Thursday, March 19, 2015
After Netanyahu win, Obama takes off the gloves
March 19, 2015, 2:26 pm
5
WASHINGTON — The Obama
administration woke up Wednesday morning to a sobering new reality on
the ground in Jerusalem – instead of a weakened or rejected Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Washington will now face the return of
“King Bibi.” The White House has to come to terms with a Netanyahu who,
defying the predictions, has been shored up by a strong mandate for his
rightward-turning campaign.
In
the final days before the election, the Obama administration was on
good behavior – both the State Department and the White House barely
responded to campaign statements by Netanyahu that walked back his
previous comments in support of a two-state agreement. They also abided
not-very-veiled accusations of US meddling in an effort to undermine
Netanyahu’s candidacy. But on Wednesday, the gloves came off.
In a set of coordinated messages,
the White House and State Department launched their first barrage,
mostly focusing on Netanyahu’s comments apparently repudiating his 2009
statements in support of a two-state solution.
The coming weeks will be critical for the
short-term future of the relationship, at least until 2017. It seems
that the Obama administration is waiting to see if Netanyahu’s campaign
rhetoric will be backed up by a rightist coalition – but in the meantime
has few reservations about giving an already teetering relationship a
rope with which to hang itself.
The morning after the elections found
US-Israel relations more shaky than ever before. The State Department
made a few things clear. US Secretary of State John Kerry’s call to
congratulate Netanyahu was perfunctory and chilly. The two did not talk
policy at all, said spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
In fact, the message that Washington is
conveying is that everything other than the most routine cooperation –
security, intelligence, and military – is open to question.
The administration broadcast loud and clear
that it views a departure from two-state solution orthodoxy as a breach
of a longstanding international consensus about the ultimate solution to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If post-elections Netanyahu puts his
policy where his mouth is and continues to deny a path
toward Palestinian statehood, Washington is signaling that things will
get ugly. Uglier, that is.
Administration officials have already
emphasized that the US will be reevaluating its approach based on
Netanyahu’s comments; they have laid down a definitive framework going
forward, instead alluding to two likely scenarios.
Carefully planted rumors have been circulating
around Washington for weeks that the White House and Foggy Bottom are
considering presenting a new peace plan, one that bypasses direct
negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and attempts
to impose a reality on the ground. The US – if it wants to play rough –
certainly has the leverage to try and strong-arm Israel into an
agreement, using critical defense allocations as carrot or stick.
During last summer’s war in Gaza and
immediately afterward, Israel got a taste of what it would feel like if
military equipment transfers were slowed – not even halted – and the
threat of a slackening of military aid is a palpable one.
The pre-elections appointment of Robert Malley
as the White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and
the Gulf region puts the right person in the right position to play bad
cop. Malley has been the focus of criticism in the past, removed from
Obama’s 2008 campaign team because of contacts with Hamas and seen as a
Washington insider who is comfortable taking a critical approach to
Israel’s policies.
The second option – this is the one the
administration has been publicly hinting at in the aftermath of the
elections – is a reduction of US support for Israel in the United
Nations and its affiliated institutions.
Psaki said that the US was still “not going to
get ahead of any decisions about what the United States would do with
regard to potential action at the UN Security Council,” a marked
departure from earlier American commitments to veto any attempt at a
unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence.
Asked repeatedly about whether the US would
maintain its veto policy, Psaki said simply that “the prime minister’s
recent statements call into question his commitment to a two-state
solution…but that doesn’t mean that we’ve made a decision about changing
our position with respect to the UN.” The statement in itself – a
refusal to commit to a veto – is itself a changed position.
Later Wednesday, The New York Times quoted several administration officials
as saying that the US could endorse a United Nations Security Council
resolution setting down terms for the formation of a Palestinian state
based on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed land swaps.
Netanyahu’s comments were enough in Washington
to strengthen the voices of critics who suggest that he has been
negotiating in bad faith the whole time. Rather than simply writing off
Netanyahu’s opposition to a two-state solution as campaign rhetoric, the
State Department says that “obviously the prime minister’s position has
changed.” At the same time, the administration is still in warning
phase – waiting to see what comes next.
The administration says that it has not yet
discussed the implications of the Israeli election with the Palestinian
Authority, meaning that there are still options open and that the US has
not yet committed to support Palestinian initiatives in the
international community.
Any action by Netanyahu that is seen to
further the ideological turn conveyed in his campaign rhetoric will
likely trigger the onset of steps by the US that go beyond the warning.
What is not yet clear is if Netanyahu simply does nothing – does not,
say, initiate a building project in East Jerusalem but also doesn’t
express any real interest in returning to talks with the Palestinians –
how long the administration will continue to wait.
The ball is in Netanyahu’s court. After years
of diplomatic frostiness and walking on the edge of open hostility
with Obama, crunch time is now. But with coalition talks underway and a
deal with Iran on the horizon, it remains to be seen whether the prime
minister has the space, capacity or desire to step back from the edge.
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