Washington: President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israeli had a poisonous relationship long before Netanyahu swept to victory on Tuesday night in elections watched minute-by-minute at the White House. But now that Netanyahu has won after aggressively campaigning against a Palestinian state and Obama’s potential nuclear deal with Iran, the question is whether the president and prime minister can ever repair their relationship - and whether Obama will even try.
On Wednesday, the answer seemed to be that he will not.
In strikingly strong criticism, the White House called Netanyahu’s campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against Palestinians from 1948 areas because they went out to vote, an attempt to “marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens” and inconsistent with the values that bind Israel and the United States together. The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters traveling with Obama on Air Force One on Wednesday that such a statement was “deeply concerning and it is divisive and I can tell you that these are views the administration intends to communicate directly to the Israelis.”
As a result of Netanyahu’s last-minute turnaround against a Palestinian state alongside Israel, several administration officials said that the Obama administration may now agree to passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution embodying the principles of a two-state solution that would include Israel’s 1967 borders with Palestine and mutually agreed swaps of territory.
Those borders, the subject of contentious negotiations for decades, include the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. Most foreign policy experts say that Israel would have to cede territory to the Palestinians in exchange for holding on to major Jewish colony blocs in the West Bank.
Such a Security Council resolution would be anathema to Netanyahu. Although the principles are Obama administration policy, up until two days ago officials would never have endorsed them in the United Nations because the action would have been seen as too antagonistic to Israel.
“The premise of our position internationally has been to support direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” a senior White House official said. “We are now in a reality where the Israeli government no longer supports direct negotiations. Therefore we clearly have to factor that into our decisions going forward.”
Administration officials said that although the relationship between Israel and the United States would remain strong, it would not be managed by Obama and Netanyahu. Instead it would be left to Secretary of State John Kerry, one of Netanyahu’s only remaining friends in the administration, and to Pentagon officials who handle the close military alliance with Israel. “The president is a pretty pragmatic person and if he felt it would be useful, he will certainly engage,” said a senior administration official, who asked not to be identified while discussing Obama’s opinions of Netanyahu. “But he’s not going to waste his time.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Obama had not called Netanyahu to congratulate him and left it instead for Kerry to do. The president will eventually call the Israeli leader, administration officials said.
Another source of administration anger is Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to Washington and an American-born former Republican political operative. Some administration officials said that it would improve the atmosphere if Dermer stepped down - he helped orchestrate an invitation from House Speaker John A. Boehner to have Netanyahu address Congress without first consulting the White House - but it would not the change the underlying divisions over policy.
But Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who is now the head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, warned that the administration’s patience was growing thin. “What the Obama administration is saying is that, ‘Yes, we’re still committed to you,’’’ Levy said. “But if you don’t give us something to work with, we can’t continue to carry the rest of the world for you.”
Netanyahu’s objections to an Iran nuclear deal, and his decision to firmly ally himself with Obama’s Republican opponents in expressing his ire over the Iran deal, may well have hardened Obama’s decision to push for agreement, one Obama adviser said Wednesday. At the very least, Netanyahu’s opposition has done nothing to steer Obama away from his preferred course of reining in Iran’s nuclear ambitions through an international agreement that would sharply limit the ability of Iran to produce nuclear fuel for at least 10 years, in exchange for a gradual easing of economic sanctions on Iran. Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, are continuing in talks in Lausanne, Switzerland, this week with the goal of reaching an agreement by the end of the month.
“We do think we’re going to get something,” one senior administration official said. He noted, pointedly: “We are backed by the P-5 plus 1,” -using the diplomatic moniker for Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany, and the United States.