Obama challenges Sarkozy about France’s disregarding of the US on the UNESCO issue. One could even argue that Obama was upset about France’s abandonment of Israel on this for which the US was advocating, but that might be going a bit far here. [Supporters will see a strong pro-Israel intent here by Obama]. The conversation leads to Netanyahu. This is interesting because there could well then be linkage between Sarkozy’s decision to vote for statehood in UNESCO, to abandon support for Israel, and to disregard the US. That personal dislike could have that impact on Sarkozy would be a major indictment of his character in and of itself. Sarkozy calls Netanyahu a “liar.” What did he lie about? I am wondering here. Anyway this leads to Obama.

Now with the leader of France being attacked by Obama for not supporting the US and EU stance and launching a tirade about Bibi as a liar, Obama’s response is not “You bet. He’s lied out his you know what!” Nor is it “I can’t stand the man. He is awful!” Instead, Obama actually deflected the conversation in an attempt to create camaraderie with Sarkozy, or to avoid an argument, while playing DOWN the situation. By saying he has to deal with Bibi every day, Obama ended the conversation.

Considering the fact that we already know that there have been a number of heated exchanges over the past couple of years between Obama and Bibi, Obama’s response to Sarkozy was highly restrained, in fact frankly surprisingly so. While Obama would not have said what he did in public, what he did say is a far cry from the sentiments that many ascribe to him and would have expected to hear from him under these circumstances.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who each of us like very well to whom we might refer at times as a pain in the ass, and certainly might in response to others who are very angry at those people. I think that Obama supporters will see Obama’s response as nothing more than that, essentially calling Netanyahu a pain in the butt. In fact, one could argue that no few of Netanyahu’s political opponents in Israel would say similar things about him or much worse. Sarkozy’s comments on the other hand are not acceptable at all and were clearly much more hostile and even slanderous.

On the whole, I think that people who dislike Obama will play this situation up, while those who support Obama will have an easy time maintaining that support. Sarkozy has some explaining to do. I think that this conversation will have little or no impact on swaying the opinions of those who support the President and consider him a friend of Israel.

When President Obama reopened face-to-face talks between the Israelis and Palestinians last month, he pledged that his administration would hold their hands but warned, “The United States cannot impose an agreement, and we cannot want it more than the parties themselves.”

With the negotiations deadlocked over the issue of Jewish settlements, several veterans of Middle East peacemaking said Mr. Obama’s warning had come true — only weeks after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to sit down.

Not only is the Obama administration holding hands, they said, it is also handing out concessions to each side, in a bid to keep Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas at the table. The generosity of the American offers, and the reluctance of the Israelis or the Palestinians to accept them, have been telling.

Now of course what’s missing here is any acknowledgment that it was the administration’s own maneuverings that led to this problem. After all if the settlement freeze was so important to negotiations, why did Abbas wait until two weeks were left in the freeze to deign to meet with Netanyahu?

Landler would never get to the real problems that Israel has with the administration. Barry Rubin already explained the cynicism behind the administration’s “generous” offer to Netanyahu:

First, the administration offers not to seek an extension of a two-month freeze. Why two months, why not three or four? Why not two weeks?

Hmm, readers, what is happening within two months? The U.S. election! The implication is that the Obama Administration is offering Israel the following basic deal: Make us look good until the vote and we will give you a pay-off.

That’s it. Because the only alternative view is that the United States believes that the once-every-two-week talks will make such dramatic progress in two months that both Israel and the Palestinians will be on the verge of peace or an end to the freeze won’t matter.

Is that credible? No. And so when press reports say that the White House is angry that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the offer we can well understand why this is so. The U.S. government certainly isn’t going to pressure the PA to give in, which is the other alternative. The collapse of the peace talks on the verge of the November elections won’t make it look good. But if the PA walks out in December won’t matter in terms of American politics.

Daled Amos summarized something equally important: why Israel has no reason to trust the administration.

So Mark Landler of the New York Times may be troubled as to why Israel wouldn’t accept a generous offer from the administration. Since the offer is coming from an administration that has failed to build trust with Israel and is making the offer in a blatantly cynical fashion, it’s not hard to see why Netanyahu is reluctant.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Now Mr. Abbas has a choice: Begin direct negotiations in exchange for prisoner releases and other “confidence-building measures” that Mr. Netanyahu has been offering — or show himself to be not so ready for peace, after all.

If talks begin, Mr. Netanyahu, too, will be challenged. Mr. Obama’s counterproductive focus on issues such as Jewish housing in Jerusalem has allowed the Israeli leader to rally domestic support and delay spelling out where he stands on truly central questions, such as the borders of a Palestinian state and whether Jerusalem will be its capital.

Nachum Barnea has made a similar point here:

The ball is now shifting to Abbas’ court. In the coming weeks, various supporters ranging from President Mubarak through George Mitchell and several European leaders will explain to him that he must enter direct negotiations. This is the only way to expose Netanyahu to massive American and European pressure and to domestic criticism, they will say.

