THE WSJ FALLS FOR THE USUAL “BUSHWA” ON THE BIBOBAMA MEETING….SEE NOTE
“BUSHWA” IS A REVERED BRONX EUPHEMISM FOR “BULL S.IT”….RSK
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704862404575351153983787416.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Of all the diplomatic noises heard during Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting yesterday with President Obama, the most significant may have been the clicking cameras of the White House press pool. Unlike at their last two encounters—both closed to the media—the Israeli Prime Minister is at last being accorded the ordinary courtesies granted to visiting foreign leaders.
It’s good to see Mr. Obama finally treating a key American ally as something other than a pariah. The President even went one better, calling America’s bond with Israel “unbreakable,” cautioning Palestinians to avoid seeking “opportunities to embarrass Israel,” and rejecting suggestions that there had ever been any strain in his relationship with his Israeli counterpart.
“If you look at every public statement I have made,” he declared, “it has been a constant reaffirmation of the special relationship between the United States and Israel.” Note the lawyerly use of the word “public.”
The reality is nearly the opposite, which goes far to explain why this Administration has been able to make so little progress in advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Israel’s willingness to take the “risks for peace” invariably demanded of it has always been anchored in a sense among Israelis that whatever they might cede in territory the U.S. would make up for in security, as well as diplomatic and economic backing.
That was the case when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005: It received nothing from the Palestinians but got a written commitment by President Bush that the U.S. would not expect Israel to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders (themselves the product of a 1949 armistice agreement) in any future settlement with the Palestinians. Yet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disavowed that commitment last year, saying Mr. Bush’s pledge “did not become part of the official position of the United States government.”
The same goes for the Administration’s surprise decision in May to support a U.N. resolution that demanded Israel’s nuclear disarmament while making no mention of Iran, a vote that contravened a decades-old understanding regarding Israel’s nuclear posture.
And it was no less true in March when the White House reacted with bullying fury to the news that an Israeli bureaucrat had approved a step in a planning process for a new housing project in north Jerusalem that could only be considered a “settlement” in the most expansive (and pro-Palestinian) sense of the term.
No wonder, then, that so many Israelis look askance at the prospect of making further concessions to the Palestinians. Israel is a democracy, and Mr. Netanyahu cannot simply deliver a “peace” on his own. So far, Mr. Obama’s actions have only made the political prospects of selling any prospective deal to Israel’s public—to say nothing of its fractious ruling coalition—that much more difficult.
Mr. Obama’s tilt against Israel has also been noticed by the Palestinians, who take it as reason to hope that they can hold out for even better negotiating terms. The Administration’s overwrought reaction to the March housing announcement sparked some politically opportunistic rioting by Palestinians that might have led to a third bloody intifada. As it is, since Mr. Obama came to office the Palestinians have retreated to “proximity talks” mediated by U.S. emissary George Mitchell instead of dealing directly with the Israelis, a retreat from the practice of the previous 16 years. The Palestinians are no fools: They know how to push a friendly U.S. Administration to push Israel.
Now the question is whether the 18 months that Mr. Obama has wasted will have longer-term consequences. Yesterday, Mr. Netanyahu spoke optimistically of returning to direct talks with the Palestinians in the coming weeks, and perhaps that will happen. But it’s difficult to see what progress can be made so long as Palestinians continue to insist on the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees to Israel, which contravenes the point of a two-state solution and would mean the demographic annihilation of the Jewish state. Mr. Obama could help if he continues to make it clear as President—as he did as a candidate—that there is no such right.
Overhanging all of this is the threat of a nuclear Iran, a country sworn to Israel’s destruction if it can acquire the means to accomplish it. We find it hard to imagine how Israel could live alongside a Palestinian state if that state were destined to become, under the leadership of Hamas, the tip of an Iranian nuclear spear. Mr. Netanyahu had warm words yesterday for the recent U.N. and U.S. sanctions against Iran. The trouble is that even CIA Director Leon Panetta publicly conceded two weeks ago that these sanctions are unlikely to deter Iran from its drive to acquire an atomic weapon.
Following Mr. Netanyahu’s disastrous meeting with Mr. Obama earlier this year, we noted the Administration’s habit of squeezing America’s friends while coddling its enemies. It’s good to see at least one of those friends no longer getting the squeeze. Now Mr. Obama has to get serious about the enemies.
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