- Barack Obama is often compared to Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
but it is from the book of another Roosevelt that he has taken a leaf:
President Theodore Roosevelt, who, 108 years ago, advised his successors:
"Speak softly and carry a big stick."
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- This week, the whole world saw how this is done. Obama
sat in the Oval Office side by side with Binyamin Netanyahu and spoke to
the journalists. He was earnest, but relaxed. The body language spoke clearly:
while Netanyahu leaned forward assiduously, like a traveling salesman peddling
his merchandise, Obama leaned back, tranquil and self-assured.
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- He spoke softly, very softly. But leaning against the
wall behind him, hidden by the flag, was a very big stick indeed.
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- THE WORLD wanted, of course, to know what went on between
the two when they met alone.
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- Coming home, Netanyahu strenuously tried to present the
meeting as a great success. But after the spotlights turned off and the
red carpet rolled up, we can examine what we have really seen and heard.
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- Among his great achievements, Netanyahu emphasized the
Iranian issue. "We have reached complete agreement," he proudly
announced time and again.
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- Agreement on what? On the need to prevent Iran from getting
a "military nuclear capability".
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- Just a moment. What is that we hear, "military"?
Where did this word creep up from? Until now, all Israeli governments have
insisted that Iran must be prevented from acquiring any nuclear capability
at all. The new formula means that the Netanyahu government now accepts
Iran having a "non-military" which is never very far from
a "military" - nuclear capability.
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- This is not Netanyahu's only defeat on the Iranian issue.
Before his trip, he demanded that Obama give Iran just three months, "until
October", and that after this "all the options would be on the
table". An ultimatum that included a military threat.
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- Nothing of this remains. Obama said that he would conduct
a dialogue with Iran until the end of the year, and that he would then
assess what had been achieved and consider what to do next. If he came
to the conclusion that there had been no progress, he would take further
steps, including the imposition of more stringent sanctions. The military
option has disappeared. True, before the meeting Obama told a newspaper
that "all the options are on the table", but the fact that he
did not repeat this in Netanyahu's presence speaks volumes.
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- No doubt Netanyahu asked for permission to attack Iran,
or at the very least to threaten such an attack. The answer
was a flat No. Obama is resolved to prevent an Israeli attack. He has warned
the Israeli government unequivocally. Just to make sure that the message
has been properly absorbed, he sent the CIA chief to Israel to deliver
the message personally to every Israeli leader.
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- The Israeli plan for a military attack on Iran has been
taken off the table if it was ever lying there.
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- Netanyahu wanted to connect Iran with the Palestinian
issue, in a negative way: as long as the Iranian danger exists, the Palestinian
matter cannot be dealt with. Obama has turned the formula upside down and
made a positive connection: progress on the Palestinian issue is a precondition
to progress on the Iranian one. That makes sense: the unsolved conflict
is fuelling Iran, provides it with a reason to menace Israel and weakens
the opposition of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Iran's ambitions.
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- OBAMA'S MAIN message concerned one issue that returned
to center stage this week: settlements.
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- This word almost disappeared during the reign of Bush
the Younger. True, all US administrations have opposed the enlargement
of the settlements, but since the failed attempt by James Baker, the Secretary
of State of Bush the Elder, to impose sanctions on Israel, no one has dared
to do anything about them. In Washington they mumbled, on the ground they
built. In Jerusalem they dissimulated, and on the ground they built.
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- As a senior Palestinian put it: "We are negotiating
about dividing the pizza, and in the meantime Israel is eating it."
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- It has to be repeated again and again: the settlements
are a disaster for the Palestinians, a disaster for peace and a double
and triple disaster for Israel. First, because their main aim is to make
the establishment of a Palestinian state impossible, and thus prevent peace
forever. Second, because they suck the marrow out of the Israeli economy
and swallow resources that should be used to help the poor. Third: because
the settlements undermine the rule of law in Israel, they spread the cancer
of fascism and push the whole political system to the right.
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- Therefore Obama is right when he puts the settlement
issue ahead of everything else, even ahead of the peace negotiations. A
total cessation of building in the settlements comes before anything else.
When a body is bleeding, the flow has to be stopped before the disease
can be treated. Otherwise the patient will die of loss of blood and there
won't be anybody left to treat. This is precisely the aim of Netanyahu.
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- This is why Netanyahu has refused to accede to the request.
Otherwise his coalition would have fallen apart and he would be compelled
to resign or set up an alternative coalition with Kadima. The hapless Tzipi
Livni, who has not found a role in opposition, would probably jump at the
opportunity.