This is the only way for Abbas to guarantee immediate Israeli concessions on the ground and expansion of Palestinian Authority sovereignty in the West Bank. Should he refuse, the Americans would have to condemn him as a peace refusenik.

Given Abbas’s record of saying, “no,” I hardly thought that it was Netanyahu who needed to be challenged.

Now the Washington Post carries an AP report:

The Palestinian Authority president, who is under U.S. pressure to resume direct talks with Israel, said that doing so under the current circumstances would be pointless.

Have the Post’s editors noticed that Abbas threw “…pie in Obama’s face” as Barry Rubin put it?

JoshuaPundit elaborates:

Abbas’ latest pre-conditions to even sit at the table are designed to make sure that it never happens. He demands that Netanyahu agree to an internationally mandated ‘settlement freeze’, which means the Israelis are essentially going to be unable to build anything in the areas the Palestinians claim for themselves while the Palestinians get free reign to build whatever they want.And he insists that negotiations start by writing in stone as a starting point an offer disgraced Israeli ex-PM Olmert supposedly made to him that was neither accepted by the Palestinians at the time or even cleared with the Israeli Knesset or cabinet – let alone the Israeli electorate!

The Israeli term chutzpah doesn’t even begin to cover this nonsense.To twist the old Mafia phrase around, it’s an offer designed to be refused.

However hopeful President Obama is that he can bring peace (or impose it) on the Middle East, this refusal should serve as a data point. More generally, Yaacov Lozowick writes:

Since 1993 Israel has performed a series of concrete actions on the ground, changes in the reality, which have weakened its control over the Palestinians. Not one of them resulted in any advantage durable enough to survive two days of violence in September 2000, when the Palestinians launched the 2nd Intifada. Since 2000 the pendulum has swung both ways, with Israel reconquering the West Bank in 2002, and slowly lifting its hand since 2004; with Israel fully evacuating Gaza in 2005, then reconquering less than a third of it in 2009 and again relinquishing direct control and now, slowly, also indirect control. The wary recognition of having an independent Palestine next door, which was the expression of Rabin’s position, has been replaced by a Likud prime minister publicly accepting the goal of a sovereign Palestine.

And in all that time, I dare you to find one single concrete step taken by the Palestinians to assure us they, too, are ready for partition. Not words, which can be uttered in English today and denied in Arabic today. Actions. Find me one. Because I could easily write a 10,000-word article about all the things they’ve done which prove the opposite; actually, I expect I could limit myself to the first half of 2010.

The President has called for direct negotiations, and Mahmoud Abbas, not Binyamin Netanyahu, has rebuffed him. Will the President be outraged? Will the Washington Post’s editors notice?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

For one thing as Jennifer Rubin notes, the Rabbis chosen to meet with the President were known for being favorably disposed towards him.

As to the build-up, Moline lets on that no one predisposed to say nasty things about Obama was invited, nor was anyone who didn’t vote for him. (”We also wanted people who had not engaged in the kinds of behaviors I mentioned in my introduction, which is to say people who had been positively predisposed to President Obama once the election was over, but found themselves troubled by what had transpired over the subsequent year.”)

But was the purpose, as Rubin alleges, simply to ensure a positive reception? Or did the President feel that if Rabbis known to be sympathetic were bothered by the administration’s policies, that there was real work to be done?

Then there are Herb Keinon’s observations.

The truth, however, is that beyond the “message problem” there are indeed fundamental conceptual differences between how the Israel and the US view regional reality.
. . .
The differences are there, and they are real. What has changed now is that the administration has decided, in large part because of electoral considerations, that rather than playing these differences up, as it has done up until now, they will now keep them in the background … at least until the midterm congressional elections in November.

After that, it will be time again for the Netanyahu government to duck and look for cover, until the US presidential primary season heats up in the fall of 2011. Then electoral considerations will again become paramount in Washington, and Israel will again catch an American reprieve.

The only real reason to change approaches now would seem to be electoral considerations.

The Obama administration has been very open about its courting of Muslims. But the administration’s outreach to the Rabbis or even to Democratic legislators hasn’t made the pages of either the New York Times or Washington Post.

Based on the timing, President Obama’s own record and the administration’s relative quiet about the outreach to the Jewish community, it would appear that the Jewish outreach or “charm offensive” is more cynical than sincere. I think that Rahm Emanuel was right about the “messaging.” The administration doesn’t believe that it was wrong in its approach to the Middle East – including blowing up a bureaucratic snafu into an international incident – it’s mostly concerned that that approach will be “misunderstood” as being anti-Israel or, at least, unfair to Israel. The truth is that it would be no misunderstanding.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Carter’s interest in the conflict is in one sense natural: the agreement he mediated between Israel and Egypt at Camp David in 1978 stands as one of the few solid achievements of his presidency. Yet the intensity of his rhetoric suggests that his absorption with this issue derives from something deeper than the pleasure of returning to the scene of past triumphs.

Generally, the Camp David treaty is considered the major accomplishment of Carter’s term in office. Yet, as Jason Maoz recounts, the impetus for Sadat going to the Jerusalem was a miscalculation by Carter.

