Netanyahu failed to build bond of trust with Obama

[IndianaGreen]

Bibi grew up near Philadelphia, a tough town, but Obama lived in Chicago, an equally tough town.

Last update - 06:59 10/06/2009

Aluf Benn / Netanyahu failed to build bond of trust with Obama

By Aluf Benn

Three weeks after Benjamin Netanyahu returned from his visit to Barack Obama, there is no longer any doubt that the prime minister has failed in his most important mission - to build a bond of trust with the U.S. president. The signs are clear: Israel and the United States are trading messages through speeches and headlines instead of through discrete consultations. Netanyahu is convinced that Obama is seeking a confrontation with Israel, while the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are publicly demanding that the prime minister change his political stripes, just as his predecessors Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert did.

A photo released by the White House, which shows Obama talking on the phone with Netanyahu on Monday, speaks volumes: The president is seen with his legs up on the table, his face stern and his fist clenched, as though he were dictating to Netanyahu: "Listen up and write 'Palestinian state' a hundred times. That's right, Palestine, with a P." As an enthusiast of Muslim culture, Obama surely knows there is no greater insult in the Middle East than pointing the soles of one's shoes at another person. Indeed, photos of other presidential phone calls depict Obama leaning on his desk, with his feet on the floor.

The fraught relationship with Obama and his administration is just one aspect of Netanyahu's trifecta of failures. His second failure is his positions. Netanyahu opposes a Palestinian state and a withdrawal from most of the West Bank. Unlike Olmert, Ehud Barak or opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who are willing to accept a small, demilitarized and well-supervised Palestinian state, Netanyahu fundamentally opposes a two-state solution and considers it a danger to Israel.

On Sunday, the prime minister will deliver an address at Bar-Ilan University. He is widely expected to use this speech to move closer to adopting the two-state solution and accepting the road map, which leads to a Palestinian state alongside Israel. If so, he will surely explain this dramatic turnabout by saying that his predecessors, who accepted the road map, left him with an impossible legacy - just as he was obliged to accept, and implement, the Oslo Accords during his previous term as prime minister. He will present reservations and preconditions that will weaken the Palestinian state and argue that the Iranian threat is more important, so he must work with the United States rather than against it.

The diplomatic vision Netanyahu puts forth will presumably be vague enough to let him keep his rightist coalition partners while earning praise from Barak and President Shimon Peres for his swift about-face. But he will still have to explain why he waited until now, when he will look like a dishrag who caved in to pressure from Obama rather than a leader who took the initiative. After all, America's demand that he recognize a Palestinian state was not exactly a surprise. He would be better off embracing it now and hoping that his hitherto inexplicable stubbornness will be forgotten.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091720.html

[rpannier]

1. Whatever works

As long as it doesn't get anyone else killed and it moves the process forward I'm for it

[babylonsister]

2. In a day?

I like this better:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/69609.html

Obama with foreign leaders: All business, all the time

He's not trying to 'make friends', and I love that!

[jaysunb]

3. " build bond of trust "

You mean a " wink & a nod or GREENLIGHT ."

Sorry, there's a new sheriff in town.....

[regnaD kciN]

4. To answer the last bit of the article...

After all, America's demand that he recognize a Palestinian state was not exactly a surprise.

...but Netanyahu figured he could sidestep it the way Likud always had, by overwhelming the President with rhetoric about Our Natural Allies, The Poor Little Embattled "Only Democracy In The Middle East" Surrounded By Vicious Enemies Ready To Drive It Into The Sea. And, if that didn't work, appeal to Congress and have Democrats and Republicans join together to make it clear to the White House that failing to give a blank check to Tel Aviv would be political suicide not to be tolerated over at the Capitol.

How was Netanyahu to know that wouldn't work this time around? After all, it always had in the past.