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Jewish World Review December 12, 2008 / 15 Kislev, 5769 What a PM Netanyahu faces from Washington By Caroline B. Glick
Giving voice to these expectations this week was this year's Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate Martti Ahtisaari. The former Finnish prime minister used his
prize ceremony to call on US president-elect Barack Obama to make contending
with the Palestinian conflict with Israel his chief focus during his first
year in office. This is the same Ahtisaari who recently demanded that the
West recognize Hamas as a legitimate political movement.
People who have been in close contact with Obama's foreign policy transition
team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will
move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to
one source who has spent a great deal of time with his transition team since
last month's elections, Obama's people are "scope-locked" on Israel.
The source reports that General Jim Jones, Obama's designated national
security advisor is Israel's most outspoken critic. The source, who held a
two and a half hour meeting with Jones, told his associates that Jones is
keen to deploy NATO forces, perhaps including US forces to Judea and
Samaria.
Jones's plan, which is vociferously opposed by the IDF, would make it
impossible for the IDF to carry out counter-terror operations in the areas.
As a practical matter, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israeli
citizens in who live in the areas would be imperiled. Just as Hizbullah has
used UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon as a shield from the IDF behind which
it has rearmed and reasserted control over the border zone, so too a NATO
force would facilitate the empowerment of Hamas and Fatah which would unify,
arm and organize free from the threat of IDF counter-terror operations.
Jones's plan is not new. In a 2002 interview, Samantha Power — who has
served for years as one of Obama's closest foreign affairs advisors and now
serves as a member of his transition team for the State Department — called
for US forces to be deployed to Judea and Samaria in what she referred to as
"a mammoth protection force" to protect the Palestinians from Israel which
she claimed was guilty of "major human rights abuses."
Obama's team, like its supporters in the international foreign policy
establishment, is dismayed by the Israeli opinion polls which show that
Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu is favored to win the upcoming February 10
general elections by a wide margin.
In anticipation of Likud's expected electoral victory, they have been piling
on against Netanyahu and Likud. This was most recently evident at last
week's Middle East policy conclave in Washington organized by the pro-Obama
and post-Zionist Saban Middle East Forum at the Brookings Institute. There,
both secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton's surrogate, former
president Bill Clinton, and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
castigated Netanyahu's assertion that peace must be built from the bottom up
through the liberalization of Palestinian society rather than from the top
down by giving land to terrorists.
Netanyahu foresees Palestinian liberalization coming about through economic
development in what he refers to as an "economic peace process." Both the
former president and Rice attacked his plan claiming that it is antithetical
to the sacrosanct "two-state solution." As far as they and their many
colleagues are concerned, the only thing that remains to be discussed is
when Israel will vacate Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. The fact that there is
no significant Palestinian constituency willing to peacefully coexist with
Israel is irrelevant.
In light of the incoming Obama administration's palpable hostility towards
Israel, and particularly towards Israel's political realists, the results of
Likud's primaries this past Monday were especially significant. In selecting
the party's slate of candidates for Knesset, Likud members favored
sober-minded politicians who use their common sense to guide them over those
with records of support for the fraudulent "peace processes" so favored by
the local media, Kadima, Labor, and the international jet set.
Likud politicians who warned of the dangers of then prime minister Ariel
Sharon's decision to withdraw from Gaza and expel some ten thousand Israelis
from their homes in Gaza and northern Samaria were elected to the top of the
Knesset slate. Those who supported Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan —
which is now widely recognized to have been Israel's most disastrous
strategic move in recent history — were either rejected out of hand, or
demoted.
The men and women selected by Likud's voters will provide Netanyahu with the
political strength to stand up to pressure from the Obama White House. They
will support him when he is forced to reject US demands that Israel give
away vital territory to Fatah and Hamas militias and to Syria's Iranian-sponsored regime. They will support him when he is compelled to refuse US demands to deploy NATO forces to Judea and Samaria. They will back
him up when he says that Fatah is not a peace partner for Israel but Hamas's
partner for war against Israel.
That the general public shares the sensibilities exhibited by Likud primary
voters is made clear by the fact that Likud's standing in the polls has not
significantly diminished since the primaries. If, as the media warned, the
public would reject a list comprised of sober-minded realists, one would
have expected that support to drop. Instead, it remains steady even as
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni castigates Likud as naysayers and opponents of
peace and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert scandalously invites the nations of the
world to turn against Israel if Likud wins the elections.