Standing out among Carter’s flubs was his decision to issue a joint statement on the Middle East with the Soviet Union. This totally unexpected document, released on October 1, 1977, marked the first time the U.S. officially employed the phrase “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

The communiqué also recommended the conveying of an Arab-Israel peace conference in Geneva, with the participation of Palestinian representatives and with the Americans and the Soviets acting as joint guarantors of any agreement that might be reached.

Reaction in the U.S. was immediate – and furious. “[A] political firestorm erupted,” wrote Middle East expert Steven Spiegel. “After American officials had worked successfully for years to reduce Russian influence over the Mideast peace process and in the area as whole, critics could not understand why the administration had suddenly invited Moscow to return.”

If there was anyone more incensed at Carter than the Israelis and most American lawmakers, it was Anwar Sadat. It had been just five years since the Egyptian leader stunned the world by unceremoniously expelling thousands of Soviet military advisers and their families from Egypt, his most concrete signal to date of his desire to align his country with the West.

Yet Carter ignored Sadat’s break with Moscow. A number of other factors came into play and …

Eventually, of course, the U.S. would broker what became known as the Camp David accords and oversee the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. But Carter had been blindsided by Sadat, with the compliance of Begin, in response to the American president’s inexplicable decision to involve the Soviets in the peace process.

Well once again, as Barry Rubin writes, the Russians are getting involved in the Middle East.

Russia’s bid for renewed power in the Middle East as a rival to U.S. goals and interests is one more thing that U.S. policy is simply not prepared to cope with, or even recognize. Will Russia align itself to a large extent with Iran and Syria to counter U.S. influence in the region and give itself special access to key trading partners? For if Moscow teams up with the radical Islamist alliance, especially after Tehran has nuclear weapons, this is going to worsen considerably an already gloomy strategic picture for the West.

But on top of all that, Russian Foreign Minister Serge Lavrov made an incredible statement that should send shock waves through U.S. policymaking circles. In calling on the United States not to take “any unilateral step against Iran,” Lavrov is trying to restrict American pressures to what Moscow is willing to accept. In other words, he is acting as Iran’s lawyer to tie America’s hands.

This isn’t the same as inviting the Russians in, however the Obama adminstration hasn’t complained as the Russians have been expanding their influence in the Middle East and allying itself with those who are fighting American interests.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear that a comparable situation exists to the one that existed in 1977, when a poorly conceived American effort convinced Egypt to make peace with Israel. Maybe the new Russian alliance will serve to move the Iraqis closer to the United States, but I don’t see how it will advance th cause of stability in the Middle East.

So in the Middle East, right now President Obama looks like Jimmy Carter, but without the stroke of good fortune.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Yet if we are seen as neutral, just watch the rest of the world get the message and start piling on. Anti-Jewish terrorism will gear up again. Frontline entities like Hezbollah, Syria and Iran will ready their missiles without worry of American anger. Iran will assume we are resigned to its acquisition of the bomb. And the UN will again begin providing cover by issuing its pro forma denunciations of Israel, counting on a newly diffident United States to vote “present.”

Perhaps the Obama administration genuinely believes that by pressuring Israel and reaching out to its enemies, it can at last achieve peace. Perhaps a few key figures in this administration simply do not like or trust the Jewish state — support for which now polls only 48 percent among Democratic voters (versus 85 percent among Republicans).

No matter. This administration should take a deep breath and review history. It would learn that when Israel is alone, its opportunistic enemies pile on. And then war becomes more, not less, likely.

Perhaps the news that the administration’s stance is alienating voters (via memeorandum)

A Quinnipiac University survey released Thursday morning indicates that 35 percent of the public gives the president a thumbs up on how he’s dealing with the situation between Israel and the Palestinians, with 44 percent saying they disapprove, and just over one in five unsure.

This stands in contrast with how Americans feel about Obama’s overall handling of foreign policy, with 48 percent approving and 42 percent saying they disapprove.

According to the poll, two-thirds of Jewish voters disapprove of how the president’s handling Israeli-Palestinian relations, with 28 percent saying they approve. Jewish voters were big backers of Obama in the 2008 presidential election, with exit polls indicating that nearly eight of ten backed the Democratic candidate.

Two-thirds of people questioned in the survey say that the president should be a strong supporter of Israel but, by a 42 percent to 34 percent margin, voters say Obama’s not a strong supporter of Israel.

and others thought to be unquestioningly loyal:

Today NY Senator Chuck Schumer broke that silence. Well…sort of. He did speak out against the Obama policy but he did it on a radio show with a very tiny audience of mostly Orthodox Jews. In other words he whispered his displeasure to the people most likely to accept his message. Not much, but it is a start, now lets see him say the same thing on CNN or Fox News.

No wonder President Obama is pushing back:

Obama’s letter came in response to concerns voiced by Jewish leaders over Washington’s policies towards Israel. Recent times have seen increased behind-the-scenes activity by Jewish organizations aimed at curbing the trend.

“Since we have known each other for a long time,” Obama wrote, “I am sure you can distinguish between the noise and distortion about my views that have appeared recently, and the actual approach of my administration toward the Middle East.”

