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Jewish World Review Nov. 13, 2009 / 26 Mar-Cheshvan 5770 Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity By Caroline B. Glick
It isn't every day that you can see an American President leaving the Prime
Minister of an allied government twisting in the wind for weeks before
deciding to grant him an audience at the White House.
It isn't every day that a visiting leader from a strategically vital US ally
is brought into the White House in an unmarked van in the middle of the
night rather than greeted like a friend at the front door; is forbidden to
have his picture taken with the President; is forced to leave the White
House alone, through a side exit; and is ordered to keep the contents of his
meeting with the President secret.
Ahead of Obama's meeting with Netanyahu, the Wall Street Journal reported
that Obama was effectively attempting to blackmail the Israeli premier by
conditioning the meeting on Netanyahu's willingness to make tangible
concessions to the Palestinians during his speech before the General
Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.
Although the report was denied by the Obama administration, if it was true,
such a move by the White House would be without precedent in the history of
US relations with Israel. And if untrue, the very fact that the story rings
true is indicative of the wretched state of US relations with Israel since
Obama entered office.
Obama's hostility was evident as well during his meeting with fifty Jewish
leaders at the White House this week. In an obvious bid to split American
Jewry away from Israel, Obama refused to discuss Israel or Iran with the
concerned American Jewish leaders. As far as Obama was concerned, all they
deserved from him was a primer on the brilliance of his economic policies
and the worthiness of his plan to socialize the American healthcare
industry. His foreign policy is none of their business.
Obama's meeting with American Jewish leaders was supposed to be a
consolation prize for American Jews after Obama cancelled his first public
address to American Jews since taking office. The White House claimed that
he cancelled the speech because his visit to the Fort Hood memorial service
made it impossible for him to attend. But then the conference was a
three-day affair. The organizers would probably have been happy to
reschedule.
Instead, as Iran races to the nuclear finish line, America's Jewish leaders
were forced to sit through White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel's
kitschy Borscht Belt schmooze about his bar mitzvah.
The ironic thing about Obama's nastiness towards Netanyahu and his arrogant
treatment of the American Jewish community is that while it has made him the
first US president to have no credibility among Israelis and has caused a 14
percent drop in his support among American Jews, it has failed utterly to
earn him the trust of the Muslim world.
Today the Fatah movement is in disarray. Last week its leader Mahmoud Abbas
announced his intention to retire and has placed the blame for his decision
on the Obama administration as well as on Israel. Key Palestinian spokesmen
like Saeb Erekat have declared the death of the peace process and called for
the renewal of the jihad against Israel.
As for the larger Muslim world, a report this week in the New York
Timesstated that the US's key Arab allies Egypt and Saudi Arabia have
been
perilously weakened since Obama took office. Their diminished influence has
been accompanied by the rapid rise of Iran and Syria. Both of these rogue
states have been on the receiving end of continuous wooing by Obama
administration officials who seem ready to do just about anything to appease
them.
In the meantime, Iran's Hizbullah proxy in Lebanon has again managed to
regain control over Lebanon's government despite its defeat in last June's
parliamentary elections. Making full use of the fact that it fields the most
powerful army in the country and owing as well to the US's decision to
abandon the pro-Western March 14 movement in favor of an approach that makes
no distinction between America's friends and foes in Lebanon, Hizbullah
strong-armed its way back to the driver's seat in the new Lebanese
government.
As for Hizbullah's Iranian bosses, far from convincing them to moderate
their policies, the Obama administration's efforts to appease the ayatollahs
have emboldened Iran's theocratic leaders to adopt ever more radical
positions against the US. As senior US officials try to make light of the
fact that in the past week Iran has thrice rejected their latest offer to
have the US, Russia and France enrich uranium for them, the Iranians
announced that they will try three hapless American hikers for espionage.
The three young Americans were abducted by Iranian security forces along the
Iran-Iraq border in Kurdistan four months ago.
The fact that Obama's policies have all failed so spectacularly presents a
unique opportunity for Israel to move its policies in a bold new direction.
Many commentators and policymakers have claimed that it falls on Israel to
help Obama succeed where he has failed. In their view, Israel must go out of
its way to establish a Palestinian state during Obama's term of office or
accept the blame for any renewal of the Palestinian terror war against it.
Such voices — most strongly represented this week by French Foreign
Minister Bernard Kouchner and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman —
have tried to blame the failure of Obama's attempt to reinstate negotiations
between Israel and the Palestinians on Israel's alleged intransigence.