One might have intuited that the striking contrast between the sober-minded
Likud party and the delusional and defeatist Kadima and Labor parties which
was brought so prominently to the fore by the Likud primaries would have
been the central message that Netanyahu chose to convey in the days that
have followed Monday's primaries. But sadly, one would be wrong to think
that.
Disturbingly, rather than drawing distinctions between his party and its
rivals, Netanyahu has spent the days since the primaries drawing
distinctions between himself and a minor player in his own party. Both ahead
of the primaries and in the days since, Netanyahu has devoted the majority
of his time to attacking his sharpest critic in Likud itself - Moshe
Feiglin, who heads the far-right Jewish Leadership Forum in Likud and won
the not-particularly-senior twentieth position in Likud's Knesset slate.
Feiglin has more in common with the Left he abhors than with his party
members. Like the Left, Feiglin bases his strategic and economic notions on
a complete denial of reality. Whereas the Left ignores the Arabs, Feiglin
ignores the West. Feiglin's religious adherence to his views has made him
few friends in Likud or elsewhere in Israeli politics. The threat he
constitutes to Netanyahu is negligible.
Given Feiglin's inherent weakness, Netanyahu's post-primaries focus on him
is shocking. Netanyahu has argued that Feiglin will lose votes for Likud.
But assuming that is true, the last thing Netanyahu should be doing is
placing a spotlight on Feiglin. Rather Netanyahu should be emphasizing his
strongest suit: the clear distinction between Likud on the one hand and
Kadima and Labor on the other hand.
In focusing the public's attention on Feiglin, Netanyahu appears to be
reacting to foreign pressures rather than domestic ones. One of Netanyahu's
most difficult challenges during his tenure as prime minister from 1996 to
1999 was handling his relations with the hostile Clinton administration.
From the moment Netanyahu was elected until the moment he left office, the
Clinton administration's Israel policy was devoted entirely to bringing down
his government. In close collusion with Netanyahu's political opponents and
the local media, for three years Clinton worked steadily to overthrow him.
Clinton's assault culminated in the 1999 elections when he sent his own
campaign managers to Israel to lead the Labor Party's election campaign
against Netanyahu and Likud.
No doubt, it is in the hopes of building better relations with the incoming
Obama administration that Netanyahu now seeks to distance himself from
Feiglin and advocates forming a broad governing coalition with his political
foes in Kadima and Labor. Apparently, in his view only such a broad
coalition will insulate him from a US presidential assault. In the interests
of forming such a coalition, while highlighting his disputes with Feiglin,
Netanyahu has sought to obfuscate his ideological differences with Kadima
and Labor.
Although Netanyahu's motivations are understandable, his mode of operation
will bring him results exactly opposed to the ones he seeks. It is true that
to withstand pressures and even an all-out assault by the Obama
administration Netanyahu will need a broad coalition. But that coalition
cannot be based on a simple will to power as Olmert's coalition and previous
leftist coalitions have been. To survive a hostile While House, Netanyahu
will require a broad coalition founded on support for his ideas and his
party's policies, not a broad coalition populated by political and
ideological opponents dedicated to undermining his ideas and policies.
Rather than obfuscate the differences between Likud and Kadima/Labor,
Netanyahu must highlight them. He must convince the Israeli electorate to
vote for Likud on the basis of these distinctions. Likud must be perceived
as the party of common sense ideas and clear-minded policies that inspire,
attract, and convince the Israeli public to support it. And Netanyahu and
Likud have those ideas and policies.
On a strategic level, Netanyahu and Likud have made clear that they stand
for three main principles. First, they are committed to establishing
defensible borders for Israel by securing Israeli sovereignty over all of
greater Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the Samarian hills and the Golan
Heights.
Second, they recognize that the Palestinian society which elected a terror
group to lead it is a society that is uninterested in peace with Israel.
Consequently, any future negotiations must be preceded by a full
reorganization and reform of Palestinian society.
Third, they reject the Kadima/Labor fantasy that foreign militaries and
international forces can be expected to protect Israel in place of the IDF.
If Netanyahu runs on these policies, he will not merely win the elections.
He will win a clear mandate to govern. And only if Netanyahu runs on these
policies will he have a chance of blunting the pressure that will certainly
be brought to bear by the Obama administration. For although it is clear
that like Clinton, Obama will have no problem opposing the will of an
Israeli government, he will be hard pressed to oppose the will of the
Israeli people.
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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