But why does the media (in this case specifically the LA Times) continue to protect him? (via instapundit)

Given the extraordinary sudden turnabout in US policy toward Israel under the Obama Administration, I have become obsessed by the repressed 2003 videotape of Rashid Khalidi and Barack Obama. That tape — or so we are told — is ensconced in a safe at the Los Angeles Times building. In the current situation, its release by the paper is more important and newsworthy than ever.

The Khalidi tape could be of tremendous significance in revealing the provenance of Obama’s views on the Middle East and the degree to which the public was misled on those views during the presidential campaign.

Yes that might have shed some light. It’s too late to affect 2008.

Imagine if a Republican had blurted out “macaca” or displayed a disturbing nostalgia for segregation. Oh they did.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

As for myself, I receive e-mails saying that Obama, that klutz, asked Binyamin Netanyahu whether Jews could alter the age-old prayer about returning to Jerusalem and substitute the word Israel. And I am told — and told and told — that Obama snubbed Netanyahu by interrupting a meeting so he could have dinner with his family. It would have been nice, not to mention diplomatic, to ask the leader of Israel to join him at the table. Netanyahu cooled his heels.

Never mind that none of this happened. There was no snub, say the most informed of informed sources, and the business about the prayer and Jerusalem is a sheer fabrication. (If I am wrong, may my right hand lose its cunning.) As for U.S.-Israel policy, it has not significantly changed. In fact, Israelis and others say that when it comes to military aid and intelligence operations, the two countries have never been closer. As an example, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz tell us that three American-made Hercules transport aircraft are in the pipeline to Israel.

Of course anyone with a modicum of common sense realized that the “Next Year in Jerusalem” story was a joke not a vicious rumor. Like most jokes it was based on a perception. In this case it is that a President who makes a big deal out of bureaucratic snafu, really does object to the Israeli presence in Jerusalem.

But if, according to Cohen, there’s no problem, what gives?

So why all this angst? One explanation is that Obama has found Netanyahu as slippery and untrustworthy as Bill Clinton once did — and Clinton’s affection for Israel was manifest. It’s not for nothing that Middle East observers are once again drawing attention to a cover story on Netanyahu that ran in the Economist back in 1997: “Israel’s Serial Bungler,” it proclaimed. Except for the date, no one in Washington would change a thing.

But it takes two to tango, and in this case, Obama does not dance like a star. He gives every appearance of not “getting” Israel; not appreciating its fears or its history. Israel is not half of the equation, as if both sides are right. It is a democracy with American values that has tried, over and over again, to make peace with a recalcitrant and unforgiving enemy. It is this, the music and not the words, that explains Koch and Wiesel and Lauder, not to mention the e-mailers, anonymous and otherwise, who seem to believe anything bad about Obama. It is downright disturbing that in a recent poll published in Haaretz, about 27 percent of Israelis said they think Obama is an anti-Semite.

There is something incredibly patronizing about this. For one thing, Koch (not to mention Alan Dershowitz, who lately has been criticizing President Obama’s Middle East policy) very publicly supported candidate Obama and his friendship to Israel. Given Obama’s record (friendship with Rashid Khalidi, membership in Rev. Wright’s church), Koch’s support seemed to be counterintuitive.

Still it’s not that President Obama doesn’t “get” Israel. He is not sympathetic to it in the least.

Like those legions who are willing to believe anything bad about Netanyahu, Cohen instinctively blames the Israeli leader. But as Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg recalls:

What he said was said in February of 2008 in a meeting with a hundred Cleveland Jewish leaders. Here are his words: “I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says: unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, that you are anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress … because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation.”

Let’s see, candidate Obama claims that he opposes the policies of the Likud and when he becomes President he enters into a contentious relationship with the leader of Israel, who is from Likud. Is that a surprise?

I think that Rabbi Wolhberg was too generous in his subsequent assessment of Obama. Claiming that one is not anti-Israel but anti-Likud is a regularly claimed excuse by people who are, in fact, anti-Israel. But even the Likud that they supposedly oppose has long since ceased to exist, largely due to Binyamin Netanyahu in his first term. Charles Krauthammer wrote in 1998:

LAST week at the National Press Club, Albright gave a hastily arranged speech to explain her position. Its essential, tendentious theme was that all of the problems in the peace process are traceable to Netanyahu. Everything has gone to pieces, she averred, “in just two years.” You don’t need to be a CIA codebreaker to understand what that means: Netanyahu was elected prime minister two years ago this month.

The historic Hebron withdrawal, in which Netanyahu single-handedly brought Likud and the Israeli Right into the land-for-peace Oslo process, received nary a word. That’s because the only praise offered in her speech was reserved for Arafat.

Albright credits him for making “substantial changes in {his} negotiating position.” He had wanted a 30 percent Israeli withdrawal but was willing to accept 13.1.

How generous.

(emphasis mine)

A large part of blaming Netanyahu for the failure of the peace process in the late 90′s necessarily meant whitewashing Arafat’s serial perfidies.

