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08/19/2009

Hopeful and defiant

Filed under: Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias — Tags: , — Soccerdad @ 10:30 am

Even as the Washington Post reports that President Obama, meeting with Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, is optimistic about peace in the Middle East, it runs a parallel story Netanyahu’s Defiance of U.S. Resonates at Home:

For five months, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been fending off U.S. pressure to halt the expansion of West Bank settlements. Now he is reaping dividends for his defiance.

Although Israeli leaders have historically been reluctant to publicly break with the United States for fear of paying a price in domestic support, polls show that Netanyahu’s strategy is working. And that means that after months of diplomacy, the quick breakthrough that President Obama had hoped would restart peace talks has instead turned into a familiar stalemate.

Arab states largely have rebuffed Obama’s request for an overture to Israel until the settlement issue is resolved — a stand that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak emphasized in a meeting with Obama on Tuesday — and the Palestinians have said a settlement freeze is a precondition for resuming negotiations. Meanwhile, the Israeli public seems to have rallied around Netanyahu’s refusal to halt all settlement construction, a backlash that intensified when the Obama administration made clear that it wanted Israel to stop building Jewish homes in some parts of Jerusalem as well as in the occupied West Bank.

In Israel, the dynamic seems to have shifted further from any dramatic concessions. Netanyahu “scored points” for standing up to Obama, said Yoel Hasson, a member of parliament from the opposition Kadima party. In contrast to the United States’ public demands for a settlement freeze, signaled early in the relationship between the two new governments, “I think the U.S. understands that it is better for them to do everything with Netanyahu more quietly,” Hasson said.

Note a few things. First of all despite their differences, Netanyahu has been working with the Obama administration. Now you can quibble whether Netanyahu caved or made a strategic retreat, but it doesn’t appear that Netanyahu is “defying” the administration. (via memeorandum)

(This would indicate strategic retreat.)

By coupling an article that highlights Israeli “defiance” with an article about President Obama being hopeful about peace, the Post effectively identifies Israel as the obstacle to peace. Yes, the reporter, Howard Schneider, acknowledges that no Arab country has acceded to President Obama’s request for confidence building measures for Israel, but he presents it as a reaction to Israel’s refusal to freeze “settlements.”

Israel’s political situation is also being misrepresented. Yes, Israelis apparently approve of Netanyahu’s handling of the diplomacy with the United States. But the approval isn’t simply a matter of Netanyahu’s defiance; he represents a large portion of the Israeli electorate. This isn’t 1996 anymore, Israel has conceded a lot and received nothing in return. At some point any country will get tired of giving away concrete assets in return for unfulfilled promises.

Lastly, Howard Schneider, the Post’s reporter, of course, ignored the hardline resolutions passed by the recently concluded Fatah convention. (See here or here.) For him to frame the issue as Israeli “defiance” is misleading, when, no matter moderate the Israeli government were, it would have no one to deal with on the other side.

The New York Times was somewhat more responsible and accurate in the way it presented the situation:

The leaders’ cautiously optimistic comments coincided with a sign that the Israeli government was trying to lower tensions with the United States on the settlement issue. That signal was in the form of an announcement by Israel’s housing minister that his government had not given final approval for any new housing projects in the West Bank since it took office in late March.

While the gesture from Jerusalem does not affect settlement housing units under construction, it at least allowed the American and Egyptian presidents to say they were hopeful about getting peace talks started again.

The Obama administration has demanded a freeze on all settlement construction, saying that such a move would create momentum for a peace agreement in the Middle East. The conservative-leaning Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has balked at the demand, resulting in an unusually public dispute between Israel and the United States.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

07/03/2009

Israel to Obama: Netanyahu won

Filed under: Israel, The One — Tags: , — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

President Obama is fond of saying things like, “I won,” and “I’m the president.”

Well, Netanyahu won. And he’s the Prime Minister. And Israelis are pretty happy with what he’s doing right now.

In other news, 43 percent of Israelis think the Benjamin Netanyahu government is doing a better job than its predecessor, as opposed to 30 percent who said it is faring worse than the previous Ehud Olmert-led government, according to a poll published Friday in the Haaretz daily.

The Dialog poll also found than Netanyahu himself enjoys a 49 percent approval rating from the public, with 52 percent saying he is best suited to lead the country, as opposed to 34 percent saying opposition leader Tzipi Livni was a better fit.

Israel’s proponents have been saying this all along—the Obama administration’s attempt to repeat what Bill Clinton did to Netanyahu in the 90s will fail. Netanyahu was elected by the will of the people, and is doing what his people want him to do. Those are pretty high numbers for a man who was elected without a party majoriy in the Knesset.

