edition | Thu., May 28, 2009 Sivan 5, 5769 | | Israel Time: 00:32 (EST+7)
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By Aluf Benn
Tags: Israel News 

WASHINGTON - This week's meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama was marked by a lack of surprises. The meeting was thoroughly prepared in advance and each leader knew what to expect. Obama will give dialogue with Iran a chance until the end of the year, and Netanyahu agreed to discuss with the U.S. administration a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. These issues will be the focus of diplomacy in the coming months. All the rest is scenery, like the demand that the Arab countries begin normalizing relations with Israel, or issues like "the two-state solution" and "the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state."

Many people in Washington seemed to be more interested in the life expectancy of the current Israeli government than in Netanyahu's positions. To a large extent, the answer to that will be dependent on Obama: The more he pressures Netanyahu to "stop the settlements," the greater the prime minister's coalition problems. Netanyahu is in a trap: The more he tries to persuade Obama he can provide the diplomatic goods, the quicker his coalition will expire.

Netanyahu was very impressed by Obama's grasp of details, even though he himself has a whole world's details to worry about. He was not aloof and I was not complacent, Netanyahu told an aide after the meeting.
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Obama is not George W. Bush, who contented himself with reciting a few basic discussion points and saw the world in a simplistic way that hid a lack of intellectual confidence. Nor is he Bill Clinton, who liked to impress his Israeli interlocutors with a detailed knowledge of Jerusalem's back streets, and who still surprises people with his photographic memory. Obama studies the materials and gets down to the nitty-gritty in discussions, but he comes across as more of a forest man than a tree man. He aims for the goal, drawn in broad strokes. He called for a stop to settlement activity, but he will leave to his aides the discussion on whether the closing off of a balcony constitutes new construction.

Obama is enjoying a cult of personality not seen in America since the tenure of John F. Kennedy. There are Obama T-shirts, Obama games and Obama children's books. People who know him describe him as a confident, arrogant man who does not try to charm his interlocutors or make them love him.

His meeting with Netanyahu was all business. That also suited the prime minister, who doesn't go in for small talk or sports chat, and prefers to discuss policy and history. There were no gestures of personal friendship. A lunch including their aides was pared down to barely half an hour because of the prolonging of the one-on-one meeting.

Obama's words of praise for the prime minister were aimed mainly at the future, discussing how Netanyahu "has both youth and wisdom [Netanyahu demurred on the question of youth] ... and I think is in a position to achieve the security objectives of Israel, but also bring historic peace. I'm confident that he's going to seize this moment."

Translated from American euphemism, this means: "You'd best follow the path I'm outlining." Obama wants peace in the region, with Iran curbed and an independent Palestinian state. This is what he is going to outline in his Cairo speech on June 4.

Netanyahu summed up the visit thus: He and Obama agreed on the goal of preventing Iran from attaining the ability to produce nuclear weapons, and he agreed to start talking with the Palestinians immediately and widen the circle of peace so the Arab states will move toward normalization. There was no agreement on the settlements or the phrase "two states for two peoples." It was decided to continue the discussions at working levels on all issues, whether there was agreement or not.

Upping the ante

Netanyahu received a strong commitment to Israel's security in Obama's public statements and in the private summations, which promised to maintain Israel's "nuclear ambiguity" and not to endanger it in new initiatives for global disarmament. There is logic to such a position: Obama is asking Israel to take risks vis-a-vis Iran and the Palestinians, and he has no interest in undermining its self-confidence. He wants to deviate from the policy of his predecessors but not on a sensitive issue like Dimona.

The American summation, as described by columnist David Ignatius in The Washington Post, was that Obama was "upping the ante" on Netanyahu. The prime minister had wanted progress with the Palestinians to be conditional on progress with Iran; he was forced to accept progress on both tracks and give a chance to Obama's planned dialogue with the Iranians.

CIA chief Leon Panetta spoke about his visit to Israel a few weeks ago, in which he warned against an independent Israeli action against Iran. Netanyahu "understands that if Israel goes it alone, it will mean big trouble," Panetta said in an interview. Netanyahu, according to a senior Israeli source, did not promise Obama that Israel will not act, he only said that no decision had been made on the matter and that Israel was "maintaining its right to defend itself." He expects that the Americans' dialogue with Iran will lead, at least, to the suspension of the nuclear program.

Obama is still waiting for an answer from the Iranians to his proposal for dialogue. In the meantime, the signs are not encouraging. This week Iran tested a long-range missile that could reach southern Italy. American sources insist that Obama's diplomatic moves are not a cover for tacit acceptance of an Iranian nuclear bomb but rather an attempt to stop it.

Obama took time to explain to Netanyahu why he wants to speak with the Iranians, and what about. As he sees it, Bush tried isolation and boycotts and achieved nothing, while dialogue will strengthen the international front against Iran. It's not clear what Netanyahu heard from him about the "other options" that America would examine should the dialogue fail or not even get off the ground.

In the administration, the person in charge of the Iranian portfolio is Dennis Ross, head of Bill Clinton's "peace team" during that administration. Ross has a team of nine people, including Iran experts and Gamal Helal, the legendary simultaneous translator at peace talks from Madrid to Camp David. Ross has visited the Gulf states and Egypt, where officials are increasingly concerned about Iran's growing power. The Iranian threat, not Palestinian rights, tops the diplomatic agenda of the "the moderate Arab states."

Netanyahu is talking about a "historic opportunity," because Israel and the Arab states share concerns about Iran. But the concerns are not identical. Israel is worried about the Iranian nuclear program and the Arabs are worried about Iran's regional strength and its undermining of the regimes in Cairo, Riyadh and the Gulf emirates. The Saudis and the Egyptians aren't counting the centrifuges and the grams of enriched uranium the way the Israelis are. They are content with a warning that if the Shi'ites in Iran have nuclear weapons, the Sunnis in the region will obtain them, too. Otherwise they are more concerned about terror and subversion. America is trying to reassure them by reinforcing its military forces in the Gulf. The Arab governments though, like Israel, want to know what America will do on the day the dialogue with Iran fails.

Obama's stance is realistic: He repeated the word "interests" 13 times. America's interests, Israel's interests, regional interests, even Iran's. He did not mention the "occupation," "Palestinian rights" or advancing democracy and freedom in the Middle East. From his perspective, the two-state solution speaks to U.S. interests, and Israel is being asked to accept this, just as Israel expects American support for its security interests. It's doubtful anyone will hear from Obama, in contrast to Bush, that God has sent him to make peace in the Middle East.

Netanyahu appeared tense and impatient in his meeting with Israeli journalists after he left the White House. This wasn't because of Obama; he spoke calmly with his people at Blair House and told them it had been a good meeting with the president. But his body language changed the moment he sat down with the journalists. He replied in short sentences, and after about half an hour asked whether there were any more questions. His aides interrupted him from time to time. It appears Netanyahu has not forgotten the way the media treated him during his previous term in office and his years in the opposition. Facing the Israeli reporters, he went on the defensive.

Two hours later, facing U.S. commentators, Netanyahu was much more relaxed, feeling at home in diplomatic English. But there, too, according to one participant, he did not say much that was new. This was the same Netanyahu with the same messages.

Netanyahu's visit to Washington should be seen as the first act: He wanted to understand the extent to which Obama seeks to advance peace and deal with Iran, and Obama wanted to understand how far Netanyahu can go on both tracks, and how far he wants to. The answers will become clear in the following acts. In the meantime, Obama will try to extend a hand to the Iranians, and Netanyahu will be weighing what to do about the Yesha Council of settlers.
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