So what does Cohen recommend? The same silliness that Brzezinski and Solarz did earlier this month.

Obama has the right policy — the only policy that makes sense — and Netanyahu is a weak prime minister who heads a shaky coalition. What’s missing on Obama’s part is not necessarily good intentions but the perception of them. He ought to do what Egyptian President Anwar Sadat did in 1977 to assure Israelis of his sincerity. Go to Jerusalem.

Never mind that President Obama does not have the right policy or that Netanyahu’s coalition isn’t as shaky as Cohen wishfully thinks, why in the world would Obama going to Jerusalem convince Israel of his sincerity or, somehow, demonstrate his goodwill towards Israel? It looks increasingly clear that President Obama doesn’t see threats from extreme Islam.

Besides Israel shouldn’t have to make peace with President Obama or the United States. And given his record, it’s hard to see how a symbolic visit will show that the President “gets” Israel.

In any case that’s not the issue. The issue is how the Arab world will make peace with Israel. Currently, there is no Arab leader willing to follow in Sadat’s footsteps. You could have a dovish Israeli Prime Minister (and since Oslo, a few have filled the bill) and you still wouldn’t have peace. Note that in 2000 and 2008, the two Ehud’s offered first Arafat and then Abbas close to what everyone knows is necessary for peace. Neither even got a counter offer. So even as Cohen tries to blame the distance (which he says doesn’t exist) between Washington and Israel on PM Netanyahu, recent history says otherwise.

What Israel needs is the equivalent of Sadat visiting Jerusalem, an unequivocal action by one or more of its enemies that the vicious hatred is a thing of the past. No matter how hard Obama pushes Israel that’s not happening any time soon. In fact, the more the President presses Israel, the further back he pushes any hope of peace.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Over the course of the article Dr. Freedman covers much important territory; unfortunately he also lets his prejudices get in the way of drawing proper conclusions.

For example in explaining the views of the Obama administration, Dr. Freedman writes:

The operative assumption of the Obama administration appeared to be that if you met your opponent halfway, he would reciprocate. While such an assumption appeared to be dangerously naive to many critics of Mr. Obama, including those in Israel, the administration held fast to this policy during its first year. A second aspect of the administration’s approach involved outreach to the Muslim world. In speeches in both Turkey and Egypt, Mr. Obama sought to portray the U.S. as a friend of the Muslim world, despite the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A third aspect of the new policy was a cooling of ties with Israel, after the warm, if not cozy, relationship of the Bush years. Mr. Obama appeared to feel that such a cooling would help the U.S. appear more even-handed in the Arab-Israeli conflict and thus facilitate peacemaking efforts to solve the conflict.

Why is perceiving the naivete of the administration attributed only to the President’s critics? The results of the first year of his outreach showed that he was rebuffed by much of the Muslim world. For example, Saudi Arabia refused to offer any sort of compromise regarding its dealings with Israel.

In the next paragraph, Dr. Freedman wrote:

Early in his administration, Mr. Obama called for a halt in settlement construction, including in Jerusalem, despite the understanding reached by Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon in April 2004. In addition, despite trips to Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Mr. Obama failed to visit Israel, despite being urged to do so by a number of American Jewish organizations, including those affiliated with the liberal “J-Street” movement. Reinforcing the chill in relations was the fact that while Mr. Obama was a left-of-center liberal, Mr. Netanyahu was a right-of-center conservative. Gone were the days when the conservatives Mr. Bush and Mr. Sharon could easily relate because they saw the world in the same focus. Indeed, in the very first public meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu in May 2009, the tension between the two leaders was clearly visible in their “body language” as they issued statements following the meeting.

The sentence which begins “[R]einforcing the chill” attributes a factor in the current chills between the United States to differing political orientations. This isn’t entirely unfair. Yet elsewhere in both these paragraphs Dr. Freedman correctly notes that President Obama purposely distanced himself from Israel and refused advice to visit Israel. Under President Obama there clearly would have been a conflict between the U.S. and Israel even if Tzippi Livni or Ehud Barak had been Prime Minister.

In explaining the political realities of Israel, Dr. Freedman wrote:

The Israeli elections of 2009 reflected a clear move to the right by the Israeli body politic. Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party jumped from 12 to 27 seats and the right-of-center Yisrael Beiteinu Party of Avigdor Lieberman rose from 11 to 15 seats. At the same time, the left-wing Meretz Party dropped from five to three seats and the left-of-center Labor Party fell from 19 to 13 seats. Explaining the shift to the right, one factor is clear — the policy of unilateral withdrawals in an effort to win peace had not worked.

Although Ehud Barak had unilaterally withdrawn from Southern Lebanon in 2000, instead of attaining peace with Lebanon, Israel had to endure repeated rocket attacks leading up to a major war with Hezbollah in 2006, which the centrist Kadima Party did not wage effectively. Similarly, Israel’s withdrawal of both settlements and military bases from Gaza in 2005, instead of facilitating the peace process, brought increased rocket fire from Gaza, which Hamas had seized in 2007, leading to a major Israeli invasion of Gaza in December 2008 (Operation Cast Lead).

