Israeli Unassailable Might and Unyielding Angst: NY Times
By ROGER COHEN, Published: April 22, 2010
JERUSALEM — For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his people are not traumatized by some wild delusion. No, there are facts: the rise of Iran, the fierce projection of Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and the rockets that have been fired by them.
Netanyahu is firm in his core self-image as the guarantor of threatened Israeli security. Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza, led only, in his view, to the insecurity of life beneath a rocket threat.
The question he poses himself, contemplating the West Bank, is how to stop this happening a third time.
To enter Israel is to pass through a hall of mirrors. A nation exerting complete military dominance in the West Bank becomes one that, under an almost unimaginable peace accord, might be menaced from there.
A nation whose army and arsenal are without rival in the Middle East becomes one facing daily existential threat. A nation whose power has grown steadily over decades relative to its scattered enemies becomes one whose future is somehow less secure than ever.
It’s not easy to parse fact from fiction, justifiable anxiety from self-serving angst, in this pervasive Israeli narrative. I arrived on Independence Day, the nation’s 62nd birthday. Blue and white flags fluttered from cars on the superhighways. A million festive picnickers were out. “If a war takes place, we will win,” the chief of the Israel Defense Forces assured them. Did annihilation anguish really spice the barbecue?
I guess so. The threat has morphed since 1948 — from Arab armies to Palestinian militants to Islamic jihadists — but not the Israeli condition. The nation “wallows in a sense of existential threat that has only grown with time,” the daily Haaretz commented. Netanyahu, in a 20-minute interview, told me of “the physical and psychological reality” of a nation whose experience is that “concessions lead to insecurity.”
Part of the insecurity right now stems from the troubles with Israel’s ultimate guarantor, the United States. President Obama, for all his assurances about unbending American commitment, has left Israelis with a feeling of alienation, a sense he does not understand or care enough. Has he not visited two nearby Muslim states — Turkey and Egypt — while snubbing Israel?
I think what is really bothering Israelis, the root of the troubles, is that Obama is not buying the discourse, the narrative.
Instead of standing shoulder-to-shoulder with little Israel against the jihadists, he’s talking of how a festering Middle East conflict ends up “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.” Instead of Iran, Iran, Iran — the refrain here — he’s saying Iran, yes, but not at the expense of Palestine. Instead of Israeli security alone, he’s talking of “the vital national security interests of the United States” and their link to Israeli actions.
This amounts to a sea change. I don’t know if it will box Israel into a defensive corner or open new avenues, but I do know an uncritical U.S. embrace of Israel has led nowhere. For now, Israeli irritation is clear.
Before meeting Netanyahu, I spoke with Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. “We are the ones suffering most in terms of blood and treasure,” he told me, reprising the Obama line. “This is the difference, we are the ones that have to live through an agreement and survive afterward. Of course we want peace but not at the price of our existence.”
He dismissed as “totally false” the notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict feeds an environment inimical to U.S. interests. On the contrary, he said, “We pay the price for defending U.S. values in this area.”
For Ayalon, the proximity talks with the Palestinians that the Obama administration is struggling to revive are a “waste of time” and should be replaced by direct talks without preconditions. As for Obama’s demands, believed to include a complete Israeli building freeze in Jerusalem, Ayalon said, “Any demand without a quid pro quo is a mistake. Why should the Palestinians negotiate if others negotiate for them?”
So here we are, 62 years on, negotiating about negotiations whose prospects of leading anywhere seem fantastically remote. I think Ayalon’s right about getting to the table, but peace involves embracing risk over fear, no getting around that, and with the Iranian nuclear program rumbling, Israelis look more risk-averse than I’ve ever seen them. Life’s not bad in affluent, barrier-bordered Israel even if threats loom.
The prime minister insists that he is ready to move forward, that he will not use the Iran threat as a delaying tactic, and that he and Obama respect each other’s intelligence.
What is imperative for him right now is that the United States and Israel talk to each other.
But about what exactly? The trauma of 9/11 bound the Israeli and American narratives. They have now begun to diverge with putative Palestine hanging in limbo between them.
Netanyahu amenable to Palestinian state within temporary borders: Haaretz
By Aluf Benn
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is amenable to an interim agreement in the West Bank that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders.
Netanyahu considers such an interim step a possible way to unfreeze the stalled political process that was created because of the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to resume talks on a final settlement. However, the prime minister insists on delaying discussion on the final status of Jerusalem to the end of the process, and refuses to agree to a freeze on Jewish construction in East Jerusalem.
Netanyahu and his aides have held intensive contacts in recent days with representatives of the U.S. administration in an effort to contain the crisis in the relations between the two countries.
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The prime minister will meet Friday with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who is visiting Jerusalem, and will continue talks that senior Israeli officials held with White House official Dan Shapiro. Mitchell met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak earlier Friday, and was to head to Ramallah later in the day for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
There have been signals from the White House in recent days of a willingness to see an improvement in relations with Netanyahu. The signals included appeasing messages highlighting U.S. commitment to Israel’s security, and peaked with President Barack Obama’s Independence Day greeting. Senior aides to the president, including his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and National Security Adviser, General James Jones, also publicly expressed their support of the strong ties between the two countries.
Both public and private pronouncements of senior figures in the U.S. and Israel suggest that the formula for bringing an end to the crisis comprises a number of elements: advancing an interim stage and a Palestinian state within temporary borders; delaying the discussion on Jerusalem, with an Israeli commitment to avoid provocations; identifying the areas in which Netanyahu and Obama differ, with construction in East Jerusalem topping the list; and a certain American toughening of its attitude toward Iran and Syria.
General Jones said on Wednesday in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a well known pro-Israeli forum, that the differences between Israel and the U.S. will be resolved as allies do. Jones called on both sides, Israel and the Palestinians, to avoid provocations such as Israeli activity in East Jerusalem and Palestinian incitement.
The formula of a Palestinian state within temporary borders was included in the second stage of the road map of 2003, but the Palestinians, and Mahmoud Abbas at their head, opposed it then and oppose it now, considering it a recipe for keeping Israeli occupation of the territories in place.
Three Israeli politicians – Defense Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres and MK Shaul Mofaz of Kadima – tried to advance the idea of a Palestinian state within temporary borders during the past year, as a reasonable recipe for breaking out of the current political stalemate that was created since elections in Israel. Netanyahu is now leading toward their view, after losing hope of moving toward a permanent settlement with Abbas.
If this initiative progresses, it is expected to result in objections from the parties on the right, who oppose any concession to the Palestinians. Establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank, or even a partial framework with temporary borders, will require Israel to withdraw from more territory and perhaps even evacuate settlements. But if the Palestinians reject the idea – as is expected – Netanyahu will be able to claim that they are once more missing an opportunity for a settlement by being stubborn and rejectionist.
In an interview to Udi Segal and Yonit Levy on Channel 2 Thursday, Netanyahu said “there will be no freeze in Jerusalem.” He said that “the peace process depends on one thing: removing preconditions to negotiations.”
Netanyahu warned that if Israel withdraws from Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem, “Iran will be able to enter there,” as it did in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, “but this will be as part of a final settlement. Meanwhile they tell me that I cannot build and plan on French Hill.”
Netanyahu said that in his talks with Obama, “I tell him I can go with you on this – willing and able – but there are things I am not willing and do not do.”
He called on the U.S. not to wait for the UN Security Council and impose severe sanctions against Iran on its own. “We prefer that the U.S. lead the confrontation with Iran,” Netanyahu said, “but Israel always reserves the right to self-defense.”