Tuesday, July 28, 2009

6 Ways Obama can Regain Israeli Trust: YK Halevi & Aluf Benn on Why Obama Needs to Reach out to Israelis

How to mend the unnecessary--and counterproductive--rift between the Obama administration and Israel.
Israelis welcomed Barack Obama when he visited here in July 2008 and many responded enthusiastically to his election. But Israelis sense that Obama has placed the onus for restarting negotiations on Israel. Worse, he is perceived as showing weakness toward the world's bullies while acting resolutely only toward Israel. Many Israelis--and not only on the right--suspect that Obama actually wants a showdown with Jerusalem to bolster his standing in the Muslim world. If those perceptions aren't countered, the Israeli public will reject Obama's peace initiatives.--YK Halevi

Why Obama needs to reach out to Israelis
Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama's stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle - not guilt over the Holocaust - brought Jews a homeland.--Aluf Benn


Family Feud
Six ways that Obama can regain Israeli trust.
Yossi Klein Halevi , The New Republic : Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Jerusalem, Israel

Are we in the early stages of an American-Israeli crisis? Or are the growing and public disagreements between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government over settlements and Jerusalem merely arguments "within the family," as President Obama insisted in his recent meeting with American Jewish leaders?
According to one poll, only six percent of Israelis consider Obama a friend. That perception of hostility is new. Israelis welcomed Barack Obama when he visited here in July 2008 and many responded enthusiastically to his election. But Israelis sense that Obama has placed the onus for restarting negotiations on Israel. Worse, he is perceived as showing weakness toward the world's bullies while acting resolutely only toward Israel. Many Israelis--and not only on the right--suspect that Obama actually wants a showdown with Jerusalem to bolster his standing in the Muslim world. If those perceptions aren't countered, the Israeli public will reject Obama's peace initiatives.
On the assumption that the pessimists among us are wrong and the Obama administration isn't seeking a pretext to create a crisis in American-Israeli relations, here are some suggestions for Washington about how to reassure increasingly anxious Israelis.

1. Make clear that renewing the peace process requires simultaneous Israeli and Arab concessions.
The impression conveyed by the administration's relentless public focus on the settlements is that a settlement freeze is the sole prerequisite toward jump-starting peace talks. After the disastrous consequences of the Oslo process (which led to more than five years of suicide bombings in Israeli cities) and of the withdrawal from Gaza (which led to three years of rocket attacks on Israeli towns near the Gaza border), the Israeli public is in no mood for unilateral concessions.
The administration insists that its intentions have been misunderstood, that it expects the Arab world to offer gestures of normalization to Israel. But unlike its hectoring tone toward Israel, there has been little public rebuke directed toward Arab leaders. True, Secretary of State Clinton recently did note that America expects a more forthcoming Arab attitude toward Israel. But that statement has hardly resonated, and the media focus remains on the settlements as the main obstacle to renewing the peace process.

2. Reaffirm the Israeli status of the settlement blocs in a future agreement.
In weighing the future of the settlements, Israelis will be looking not only for tangible signs of Arab goodwill but also of American goodwill--specifically, a reiteration of the Bush administration's endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the major settlement blocs as part of a peace agreement. In return, a future Palestinian state would receive compensatory territory from within Israel proper.
The administration is right to insist that the current Israeli government must be bound by the commitments of previous Israeli governments (a position that Prime Minister Netanyahu has in fact upheld). But that same principle should also apply to Washington. Obama should not dismiss previous administration promises to Israel--even those made by George W. Bush.

3. Actively confront Palestinian demonization of Israel.
In his Cairo speech, Obama called for an end to Palestinian incitement against Israel. A systematic culture of denial--denying any historical legitimacy to the Jewish presence in the land of Israel--is being nurtured not only by Hamas but by the Palestinian Authority. In recent months, for example, the Fatah media has promoted a campaign denying the historical attachments of Jews to Jerusalem.
Challenging that campaign of lies would be a good way for the administation to begin proving its seriousness on incitement. Negating any Jewish rights to Jerusalem reinforces the very rejectionism among Palestinians that led to the collapse of the Oslo proces--surely no less a threat to peace than building 20 apartments in East Jerusalem.


4. Affirm Israel's historical legitimacy to the Muslim world.
In his Cairo speech, Obama rightly noted that the key obstacle on the Arab side toward making peace is the ongoing refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Crucially, he has made clear that he intends to carry the issue of Israel's legitimacy into his dialogue with the Muslim world. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for Muslims to hear Israel's case. So far, though, the president has failed to make it. By referring only to the Holocaust, and ignoring the historical Jewish attachment to the land of Israel, the president has inadvertently reinforced Muslim misconceptions regarding Jewish indigenousness. The Holocaust helps explain why Israel fights, not why Israel exists. It doesn't explain why thousands of Ethiopian Jews walked across jungle and desert to reach Zion; nor for that matter why some Jews leave New York and Paris to raise families in a Middle Eastern war zone.

5. Make clear that the impending nuclearization of Iran, and not the Palestinian problem, is the region's most urgent crisis.
Continuing to publicly reprimand Israel over settlement building while only reluctantly and belatedly criticizing the Iranian regime for suppressing dissent has further alienated Israelis from the Obama adminstration. In one recent cartoon in the daily Maariv, Obama is depicted as a waiter serving Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Obama offers him two plates: On one is a carrot, and on the other--a carrot.
Israelis need to know that there is no substantive difference between Obama and Netanyahu on the need to prevent an Iranian bomb at all costs--or to put it more bluntly, that there is as much urgency over a nuclear Iran in Washington as there is in Riyadh and Paris.


