WarSclerotic

One of the issues that were most conspicuously absent from the campaigns that preceded Israel’s recent election was the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The Zionist Union chose to ignore it after realizing that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was not all too popular on the Israeli street, nor on the Palestinian street for that matter. After all, it is a little difficult to sell the idea of peace and a Palestinian state when the Palestinian leader, having served for 11 years, has been unsuccessful in organizing an election at home over the last five years. In fact, Abbas only has half a home, since the Gaza Strip has been under Hamas control for the last nine years.

But then, the day after the Israeli people dared defy the polls, the political commentators, the nonprofit organizations and the foreign diplomats and re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israelis woke up to a surreal reality: The Middle East is being ravaged by countless problems, but U.S. President Barack Obama wants to talk only about a Palestinian state. More accurately, he wants to establish a Palestinian state. The sooner the better. Obama even made sure that the White House chief of staff would address the left-wing pro-Israel lobby J Street and say that the Israeli “occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end.”

No one in Israel is surprised by the American sentiments, but our Arab neighbors may very well be. Saudi Arabia doesn’t know how to curb the pro-Iranian groundswell in Yemen and has already stepped in militarily, making it clear to Washington that it prioritizes Saudi interests over American ones. The Jordanians fear an Islamic State group invasion while bracing for the negative impact of the influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. Iraq is divided, and the government in Baghdad has lost its sovereignty over many of the country’s regions. Syria has been bleeding for four years as it wages a bitter civil war.

In the Maghreb, things aren’t much better: Post-Moammar Gadhafi Libya is no longer defined as a single country, now that about 100 tribes are fighting over the land. Terrorism has infiltrated every district, and Libya is beginning to resemble Somalia. In Tunisia (where the Arab Spring began in 2010), the middle class dream may have been realized, but jihadi terrorism still threatens the country’s stability and keeps tourists away.

Anyone who paid attention to the news on Thursday may have realized just how big the problem has become: While an actual war was erupting in the Persian/Arab gulf, American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, an Obama sidekick, explained to Army Radio how deep the rift was between Obama and Netanyahu. As though Israel is the source of all the trouble in the Middle East.

Obama is clinging to the Palestinian issue. In an interview with the Huffington Post last week, he casually mentioned his concern about possible chaos in the Middle East, as though until now the region has been as calm as Switzerland.

Referencing a remark made by Netanyahu in the run-up to the election, Obama told the Huffington Post: “We take him at his word when he said that it [a two-state solution] wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership, and so that’s why we’ve got to evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don’t see a chaotic situation in the region.” In his eagerness to barb Netanyahu, the American president must have forgotten that in a previous interview, with CBS, he himself explained that the current situation was not conducive to the two-state solution.

Obama told the Huffington Post that “a two-state solution is the only way for the long-term security of Israel, if it wants to stay both Jewish and democratic.” In saying as much, Obama again not only ignored the extenuating circumstances in the region, but also blatantly ignored the wishes of the Israeli voters.

It is rare to see the most important and powerful man in the world — the president of the world’s biggest superpower — behaving in such a petty manner, quibbling not with his enemies but with his friends, no less. It appears that Obama has lost all proportion, and there is no telling where his vendetta against Netanyahu will take him. He refuses to forgive Netanyahu for defying his wishes and addressing Congress earlier this month. The thing that irked him most was that Netanyahu challenged the emerging bad deal with Iran. Obama is the primary proponent of this deal, as he is trying to change the balance of power in the Middle East for the sake of his own legacy.

The other thing that Obama finds unforgivable is, of course, Netanyahu’s election victory. Obama is furious that Netanyahu dared to be re-elected in a democratic election, defying the entire world’s expectations. In fact, the two leaders — Obama and Netanyahu — are in similar shoes. The Israeli prime minister would have preferred Mitt Romney — Obama’s challenger in the 2012 U.S. elections — as the American president, and Obama would have preferred the Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni duo — Netanyahu’s chief opponents — as Israel’s rotating prime ministers.

Contrary to American interests

The big conflict between the two democratic countries, stemming from the election results, is that Obama is not interested in working with Netanyahu under any circumstances. With the end of Obama’s term still 22 months away, it is going to be a long 22 months for Israel, and especially for Netanyahu.

Unlike previous clashes between Israel’s and the U.S.’s leaders, this current quarrel has not included too much criticism against Netanyahu himself. One possible reason could be the result of the election, or possibly that Obama has “lost it” and is now very undiplomatically communicating that he is heading for a confrontation.

In an interview on Israel Radio this week, counselor for political affairs at the Israeli embassy in Washington and former Israeli Consul General in Los Angeles Jacob (Yaki) Dayan was asked to comment on the tense relations between Washington and Jerusalem, and specifically the animosity between Netanyahu and Obama. Dayan reiterated the assumption that Obama wants to shape his legacy around the establishment of a Palestinian state and of course a nuclear deal with Iran. He remarked that the American president was not about to let the facts, or the results of Israel’s election, get in his way. Dayan added further that even if Herzog had been elected in Netanyahu’s stead, he still would have had to confront the difficult challenges posed by Obama.