In response to these allegations, this week Netanyahu expressed profound and
urgent interest in holding negotiations with Abbas. This move was
ill-advised. Although it is true that by proclaiming his devotion to the
so-called peace process, Netanyahu was able to deflect some of the White
House's attacks against him, the short-term advantage it brought him this
week in Washington is eclipsed by the long-term damage such an approach
causes the country. In the long-run, Israel is harmed when its leaders
promote the fiction that it is possible to reach an accord with the
Palestinians that will bring about the formal and peaceful establishment of
a Palestinian state.
As Netanyahu prepared to fly off to Washington, Abbas made clear that he
will not make any concessions to Israel for peace. Together with his fellow
Fatah members, Abbas made clear that like Hamas, Fatah does not recognize
Israel's right to exist, does not support peaceful coexistence with Israel,
and shares Hamas's dedication to continued war against Israel.
For their part, pro-Palestinian lobbyists Robert Malley and Hussein Agha are
now arguing that the two-state solution has failed and that the time has
come for a one-state solution in which Israel ceases to exist as a Jewish
state by accepting the Palestinians as full citizens in one bi-national
state.
The Israeli Left, as well as the State Department and several European
governments have now embraced the unelected Palestinian Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad's plan to unilaterally declare Palestinian independence in Judea,
Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem in two years. The aim of the Fayyad plan is to
coerce Israel into abandoning all the lands it took control over during the
1967 Six Day War by implicitly threatening to deploy international forces
throughout "Palestine" that will be charged with "protecting" the new
Palestinian state from the IDF.
Both the Fayyad plan supporters and the one-state solution crowd believe
that their plans can indirectly advance the so-called peace process. In
their view, frightened of both a unilateral Palestinian declaration of
independence and of a bi-national state, Netanyahu will abandon his demand
for a demilitarized Palestinian state and for defensible borders for Israel
and voluntarily withdraw the IDF and the 250,000 Jewish residents of Judea
and Samaria to within the 1949 armistice lines. But the fact is that there
is no reason for Netanyahu to fear their plans. Indeed it is high time for
Israel to call their bluffs.
The shocking truth is that the demographic threat is an empty threat. The
demographic doomsday scenarios for Israel are all based on falsified
Palestinian census data from 1997 that inflated the number of Palestinians
in Israel, Judea, Samaria and Gaza by 50 percent. As the independent
American-Israel Demographic Research Group demonstrated in early 2005,
Israel has no reason to be concerned that by maintaining its control over
Judea and Samaria, it will become a majority Arab state. Today, the combined
population of Israel and Judea and Samaria leaves Jews with a two-thirds
majority. With Jewish immigration and fertility rates rising, negative Arab
immigration rates, and decreasing Arab fertility rates, the long-term
projections for Israel's demographic viability are all positive.
As Netanyahu knows, there is consensus support among Israelis for his plan
to ensure that the country retains defensible borders in perpetuity. This
involves establishing permanent Israeli control over the Jordan Valley and
the large Jewish population blocs in Judea and Samaria. In light of the
well-recognized failure of the two-state solution, Hamas's takeover of Gaza
and the disintegration of Fatah accompanied by the shattering of the myth of
Fatah moderation, Israel should strike out on a new course and work towards
the integration of Judea and Samaria, including its Palestinian population
into Israeli society. In the first instance, this will require the
implementation of Israeli law in the Jordan Valley and the large settlement
blocs.
Replacing the military government in these areas with Israel's more liberal
legal code will also advance Netanyahu's economic peace plan which envisions
expanding the Palestinian economy in Judea and Samaria by among other things
reintegrating it into Israel's booming economy. This plan would reward
political moderation while marginalizing terrorists in Palestinian society.
In so doing, it will advance the cause of peaceful coexistence over the
long-term far better than the failed two-state solution. Far from
engendering peace, the two-state paradigm empowered the most corrupt and
violent actors in Palestinian society at the expense of its most productive
and moderate citizens.
Obama's disgraceful treatment of Israel and, for that matter, his atrocious
treatment of the majority of America's allies in the Middle East and
throughout the world, has strengthened the hands of America's worst enemies
and made the world a much more dangerous place. But his obvious failures
provide Israel with an opportunity to take control of events and change the
situation for the betterment of Israel and the Palestinians alike.
Applying Israeli law to the Jordan Valley and the major Israeli population
blocs in Judea and Samaria will probably not win Netanyahu many friends in
the Obama White House. But if we learned anything from Obama's insulting
treatment of Netanyahu and American Jews this week, we learned that
regardless of what Israel does, the Obama administration has no interest in
being his friend.
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JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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