What Netanyahu may be up to

When the 10-month building freeze was announced, the natural reaction of Judea and Samaria residents was outrage. By security cabinet fiat, legally obtained building permits were voided, and even builders who had progressed beyond the reach of the edict were consigned to languish on construction sites as infrastructure work came to a halt. The example of Gush Katif demonstrates that those instantly victimized by government expropriation will have a long and frustrating wait for government compensation. More important, in the race to shape Israel's borders, Arab construction enjoys carte blanche, including forbearance for illegal construction, while Jewish construction has been handed a red card.

Initial outrage is quickly supplanted, however, by an attempt to understand Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's motives. An accurate assessment of these motives should frame a decision on counter-strategies. The explanations, at various levels of sophistication, for his actions can be broadly broken down into personal and strategic reasons.

The simplest explanation is that Netanyahu caves in under pressure. The prime minister has never managed to shake this charge completely, and his critics on both the right and the left use it against him. For example, image consultants Eyal Arad and Reuven Adler made Netanyahu's presumed vulnerability to pressure the centerpiece of Kadima's electoral advertising in the Knesset elections. After repeatedly watching the profusely sweating Likud head in their TV spots, even an extraterrestrial would have concluded that Kadima was marketing deodorant. In all fairness, Netanyahu occasionally appears to validate this impression - for example, when he feverishly tinkered with the Likud primary results as a result of a press barrage portraying the Likud list as too rightist.

A kindred explanation replaces vulnerability to pressure with tactical considerations. Netanyahu in his second tenure as prime minister is determined to avoid the mistakes he made during his first term: clashing with the legal establishment, spurning the opportunity of getting Ehud Barak and Labor on board in 1998, and creating an open rift with an American president. This time around Netanyahu has avoided offending the legal mandarins by refusing to dilute the extraordinary powers of the attorney general as recommended by his justice minister. He has allowed Barak to punch far above his parliamentary weight and has studiously avoided an open breach with President Barack Obama. As Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely ruefully put it, Netanyahu is steering between Ehud Barak and Barack Obama. If the key to understanding the freeze is that the prime minister collapsed under pressure or has mortgaged everything for mere political survival, opponents of that policy have no recourse but to ramp up countervailing pressures.

It is more flattering to Netanyahu to accept his protestations that he is attempting to serve Israel's broader interests with a construction moratorium. In a throwback to the Olmert era, the freeze is being sold as part of a strategy that temporarily subordinates everything to tackling the Iranian nuclear threat. The Iran cover story may convince the gullible, but it makes the least sense. As the recent Harvard simulation of U.S.-Iranian negotiations suggested, the United States has essentially resigned itself to a nuclear Iran and will try to contain Tehran, Cold War-style. The optimum scenario involves a new round of sanctions probably diluted to secure Chinese and Russian approval. With the surge in Afghanistan and an incipient rift with his voter base, Obama will not exercise the military option in Iran, nor will he allow Israel to do the job itself, fearing the economic repercussions of an oil spike or a series of Iranian retaliatory terror strikes.

This leaves the explanation of the freeze as a sop to the Obama administration. In World War II, the Soviet Union successfully traded territory for time. Since even in "Greater Israel" there is precious little territory to give, Netanyahu has sought to reverse the process in his dealings with the Obama administration by trading building time for territory. To attack Obama at the height of his popularity, when he had just descended from Olympus to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, would have been foolhardy and suicidal. The president was also too cocksure of his righteousness. In the opinion of Minister without Portfolio Benny Begin, he demonstrates even greater antagonism toward the settlements than Jimmy Carter.

By playing for time, Netanyahu was hoping for one of two things: that Obama's popularity would begin to descend from the stratosphere to normal levels - and better yet, that he would be mugged by global and particularly Middle Eastern reality. Netanyahu may have actually gotten both his wishes. Obama's ratings have sharply plummeted, which will have an impact on his ability to secure support for a policy inimical to Israel. More importantly, last week's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, on the heels of the Afghanistan surge, may indicate that Obama has realized that using an unclenched fist does not win friends in the region, but only results in mangled fingers. In any case the freeze is set to expire in the midst of the U.S. midterm election campaign, perhaps the most propitious moment to resume building.

The IOU that Netanyahu signed to resume building comes due next September. His decision on honoring it will clarify his motivations. If accelerated building resumes, Netanyahu will reunite the nationalist camp. If it doesn't, it will be the start of divorce proceedings rather than of a simple separation between him and his erstwhile supporters.

Dr. Amiel Ungar is a columnist for the Makor Rishon daily and Nekuda.