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- Netanyahu will try to use Barak against Barack. With
the help of Ehud Barak he is putting on a performance of "demolishing
outposts", in order to divert attention from the ongoing building
in the settlements. We shall see whether this ploy succeeds and whether
the settlers' leadership will play their part in this charade. The day
after Netanyahu's return, Barak demolished for the seventh time (!) Maoz
Esther, an outpost consisting of seven wooden huts. Within hours, the settlers
returned to the place.
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- (The Israeli army has built an entire Arab village in
the Negev for training purposes. Somebody joked this week that the army
has also built this outpost and manned it with soldiers disguised as settlers,
so it can be demolished every time there is pressure from America. Afterwards
the soldiers build it up again, ready for use the next time pressure is
exerted.)
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- REFUSAL TO freeze the settlements means refusal to accept
the two-state solution. Instead, Netanyahu juggled with empty slogans.
He spoke about "two peoples living together in peace", but refused
to speak about a Palestinian state. One of his aides called the demand
for two states a "childish game".
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- But this is not a childish game at all. It has already
been proven that negotiations, the aim of which has not been defined in
advance, do not lead anywhere. The Oslo agreement collapsed for precisely
this reason. Netanyahu hopes that the next round of negotiations will also
founder because of this.
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- He has not presented a plan of his own. Not because he
has no plan, but because he knows that nobody would accept it.
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- Netanyahu's plan is: total Israeli control over all the
country between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Unlimited Jewish
settlement everywhere. Limited self-government for a number of Palestinian
enclaves with a dense Palestinian population, which will be surrounded
by settlements. All of Jerusalem to remain part of Israel. Not a single
Palestinian refugee to return to the territory of Israel.
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- This merchandise will find no buyers in the whole wide
world. So Netanyahu, a professional salesman, tries to wrap it in an attractive
package.
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- For example: the Palestinians will "govern themselves".
Where exactly? Where will the borders run? He has already pronounced that
the Palestinians cannot have control over "their airspace or their
border crossings". A state without a military and without control
over its airspace and border crossings that looks suspiciously like
the Bantustans of the late racist apartheid regime in South Africa.
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- I would not be surprised if at some point in the future
Netanyahu starts to call these native reservations "a Palestinian
state".
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- In the meanwhile he tries to gain time and postpone the
negotiations as long as possible. He demands that the Palestinians recognize
Israel as 'the state of the Jewish people", expecting and hoping that
they will reject this with both hands. And indeed, accepting it would mean
giving up in advance their main card the refugee issue and
also sticking a knife in the back of the 1.5 million Palestinians who are
citizens of Israel.
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- Netanyahu is ready to accept Obama's proposal to involve
the Arab and other Muslim states in the peace process an idea that
has always been rigorously rejected by all Israel governments. But that
is just one more of the rabbits that he will pull out of his hat from time
to time in order to delay everything. Before dozens of Arab and perhaps
more than fifty Muslim states decide whether to join the process, months,
perhaps years, will pass. And in the meantime, Netanyahu demands from them
an advance payment in the form of normalization which means that
the entire Arab and Muslim world would give up their only card without
getting anything in return. Pure baksheesh.
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- That is Netanyahu's working pl n.
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- DOES OBAMA have a peace plan of his own? If one puts
all his statements of the last few days together, it seems that he has.
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- When he speaks about "two states for two peoples",
he practically accepts the peace plan that has by now become a world-wide
consensus: as the "parameters" put forward by Bill Clinton in
his last days in office, as the core of the Saudi peace proposal and as
the peace plans of the Israeli peace movement (the draft peace agreement
of Gush Shalom, the Geneva initiative, the Ayalon-Nusseibeh statement and
more.)
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- In short: a sovereign and viable State of Palestine side
by side with Israel, the pre-1967 borders with minor and agreed exchanges
of territory, the dismantling of all the settlements that will not be joined
to Israel in the territory exchanges, East Jerusalem as the capital of
Palestine and West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a mutually acceptable
solution to the refugee problem, a safe passage between the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip, mutual security arrangements.
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- IN THE MEANTIME, throughout the world there is a growing
consensus that the only way to get the wheels of peace moving again is
for Obama to publish his peace plan and call upon both sides to accept
it. If need be, in popular referendums.
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- He could do this in the speech he is due to deliver in
two weeks time in Cairo, during his first presidential trip to the Middle
East. Not by accident, he will not come to Israel during this trip, something
that is almost unprecedented for a US president.
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- To do this, he must be ready to take on the powerful
Israeli lobby. It seems that he is ready for that. The last president who
dared to do this was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who compelled Israel to give
back the Sinai straight after the 1956 war. "Ike" was so popular
that he was not afraid of the lobby. Obama is no less popular, and perhaps
he will dare, too.
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- As "Teddy" Roosevelt indicated: when you have
a big stick, you don't have to wave it. You can afford to speak softly.
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- I hope Obama will indeed speak softly but clearly
and unambiguously.
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