6. Don't treat the Netanyahu government as a pariah.
For weeks Israelis have been reading in their newspapers about a near-total breakdown in trust between Washington and Jerusalem. For his part, Netanyahu has repeatedly praised Obama's friendship for Israel, and refused to attack his Iran policy. During his meeting with Jewish leaders, Obama reaffirmed his friendship for Israel but seems to have mentioned no words of friendship for Israel's prime minister. Israelis need to hear some words of warmth from the White House toward their elected leader. That's what one expects from friends, to say nothing of family.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor of The New Republic and a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

Why Won't Obama Talk to Israel? - Aluf Benn (New York Times)
President Obama has spoken to Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Russians and Africans, but he hasn't bothered to speak directly to Israelis. All they see is American pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu to freeze settlements, a request that's been interpreted in Israel as political arm-twisting meant to please the Arab street at Israel's expense
This policy of ignoring Israel carries a price. Though Mr. Obama has succeeded in prodding Mr. Netanyahu to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he has failed to induce Israel to impose a freeze on settlements. In fact, he has failed even to stir debate about the merits of one: no Israeli political figure has stood up to Mr. Netanyahu and begged him to support Mr. Obama; not even the Israeli left has adopted Mr. Obama as its icon.
Mr. Obama's quest for diplomacy has appeared to Israelis as dangerous American naivete. The president offered a hand to the Iranians, and got nothing, merely giving them more time to advance their nuclear program. And he failed to move Arab governments to take steps to normalize relations with Israel.
Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama's stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle - not guilt over the Holocaust - brought Jews a homeland.
In the past decade, repeated peace negotiations and diplomatic statements have indicated that the "settlement blocs" will remain in Israeli hands under any two-state solution. Why, then, insist on a total freeze everywhere? And why deny with such force the existence of previous understandings over limited settlement construction? There is simply too much evidence proving that such an understanding existed. To Israelis, the claim undermined Mr. Obama's credibility.




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Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Ehud Ya'ari: Regime Change in Iran: The Real Message Behind the Disputed Election

Ehud Ya'ari, one of Israel's most astute observers of the Middle East, offers an anaylsis of recent events in Iran that challenges some prevailing notions of Iran's power structure.
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At the moment, US President Barack Obama is not going to get very far in his dialogue with the Iranians. But I believe that, down the road, there will be the possibility of some understandings between the US, the Europeans and the Iranians. And it is the Arab states, not the Israelis, who are telling Obama to please not cut a deal with Iran behind their backs or at their expense.

Here's the real message behind Iran's disputed election
Ehud Ya'ari July 7, 2009 -

WHAT we have witnessed in Iran in recent weeks is a military coup conducted through the ballot boxes. Policymakers and analysts have been talking for a long time about the possibilities and prospects of a change of regime in Iran. Well, I have news for everybody — change of regime in Iran has taken place.

The re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as Iran's President represents the emergence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp as a military dictatorship — pushing aside the clerics and mullahs. It's a new Iran in many ways. It's an Iran in which the Supreme Leader, despite what you will read in most of the Western press, is not the real victor in the election. He manipulated the elections in such a way as to have Ahmadinejad re-elected. Now, however, the Supreme Leader works for Ahmadinejad, rather than the other way around.

It's a new Iran because it's no longer the Islamic Revolution regime as we have known it since Khomeini took over in 1979. Ahmadinejad's Government is already 60 per cent Revolutionary Guard, and the Iranian parliament is 40 to 50 per cent ex-Revolutionary Guard officers. This election sees the takeover by this group and their allies completed.
Everybody has heard Ahmadinejad's statements — his regime's very clear views on eliminating Israel and the very aggressive and confrontational foreign policy.
The three other candidates, each in a different manner, objected to the way Ahmadinejad ran Iran's nuclear program, hinting very strongly that they did not necessarily see an advantage in the short-term acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons.
One of them suggested they negotiate with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and with Germany, and offer guarantees that the country would not be "going the military way".
This very fierce debate had never been heard in Iran before. But the debate is one point and the declared result of the election is something else — which is that two-thirds of Iranian voters are said to have supported Ahmadinejad. Those other voices — from within the ruling regime — will now be marginalised.
We have a few years in which to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear arms. The reason is Iran will never stage a nuclear "breakout" from the non-proliferation regime for a bomb or two. If Teheran goes for a breakout, it will only do so for an arsenal — it doesn't make sense otherwise.
The efforts are not just focused on uranium enrichment. They are building a heavy-water reactor in Arak for plutonium. But they are not yet at the point where they have enough material for an arsenal — at which time a political decision will be made about whether to build nuclear weapons or not. The Arab states have made it clear that if Iran has a bomb, they will follow.
Egypt has reignited its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, such as medical isotopes. Saudi Arabia will acquire nuclear weapons from the Pakistanis. It has a long-term understanding with Islamabad regarding this.
I think we in the Middle East are sentenced to a long period of ambiguity in which it's quite unclear what Iran's nuclear status is.
I believe that this ambiguity is the preferred policy of the Iranians at this point — playing their own game of ambiguity while moving as fast as they can to develop nuclear technologies in both enriched uranium and plutonium.
They want as soon as possible to be as close to the nuclear threshold as Japan currently is.
In the Middle East, Iran and its regional and nuclear ambitions define the only political and diplomatic game in town — overshadowing all other issues. It's the only game for the Arab states as much as for the Israelis.
At the moment, US President Barack Obama is not going to get very far in his dialogue with the Iranians. But I believe that, down the road, there will be the possibility of some understandings between the US, the Europeans and the Iranians. And it is the Arab states, not the Israelis, who are telling Obama to please not cut a deal with Iran behind their backs or at their expense.
Ehud Ya'ari is the Middle East commentator for Israel's Channel 2 Television and the author of eight books on Middle Eastern affairs.

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