Given these events, the majority of Israelis were not only wary of any further withdrawals, which, as Mr. Netanyahu pointed out in the campaign, would bring Tel Aviv and Ben-Gurion Airport into rocket range, but were also highly suspicious of the Palestinians, whose Hamas-Fatah split made any final Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement a far-off possibility, at best. Making matters worse was a general feeling that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was well-meaning but weak, and that his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, was honest but without a political base.

First of all, as I’ve pointed out many times, Israel’s “move to the right” still meant that the Israeli government would be closer in its views to Peace Now of twenty years ago than the Likud of twenty years ago. PM Netanyahu, himself, withdrew Israel from most of Chevron during his first term as Prime Minister.

But by explaining very well why Israelis would be skeptical of further withdrawals and concessions, Dr. Freedman undermines his labeling. The results of the 2009 Israeli election were the rational reation to previous failed policies; not an ideological move. Barry Rubin, in fact, described the results of election as representing a new consensus in Israel. President Obama’s problems with Israel are the result of his ideological orientation and his rejection of the views of a majority of Israelis, not the ideology of his counterpart, PM Netanyahu.

Further on, Dr. Freedman writes:

There were several aspects of the crisis. First, after a great deal of effort, the U.S. had gotten P.A. leader Mr. Abbas to agree to resume peace talks with Israel, albeit at the low level of indirect or proximity talks under which the U.S. Middle East Special Envoy George Mitchell would shuttle between the two sides. Mr. Biden’s trip to Israel was aimed, in part, to add the U.S. imprimatur to the start of the talks that had been endorsed by the Arab league, thus giving Mr. Abbas a modicum of legitimization.

So why did Abbas stop talking to Israel? Dr. Freedman never explains. Abbas had been offered quite a bit by outgoing PM Olmert in late 2008 and he rejected the offer. Note in this interview, the language that supposed “moderate” Saeb Erekat uses to describe the PA’s rejection of Olmert’s offer. It’s not very moderate. But what’s clear is that President Obama wasn’t trying to solve the problem of Israeli intransigence here, he was pressuring Israel to make concessions to overcome Palestinians intransigence.

However, as the date of Mr. Biden’s visit to Israel approached, the situation in East Jerusalem had become more explosive. The Israeli government, either with Mr. Netanyahu’s active support, or with his toleration, had begun to accelerate the construction of Jewish housing in Arab-populated neighborhoods of East Jerusalem such as Silwan and Sheikkh Jarrah, while destroying Arab-owned housing in these neighborhoods and elsewhere in East Jerusalem, because they had been “illegally” constructed; that is, built without the municipal permit that, under an Israeli “catch-22” policy, is almost impossible for East Jerusalem Arabs to obtain. This had inflamed Arab opinion.

In addition, the Israeli government in February had added both the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb (a Jewish enclave in Arab Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, surrounded by high walls and watchtowers) to the list of Jewish heritage sites across Israel and the West Bank that have been slated for millions of dollars of renovation work. The Palestinians had seen these actions as further attempts by Israel to unilaterally extend its control over areas that they want for their future Palestinian state. For the Palestinians, control over Arab East Jerusalem is seen as vital because, for both political and religious reasons, they want it as the capital of their long hoped for Palestinian state and, with the Jewish construction in Arab East Jerusalem, it appeared that this hope was rapidly slipping away.

By mentioning the controversy over Sheikh Jarrah, Dr. Freedman implicitly shows that the problem isn’t PM Netanyahu’s ideology. What happened there was supported by Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barakat, no right winger.

And his description of Rachel’s tomb is accurate, but he fails to acknowledge why these fortifications are necessary. They were necessary because Rachel’s tomb was attacked during the Arafat led “Aqsa intifada” ealier this decade.

Apparently the Arab desecration of Jewish holy sites isn’t something that bothers Dr. Freedman too much.

Freedman concludes:

However, whether that type of close coordination is still possible is now questionable. Indeed, whether Mr. Netanyahu can regain Mr. Obama’s trust without a major gesture to the Palestinians that would facilitate the resumption of negotiations is highly doubtful.

As Mr. Obama stated in an MSNBC March 30 interview, Mr. Netanyahu will have to “take some bold steps” to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Whether Mr. Netanyahu is prepared to do so — thereby preserving Israel’s close tie to the U.S. — remains to be seen.

Over the course of his essay, explicitly and implicitly, Dr. Freedman showed the intransigence of the Palestinians and the ideological change represented by President Obama. Yet his conclusion is only that PM Netanyahu must change to regain President Obama’s trust. It’s an astounding conclusion. It disregards one of the effects of the President Obama’s Middle East policy so far. Barry Rubin describes it:

Of course, the U.S. criticism of Israel and the crisis following the announcement of some future Jerusalem construction have been the main news. But that’s because the Obama Administration is ready (sometimes it seems, eager) to criticize Israel but did ot ever criticize the PA during its own fifteen months in office. This last point–which I have repeatedly pointed out–has become so embarassingly obvious that finally the State Department made a small peep. [See note at end of article.]