But fortunately, Netanyahu is not alone in this battle, because the U.S. is not just the president and the White House. In the same way that Netanyahu and Obama dramatically differ in their views, so do Obama and Congress, and American public opinion aligns with Congress. This is where Netanyahu’s power lies. American public opinion is very pro-Israel at the moment, even if there is a liberal minority on various campuses that is critical of Israel’s policies. Congress has already made its voice heard: with its warm welcome when Netanyahu spoke earlier this month, with the letter to Iran’s supreme leader that was signed by 47 Senators and with the unprecedented letter signed by 360 members of the House of Representatives (half of them Democrats) addressed to Obama, demanding to review any future deal with Iran. “In reviewing such an agreement, Congress must be convinced that its terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb, and only then will Congress be able to consider permanent sanctions relief,” they wrote. In the letter, the signatories expressed their support for legislation sought by the Senate that would give Congress 60 days to review any final agreement before it is implemented.

All this was compounded by former CIA Director David Petraeus’ remarks in an interview with the Washington Post, in which he reminded Obama that Iran is part of the problem, not the solution, and that Iran is more dangerous than Islamic State. Petraeus also noted that Iranian power in the Middle East is “deeply hostile to us and our friends.”

“But,” he added, “it is also dangerous because, the more it is felt, the more it sets off reactions that are also harmful to our interests — Sunni radicalism and, if we aren’t careful, the prospect of nuclear proliferation as well.” Anyone who heard these words spoken could have easily thought the speaker was Netanyahu. No wonder Obama is mad.

Meanwhile, the end of March is fast approaching and bringing with it the deadline for a nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, in preparation for a final deal to be signed in June, if it is reached. The negotiations that began in 2002 with the aim of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons is now approaching a conclusion that will allow Iran to hold on to 6,000 centrifuges and enriched uranium.

Iran is slated to become a nuclear threshold state under the auspices of Washington. If the permanent deal is signed, Obama will have a copyright on the Iranian nuclear bomb. Even American officials understand that this runs contrary to American interests, but Obama is stubborn and won’t budge. In his mind, he sees a different Iran. An Iran that will fight Islamic State and do the West’s, and namely the U.S.’s, dirty work.

A deal at any cost

It has now emerged that Obama can be very incoherent in his semantic confrontations with Netanyahu. He tried to use Netanyahu’s words against him, making it appear as though Netanyahu initially supported the two-state solution and then backed away from it. Obama ignored the fact that Netanyahu’s remark was made in the heat of an election campaign, and pretended that nothing has changed in the Middle East. Did Abbas not join a unity government with Hamas? Has the president of the Palestinian Authority recognized the Jewish state and we just haven’t heard about it?

Obama also appears to have forgotten that he himself zigzagged quite a bit on the Syrian issue, for example. The red line that he drew in regard to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons simply faded away, only so that Obama could avoid going to war. And if Obama really puts so much value into every word that was ever said, how is he still willing to negotiate with the Iranians?

Was Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s response to Obama’s new year greeting a week ago not clear enough? Did Khamenei’s words, said before an impassioned crowd in the religious city of Mashhad, escape Obama’s ears? Did he not hear the spiritual leader of Iran reject the American greeting to a crowd chanting “Death to America”? It is unbelievable, but the American president actually sees these people as his new friends. In the name of his legacy.

In light of this troubling situation, it is no wonder that Jerusalem is not the only capital worried about an emerging bad deal. Arab capitals are also on edge. The turmoil in Yemen underscores how much the entire region is losing its faith in the American president. In Europe, France was the first to come to its senses and realize that Obama was shuffling the deck. Enemies have been turned into official friends, and now have the privilege of sharing common interests with the U.S.

Obama is also being criticized at home. This week The Wall Street Journal ran an unusually harsh article titled “The Orwellian Obama Presidency.” In it, senior staffer Bret Stephens explains that Obama’s administration is “now on better terms with Iran — whose Houthi proxies, with the slogan ‘God is great, death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, power to Islam,’ just deposed Yemen’s legitimate president — than it is with Israel.”

“Mr. Obama plays to classic bully type. He is abusive and surly only toward those he feels are either too weak, or too polite, to hit back,” he writes.

At this point let us recall the secret talks the Americans held with Iran in 2012 in Oman without notifying their close ally Israel. It appears that to Obama, everything seems legitimate as long as no one spoils his deal with Tehran — one he is intent on achieving at any cost. And Netanyahu, to whom Obama is openly hostile, poses the biggest threat to this precious agreement.

Picking a side

This has been a complicated week in Israel-U.S. relations. The Wall Street Journal fielded a report that Israel spied on nuclear talks with Iran. Jerusalem rejected the report outright. But the report is quite revealing, as it suggests that the Americans were less angry about the spying than they were about the alleged transfer of information from Jerusalem to American officials as part of the uncompromising battle against a bad deal with Iran. On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal even addressed Obama’s “tantrum” in an editorial.

“You’ll have to forgive President Obama. The leader of the free world is still having difficulty accepting that the Israeli people get to choose their own prime minister, never mind his preferences,” the paper said. Later, remarking on the White House chief of staff’s appearance at the J Street conference last week, the paper added, “Americans and the world are left to wonder whose side the leader of the free world is on.”

Perhaps, that is a point.