By HELENE COOPER, # The New York Times,
May 19, 2011
WASHINGTON - As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
of Israel heads to the White House on Friday for
the seventh meeting since President Obama took
office, the two men are facing a turning point in
a relationship that has never been warm.
By all accounts, they do not trust each other.
President Obama has told aides and allies that he
does not believe that Mr. Netanyahu will ever be
willing to make the kind of big concessions that
will lead to a peace deal.
For his part, Mr. Netanyahu has complained that
Mr. Obama has pushed Israel too far - a point
driven home during a furious phone call with
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on
Thursday morning, just hours before Mr. Obama's
speech, during which the prime minister reacted
angrily to the president's plan to endorse
Israel's pre-1967 borders for a future
Palestinian state.
Mr. Obama did not back down. But the last-minute
furor highlights the discord as they head into
what one Israeli official described as a "train
wreck" coming their way: a United Nations General
Assembly vote on Palestinian statehood in
September.
Mr. Netanyahu, his close associates say,
desperately wants Mr. Obama to use the diplomatic
muscle of the United States to protect Israel
from the vote, not only by vetoing it in the
Security Council, but also by leaning hard on
America's European allies to get them to reject
it as well.
Mr. Obama has indicated that he will certainly do
the first. But it remains unclear how far Mr.
Obama can go to persuade Britain, France and
other American allies to join the United States
in rejecting the move, particularly as long as
Mr. Netanyahu continues to resist endorsing the
pre-1967 lines.
From one of their first meetings, at the King
David Hotel on July 23, 2008, when Mr. Obama,
then the presumptive Democratic nominee for
president, visited Israel, the two men have
struck, at most, an intellectual bond. Mr.
Netanyahu, as the leader of Israel's conservative
Likud Party, was far more comfortable with the
Republican Party in the United States than with
Mr. Obama, the son of a Muslim man from Kenya
whose introduction to the Arab-Israeli conflict
was initially framed by discussions with
pro-Palestinian academics.
"Their relationship is correct at best," said
Judith Kipper, director of Middle East programs
at the Institute of World Affairs. Mr. Netanyahu
"likes the status quo, and he particularly
identifies with conservative Republicans."
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the
Anti-Defamation League and a friend of Mr.
Netanyahu's, recalled that after the first
meeting, Mr. Netanyahu walked out of the hotel
and told him that he had been impressed with Mr.
Obama's intellect, and that the American
presidency "was his to lose."
But things went downhill soon after Mr. Obama
took office and, within months, called for a halt
in Israeli settlement construction in the West
Bank. Mr. Netanyahu refused, handing the
president his first foreign policy humiliation
when Mr. Obama had to abandon the demand in the
face of Israel's refusal to comply.
Compounding the problem, Mr. Netanyahu delivered
a fiery speech to a pro-Israel lobbying group in
Washington declaring that "Jerusalem isn't a
settlement, it's our capital." A furious White
House promptly denied him all the trappings of a
presidential meeting with Mr. Obama the next day,
refusing to allow photographers to take pictures
of the two men in the Oval Office, as is usually
the case for meetings with foreign leaders.
Things got so bad, Mr. Foxman recalled, that Mr.
Netanyahu "told me, 'Abe, I need two hours just
alone to talk to him." Late last year, Mr.
Netanyahu got his two hours at the White House
with Mr. Obama, a meeting which, both American
and Israeli officials say, helped clear the air.
"The relationship now is very cordial," a senior
White House official said.
But the easing of tensions ended this spring
when, Israeli and American officials said, Mr.
Netanyahu got wind of Mr. Obama's plans to make a
major address on the Middle East, and alerted
Republican leaders that he would like to address
a joint meeting of Congress. That move was widely
interpreted as an attempt to get out in front of
Mr. Obama, by presenting an Israeli peace
proposal that, while short of what the
Palestinians want, would box in the president.
House Speaker John A. Boehner issued the
invitation, for late May.
So White House officials timed Mr. Obama's speech
on Thursday to make sure he went first.
"You get so many reports that Bibi is playing
politics in your backyard that eventually you've
got to draw the conclusion that there's nothing
there to work with with this guy," said Daniel
Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator who is
now a fellow with the New American Foundation,
referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname.
Administration officials said that they were
determined not to allow Mr. Netanyahu to get out
in front of Mr. Obama.
In a statement after Mr. Obama's speech on
Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu's office pointedly said
that the prime minister would raise his concerns
about Mr. Obama's language about the pre-1967
borders during Friday's meeting.
"While there were many points in the president's
speech that we appreciate and welcome, there were
other aspects, like the return to the 1967
borders, which depart from longstanding American
policy, as well as Israeli policy, going back to
1967," Michael B. Oren, Israel's ambassador to
the United States, said in an interview. "The
prime minister will raise the issue with the
president. As the president said, the United
States and Israel are great friends, and friends
have to be able to talk frankly to one another."
But both men will have to manage any additional
irritation as they prepare for the United Nations
vote that is headed their way, American and
Israeli officials said. Neither side wants to see
an overwhelmingly lopsided United Nations vote
for Palestinian statehood, with Britain, France
and Germany joining the rest of the world and
isolating Israel further, with only the United
States and a few others voting against it.
"I think the Europeans are sliding" toward voting
for Palestinian statehood "because they don't see
a peace strategy coming out," said David
Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy.
He said that the two leaders had to figure out a
way to work together to stop a United Nations
vote that could harm both the United States and
Israel. "If they are incapable of being able to
translate a common interest into a common
strategy, then it's a very sad commentary on both
countries," Mr. Makovsky said.
More in Middle East (3 of 35 articles)
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