So it is easy to miss the fact that by their behavior the Palestinian leadership has lost any possible material gain from the administration’s attitude.

Seeing how eager the Obama administration is to please them, the Palestinians now see no reason to compromise, but rather wait for American pressure to change or undermine Israel’s position. The Obama administration’s strategy of only pressuring Netanyahu has backfired.

Now I’m a right winger, so I realize that my view of President Obama is negative. But it appears that even some of those liberals who support Israel and assured us that Barack Obama was pro-Israel are now regretting that. JoshuaPundit notes that Ed Koch has reversed himself.

Another Obama supporter, Prof. Alan Dershowitz also has criticized the President’s treatment of Israel. He goes a step further. He shows that it is President Obama who has kept the controversy alive; contradicting the unsupported assertion of Prof. Freedman that Netanyahu needs to take “bold steps” to restore the relationship between the United States and Israel.

The conflict was largely contrived by people with agendas. The initial impetus for the brouhaha was an ill-timed announcement that permits had been issued for building 1,600 additional residences in a part of Jerusalem that had been captured by Israel in the 1967 war. The Netanyahu government had been praised by President Obama for agreeing to a freeze on building permits on the West Bank, despite the fact that the freeze did not extend to any part of Jerusalem. Thus the announcement of new building permits did not violate any agreement by Israel. Nonetheless, the timing of the announcement embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden who was in Israel at the time. The timing was neither an accident nor was it purposely done by Prime Minister Netanyahu to embarrass Biden. Many believe that the announcement was purposely timed by opponents of the peace process in order to embarrass Netanyahu. Whatever the motivation, the announcement deserved a rebuke from Vice President Biden. It also warranted an apology and explanation from the Israeli government, which immediately came from Netanyahu. That should have ended the contretemps. But some in the Obama Administration apparently decided that they too had an agenda beyond responding to the ill-timed announcement, and they decided to take advantage of Israel’s gaff. They began to pile on and on and on. Instead of it being a one day story, the controversy continues to escalate and harden positions on all sides to this day and perhaps beyond. The real victim is the peace process and the winners are those–like Iran, Hamas and extremist Israelis–who oppose the two-state solution.

The building permits themselves were for residences not in East Jerusalem, but rather in North Jerusalem, and not in an Arab section, but rather in an entirely Jewish neighborhood. This neighborhood, Ramat Shlomo, is part of the area that everybody acknowledges should and will remain part of Israel even if an agreement for a two state solution and the division of Jerusalem is eventually reached. In that respect, it is much like the ancient Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, which was illegally captured from the Jewish residents by the Jordanian army in the 1948 war. The Jordanians then desecrated Jewish holy places during its illegal occupation, and the Israelis legally recaptured it during the defensive war of 1967. No one in their right mind believes that Israel has any obligation to give up the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the holiest Jewish site in the world, despite the fact that it was recaptured during the 1967 war.

Because the Palestinians understand and acknowledge that these entirely Jewish areas of Jerusalem will remain part of the Jewish state even after an agreement, the ill-timed announcement of building permits during the Biden visit generated a relatively mild and routine complaint, rather than a bellicose response, from the Palestinian Authority leadership. The bellicose response came from the American leadership, which refused to let the issue go. Once this piling on occurred, the Palestinian leadership had no choice but to join the chorus of condemnation, lest they be perceived as being less Palestinian than the Obama Administration.

There’s one more point that Dershowitz addresses that deserves further scrutiny.

The shabby treatment accorded Israel’s duly elected leader has also stimulated an ugly campaign by some of Israel’s enemies to delegitimize the US-Israeli strategic relationship, and indeed the Jewish nation itself, in the eyes of American voters. The newest, and most dangerous, argument being offered by those who seek to damage the US-Israel alliance is that Israeli actions, such as issuing building permits in Jerusalem, endanger the lives of American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This phony argument–originally attributed to Vice President Biden and General David Petraeus but categorically denied by both of them–has now taken on a life of its own in the media. A CNN headline on the Rick Sanchez Show blared “Israel a danger to US Troops.” Other headlines conveyed a similar message: “US Tells Israel: ‘You’re undermining America, endangering troops.’” Variations on this dangerous and false argument have been picked up by commentators such as Joe Klein in Time Magazine, Roger Cohen in The New York Times, DeWayne Wickham in USA Today and not surprisingly, Patrick Buchanan and Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer.

When the first phony story appeared that Gen. Petraeus claimed that Israeli policies were endangering American troops it got a lot of play. I suspect that the source for the story was someone from the administration. I can’t prove that. However, had the President, Vice-President or other senior official come out and forcefully denied the story, it would have ended the matter. (Gen. Petraeus did once he arrived stateside, but was in no position to contradict the story eariler.) Clearly it was to the administration’s (perceived) advantage to have Israel portrayed as a liability.

