In a severe attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Obama said in an interview with the Huffington Post on Friday that he believed Netanyahu's statement that he did not want a Palestinian state, and that the Israeli leader's remarks on election day about Israel's Arabs would help those who oppose Israel's existence.
This was without doubt a personal attack from someone who does not conceal his lack of admiration for the object of his attack. Such downright criticism of the leader of a friendly country, essentially a US ally, cannot be recalled in Washington, and indicates the depth of the chasm into which US-Israeli relations, or at least relations between the Obama administration and Netanyahu's government, have sunk. Spokespersons for the US administration prepared the ground for Obama's attack all week with similar statements.
The head of a large Jewish organization said yesterday that he was shocked by what Obama said. "That's not how you speak about the leader of a friendly country, even if you have differences of opinion with him. Only about Assad have worse things been said," he said, requesting that his name should not be mentioned.
In his first public comments since Netanyahu's election victory, Obama left the clear impression that his working assumption is that Netanyahu does not support setting up a Palestinian state, despite the latter's efforts since the election to present himself as someone who does support such a state, under certain conditions. In effect, Obama chose to ignore completely the interviews that the prime minister gave to US networks NBC and Fox News after the election, in which he said that he did support the two-state solution. The US president chose instead to stick to Netanyahu's remarks at the end of his election campaign, in which he said that no Palestinian state would arise while he was in power.
"We take him at his word when he said that it 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," Obama said in the interview.
The US president undertook to continue working with the Israeli government on military and intelligence matters, but he avoided saying whether the US would continue to frustrate the Palestinians' efforts to initiate a UN Security Council resolution that would give international recognition to a Palestinian state. Obama said he had told Netanyahu in the telephone conversation between them on Thursday that "it is going to be hard to find a path where people are seriously believing that negotiations are possible."
Obama spoke with noticeable bitterness about Netanyahu's call for his supporters to come out and vote because Israeli Arabs were being bussed to the polling stations. "We indicated that that kind of rhetoric was contrary to what is the best of Israel's traditions. That although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly. And I think that that is what's best about Israeli democracy. If that is lost, then I think that not only does it give ammunition to folks who don't believe in a Jewish state, but it also I think starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country," Obama said.
Obama also said that Netanyahu's election victory would not affect the nuclear talks with Iran. Just days before the target date for reaching a framework agreement between Iran and the six powers, Obama gave a sober assessment of the chances of a deal: "Frankly, they have not yet made the kind of concessions that are I think going to be needed for a final deal to get done. But they have moved, and so there's the possibility." The president said that his aim was to close a deal "in a matter of weeks, not months", but that it was too early to speak of a draft agreement.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 22, 2015
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