(Aluf Benn-Haaretz).The following joke is making the rounds in the Prime Minister's Bureau these days: What do Americans do when something breaks down in their home - when the sink is blocked up, the toilet overflows, a fuse burns out? Simple: They ask Barack Obama to give a speech and the problem is solved.
Half a year after Obama took office as president, and three and a half months after Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister, Israel-U.S. relations are at a low point. From Israel's perspective, Obama looks like a weak leader afraid of engaging the ruffians from North Korea and Iran, and trying to cover up his weakness with highfalutin speeches and unfair pressure on Israel. From across the Atlantic, by contrast, Netanyahu looks like a peace rejectionist who is trying to cover up his extremism with nonbinding declarations and by meddling in American politics.
Netanyahu is convinced that Obama deliberately wanted to engage him in a confrontation in order to placate the Arab world by demonstrating a somewhat distant attitude toward Israel. As the prime minister sees it, the president's Jewish advisers, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, incited Obama against him and are trying to promote Jewish left-wing organizations in America.
wo months after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting in Washington, in which the president presented the prime minister with the demand for a settlement freeze, there are increasing signs that the administration is curbing its pressure campaign against Netanyahu. Although Obama has not backtracked, he has agreed to make the settlements issue part of a broad diplomatic package.
The reports that emerged from Obama's meeting with America's Jewish leaders did not refer to even a single good word said by the president about the prime minister. Not even praise for Netanyahu's speech at Bar-Ilan University. Obama distinguishes between Israel and its prime minister.
till, Obama seems to have gone too far in his demand for a total settlement freeze, and he will have to swallow at least some of his pride. The moment America declared Israel's security a sacrosanct value, Netanyahu knew he would not face a threat of delays in the supply of spare parts for the air force, a tactic the previous administration resorted to, along with demanding the dismissal of top defense officials, when it wanted to punish Israel for selling arms to China. Netanyahu was also proven right in his belief that the Saudis would not come up with any generous gestures and that the Palestinians' refusal to renew the negotiations would play into his hands. There is nothing like Arab rejectionism to take the heat off Israel.
Obama made a mistake in ignoring Israeli public opinion. In so doing, he allowed Netanyahu to cobble together a political consensus against a settlement freeze, and to portray him as an unfriendly president who is toadying to the Arabs.
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