The Obama administration clearly has no intention of playing nicely with the Netanyahu government. Dr. Freedman may think that things would be different with a different Israeli leader or if Netanyahu gives in to the pressure. Given the administration’s record so far there is little evidence that this is so. By singling out Netanyahu as mostly resposible for the problem’s an American-Israeli relations Dr. Freedman demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the political dynamics of the Middle East. Blaming Bibi is the intelectually lazy approach to Middle East analysis.

Crossposted on Yourish.

In retrospect, it seems clear that the step-by-step approach was a mistake: Constructive ambiguity, in this case, proved destructive. It allowed the Israeli right wing to perpetuate the idea that it could have it all — obtain a peace deal without making concessions on Jerusalem. And it allowed Netanyahu to continue his straddle.

Jerusalem is the hardest issue of all in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiation, and for that reason, would-be peacemakers have wanted to save it for last. But this month’s crisis makes that strategic waffling impossible. Thanks to the Israeli right, the Jerusalem issue is joined.

What’s needed now is for Obama to announce that when negotiations begin, the United States will state its views about Jerusalem and other key issues — sketching the outlines of the deal that most Israelis and Palestinians want. If Netanyahu refuses to play, then we have a real crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations.

At the time Barry Rubin observed:

Has anyone else noticed that David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist who always tries to echo what he’s hearing from his administration contacts, has just called for an imposed settlement on Israel and the Palestinians?

On a hopeful note Meryl wrote yesterday:

I think that given the pushback of the last few weeks, the Obama administration will not be publicly calling out Netanyahu. It’s all going to be behind the scenes now. And I don’t think Obama is going to succeed in getting Israel to stop building apartments in Ramat Shlomo. Nor do I think that Israel will be agreeing to final status issues up front.

Obama may want to count an Israel-Palestinian peace deal among the accomplishments of his administration, but I don’t think he can bully Israel into it. He has far too much trouble right here at home right now. The Tea Party movement is more popular than the president.

However, Ignatius has weighed in again. It would appear that the administration remains undaunted.

Obama’s embrace of a peace plan would reverse the administration’s initial strategy, which was to try to coax concessions from the Israelis and Palestinians, with the United States offering “bridging proposals” later. This step-by-step process was favored by George Mitchell, the president’s special representative for the Middle East, who believed a similar approach had laid the groundwork for his breakthrough in Northern Ireland peace talks.

The fact that Obama is weighing the peace plan marks his growing confidence in Jones, who has been considering this approach for the past year. But the real strategist in chief is Obama himself. If he decides to launch a peace plan, it would mark a return to the ambitious themes the president sounded in his June 2009 speech in Cairo.

A political battle royal is likely to begin soon, with Israeli officials and their supporters in the United States protesting what they fear would be an American attempt to impose a settlement and arguing to focus instead on Iran. The White House rejoinder is expressed this way by one of the senior officials: “It’s not either Iran or the Middle East peace process. You have to do both.”

Taken together with the smearing of Dennis Ross, the suggestions that supporters of Israel are not loyal to the United States and that Israel is somehow a strategic liability for the United States – all seemingly coming from the administration, it appears that President Obama having successfully railroaded a healthcare plan through congress, is spoiling to do something similar in the Middle East. In the meantime Iran, no doubt, continues to be emboldened.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Jackson Diehl, not someone I consider to be pro-Israel, nonetheless acknowledges what the administration is doing:

U.S. pressure on Netanyahu will be needed if the peace process ever reaches the point where the genuinely contentious issues, like Palestinian refugees or the exact territorial tradeoffs, are on the table. But instead of waiting for that moment and pushing Netanyahu on a point where he might be vulnerable to domestic challenge, Obama picked a fight over something that virtually all Israelis agree on, and before serious discussions have even begun. As the veteran Middle East analyst Robert Malley put it to The Post’s Glenn Kessler, “U.S. pressure can work, but it needs to be at the right time, on the right issue and in the right political context. The administration is ready for a fight, but it realized the issue, timing and context were wrong.”

A new administration can be excused for making such a mistake in the treacherous and complex theater of Middle East diplomacy. That’s why Obama was given a pass by many when he made exactly the same mistake last year. The second time around, the president doesn’t look naive. He appears ideological — and vindictive.

The consequences as Victor Davis Hansons puts it are:

So we are watching unfold a sort of Chicago-style Realpolitik, flavored with the traditional academic leftist disdain for the Jewish state. The subsequent result is not so much a cut-off of U.S. aid as a subtle shift in perception abroad: Israel’s multiple enemies now are almost giddy in sensing that America is not all that into protecting the Jewish state, intellectually or morally. And given the nature of the UN, given the power of oil, given endemic anti-Semitism, given the collapse of classical liberal thought in Europe (e.g., Britain was far more deferential to Libya in repatriating a supposedly “terminally ill” mass murderer to Tripoli than it is currently with Israel), and given the realpolitik amorality of Russian and Chinese foreign policy, the world as a whole can now far more easily step up its own natural pressure on Israel, at just the moment when it increasingly has no margin of error with a soon-to-be nuclear Iran.

The consequences of President Obama’s pique is that he makes Israel’s enemies confident and thus less willing to come to terms with Israel, undermining his own efforts to get even a show conference going.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.