In a discussion about Obama’s relationship with Israel at the Wilson Center a month back, several speakers said that Obama doesn’t like Netanyahu, and he needs to get over it. But then in the Q-and-A, former diplomat Ted Kattouf got up and said the ball’s in Netanyahu’s court. The Israeli Prime Minister has stepped on Obama again and again, from announcing settlement projects in the face of American officials’ visits and right after the US supported Israeli colonization at the U.N., to embracing Obama’s opponent last fall.
Kattouf singled out one moment in particular: the lecture at the White House:
He lectures the president of the United States in the Oval Office, as I’ve never seen even an adversary let alone an ally lecture a president in front of the cameras.
Former ambassador Sam Lewis agreed with Kattouf, and seemed to refer to the lecture here:
It was insulting. I felt quite offended as a former American official and American who happened to have supported Obama also.
Natan Sachs of the Saban Center said the lecture continues to rankle:
There were many missteps along the way, certainly the lecture in the White House and many other things… This is a point you hear in Washington all the time, especially from Democrats. Israelis don’t even remember that. They say, Yes he was being gruff with him.
What’s the lecture?
On May 19, 2011, Obama gave a foreign-policy speech at the State Department, in which he stated:
We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.
This reference to the ’67 borders was unpardonable.
The very next day, Obama and Netanyahu had their seventh meeting in the White House, and afterward spoke to the press. Video below.
Netanyahu leaned over toward Obama in an authoritative and officious manner as he spoke and specifically rebuked him on the ’67 lines.
I think for there to be peace, the Palestinians will have to accept some basic realities. The first is that while Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines — because these lines are indefensible; because they don’t take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground, demographic changes that have taken place over the last 44 years.
Remember that, before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide. It was half the width of the Washington Beltway. And these were not the boundaries of peace; they were the boundaries of repeated wars, because the attack on Israel was so attractive.
So we can’t go back to those indefensible lines, and we’re going to have to have a long-term military presence along the Jordan. I discussed this with the President and I think that we understand that Israel has certain security requirements that will have to come into place in any deal that we make.
There’s more at the links. But that’s a good portion of the lecture at the White House. Maybe Obama is planning some payback?
‘Maybe Obama is planning some payback?’
Lets hope he’s not in Israel if he does. I fear your concerns regarding armed civilians and Obama’s security may become a reality.
Why the complaints from these officials? Obama has folded to Netanyahu on so many other occasions, why shouldn’t Netanyahu show who is boss.
payback, in what form?
It’s not Obama’s style to lecture or be vindictive. But give someone else rope to hang himself, now that’s a characteristic. Netanyahu has repeatedly done that, and he’s not out of the coalition woods yet, either. Maybe he won’t be able to get a coalition, and Obama will postpone, the humiliation driving Peres to invite someone else to form a coalition. But Obama seeks always to reassure the Israeli people and American Jews that the US has their back, as a way to reduce the sense of immediate existential threat that is the core of Netanyahu’s strength (support me, do as I say, or we will all die very soon!). Only when the Israelis relax a bit will the opportunity for peace open up, leaving the extremists high and dry. A more relaxed people is also more apt to abandon its racism. That’s Obama’s style.
So Beebee insists on retaining the demographic changes on the ground, the facts that are in fact illegal under everyone’s laws and policies except Israel’s. Those settlements, still ongoing, are not named. Imagine a fairy tale where the POTUS interrupts Beebee and says so, and tells Beebee US will not longer fund Israel so long as it does not withdraw those settlements because they are the single biggest block to any serious peace talks, or plan. POTUS uses the pizza eating and dividing analogy. OK, I’m dreaming. Reagan: “Tear down that wall!” To the USSR yet, not to puny, dependent Israel. America, we’ve come a long way!
Israel will not give up the settlements in any significant way, ever. The core reason is that the land taken from ’67 on is deemed a military geographically strategic necessity. Many countries have borders that are terribly hard to defend militarily. But only Israel gets to grab more land in that situation–thanks solely to the USA.