The Ha’aretz spin is negative, of course, since Ha’aretz wanted Tzipi Livni. But here are the salient facts:

The survey by Dialog, conducted Thursday under the auspices of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University, found Netanyahu’s approval ratings were 18 percent higher than Tzipi Livni’s – a much larger margin than when they were competing for prime minister. Asked who was better suited to be prime minister, 52 percent said Netanyahu, while only 34 said Livni.

[...] Netanyahu’s approval ratings may have jumped 5 points since the last Dialog survey, on June 15. In the most recent survey, 49 percent of the 500 respondents said they were satisfied with Netanyahu’s performance.

So Netanyahu’s approval ratings are going up, more than half of Israelis think he is the right man to lead the country, and Livni’s approval ratings are dropping like lead.

Say, President Obama: Netanyahu won.

03/22/2009

Major newspaper seems fated to cast Israel in the worst possible light

Filed under: Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias — Tags: — Soccerdad @ 10:00 am

I suppose that the article Israeli Coalition Appears Fated to Clash With U.S. isn’t nearly as bad as the title. Still it’s got some problems. For example, early on the reporter, Howard Schneider writes:

A leading contender to become defense minister once characterized the two-state solution that forms the basis of U.S. and international policy toward Israel and the Palestinians as “a story the Western world tells with Western eyes.”

At the end he identifies the candidate:

A top contender for defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, has opposed territorial concessions to the Palestinians for security reasons. As military chief of staff under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, he opposed the Gaza withdrawal and lost his job.

And how exactly did the withdrawal from Gaza work out? Well elsewhere Schneider described it like this:

Israel dismantled settlements and withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but the move did not bring the expected quiet. Rockets and mortars fall regularly into Israeli towns. The Islamist group Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections and, about a year later, forced the rival Fatah faction out of Gaza.

“Fall regularly?!?!” Does he mean like manna from heaven? For crying out loud, rockets and mortars don’t fall passively, they are fired by people with murderous intent. No matter how Schneider tries to softpedal it, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza did damage Israel’s security. It made things less peaceful. And yet he describes Gen. Yaalon’s hesitation to withdraw from territory as a liability!

And the biggest problem according to Schneider is the Prime Minster apparent.

Israel’s next government seems tailor-made for conflict with an administration in Washington that supports a Palestinian state and is expected to push for progress on drawing its borders. Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu is himself a skeptic when it comes to Palestinian statehood and has referred to U.S.-backed peace talks as a waste of time.

Of course with the recent revelations that Fatah the main constituent organization of the Palestinian Authority – as well as purported “moderates” – doesn’t accept Israel’s right to exist (though this isn’t really news) or that Fatah continues to incite against Israel don’t make it onto Schneider’s radar. Also Fatah seems more inclined to reconcile with Hamas – in a move that will make peace with Israel impossible – than to come to an agreement with Israel. As Barry Rubin writes:

Despite this, the relationship between Hamas and Fatah remain quite complex. It seems bizarre that Hamas set off a civil war, murdered Fatah men in cold blood, and kicked the group out of Gaza yet still most of Fatah is ready to forgive it. There is a strong likelihood that if given the choice, Fatah leaders—though not necessarily Abbas himself—would prefer conciliation with Hamas, which would make any peace with Israel impossible—to making a diplomatic deal with Israel and getting a Palestinian state.
From Israel’s standpoint, of course, how can it negotiate any comprehensive solution with the PA when it cannot deliver half of the territory, people, and armed men who are supposed to be bound by such an agreement? Moreover, the possibility that either Hamas will overthrow Fatah at some future point or even that the two will join together in a new war against Israel rather puts a damper on Israeli willingness to make concessions.

Schneider is probably accurately portraying the Obama administration’s interest in having an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. And he’s identified a likely source of contention between a Netanyahu government and the Americans. But the Israeli reticence towards further concessions or negotiations is well founded. It’s a shame that the administration (and Schneider) are dismissive about Netanyahu’s concerns.

Shmuel Rosner reports:

Netanyahu might think that his refusal to utter the term “Two State Solution” is ideologically justified and logically sound. He might think that Tzipi Livni’s attempt to argue that this was the reason for which she’s refused to join his coalition is lame. No matter what he thinks, Washington – official Washington – doesn’t like this revisionist position. One official told me it was just “childish”. When Netanyahu comes for a visit, he might be asked to make a choice. The price for press availability with President Obama will be a commitment to say the words “two”, “state” and “solution” in the same sentence.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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