Netanyahu Surprised to Learn that Obama Means What He Says on Settlements
As I said yesterday, I’ve been a bit surprised (in a good way!) by how tough and united the Obama administration has been in terms of pressing Israel to freeze settlement activity. Laura Rozen reports that Netanyahu’s surprised too, he was apparently expecting empty talk and loopholes:
Last night, shortly after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists that the Obama administration “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a confidante. Referring to Clinton’s call for a settlement freeze, Netanyahu groused, “What the hell do they want from me?” [...]
In the 10 days since Netanyahu and President Barack Obama held a meeting at the White House, the Obama administration has made clear in public and private meetings with Israeli officials that it intends to hold a firm line on Obama’s call to stop Israeli settlements. According to many observers in Washington and Israel, the Israeli prime minister, looking for loopholes and hidden agreements that have often existed in the past with Washington, has been flummoxed by an unusually united line that has come not just from Obama White House and the secretary of state, but also from pro-Israel congressmen and women who have come through Israel for meetings with him over Memorial Day recess. To Netanyahu’s dismay, Obama doesn’t appear to have a hidden policy. It is what he said it was. [...]
It’s not just the administration that’s delivering Netanyahu that message, however. Whereas in the past Israeli leaders have sometimes eased pressure from Washington on the settlements issue by going to members of Congress, this time, observers in Washington and Israel say, key pro-Israel allies in Congress have been largely reinforcing the Obama team’s message to Netanyahu. What changed? “Members of Congress have more willing to follow the leadership of the administration … because [they] believe it is in our national security interest to move toward ending the conflict and that it is not a zero sum for Israel,” the former senior Clinton administration official said.
Good on Obama. But also good on the members of congress. It seems to me that Netanyahu has been hoping to be able to get away with defying the administration by getting congressional allies to pressure the White House, thereby causing the White House to decide that they’d rather give in than jeopardize their agenda. In part, this change in congress just reflects members of congress recognizing the realities of the situation. But I also think that the advocacy of new groups like J Street — currently running a campaign to support Obama’s position on the settlemeent issue — is helping to stiffen the spines of people with the right instincts.
64 Responses to “Netanyahu Surprised to Learn that Obama Means What He Says on Settlements”
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May 29th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
RE: members of Congress, I think that the ridiculousness of the settlements has become more and more obvious over the years. 10 years ago, the idea that settlements = no peace wasn’t widely understood, even among semi-informed observers; it seemed like most of the action was around Jerusalem, Golan Heights, and the right of return. But during the fruitless impasse of the Bush years, as the settlements inexorably expanded, it became more clear to more people that Israel was actively making this worse, and for no strategic reason other than bloody-mindedness.
Also, now that the two-state solution is the (mainstream) universally-accepted framework for considering the issue, it’s harder to distract people with claims predicated (often implicitly) on keeping the Palestinians eternally powerless.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I agree, good for Obama. Now comes the hard part, because the AIPAC hot line in the White House is going to ringing 24/7 as Israel’s 5th column gears up. And taking a tough stand with words is a lot different than actually using the real lever that Obama has over Israel – the money. As long as that flows to Israel, I not sure Bibi has a reason to do a damn thing differently.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
I find it unbeleivable that Congress is supporting the President on this. You would expect them to support Netanyahu. It can’t just be J-street, its a small organization.
What the hell is going on?
May 29th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Well, y’all know what I think about Zionism. It’s a disgrace.
And, of course, saint Obama is a Zionist too, or, at least, he’s playing one on TV.
May 29th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
I’m also personally amazed with Obama on this, as it’s yet another case of him saying something, and shockingly, meaning it. One has to wonder what years of careful loophole containing language has done to international perceptions of American foreign policy (well, not wonder hard…)
May 29th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Matt Y,
Great blog and good observation. Just wanted you to know “settlement” is misspelled in the last paragraph. Good job. Keep it up!
May 29th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Not that this has actually happened yet (and I hope it has) but if any Israeli Prime Minister would manage to blow Likud’s stranglehold on US policy, it would be Netanyahu. The guy’s dumber than a box of rocks and a pathological narcissist; basically he’s the Israeli Mayor Quimby (or George W. Bush).
May 29th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I can’t see how Netanyahu’s get around this. If he’s tough on West Bank setters, Lieberman and the right wing will crucify him; if he stays the course he risks jeopardizing Israel’s relationship with US, and he’s probably toast anyway.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I’m pretty shocked too that we seem to have something that vaguely resembles a rational policy on Israel and that we are actually following through on it. I’d almost come to accept as a given that America’s Israel policy would always teeter between “kind of bad” and “actively counter-productive.”
May 29th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Netanyahu groused, “What the hell do they want from me?”
I’m going to go out on limb here and guess they want a settlement freeze.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
It would be sweet to see AIPAC whiff on this one. I hardly dare to hope . . .
May 29th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Haim Saban: “And what am I bid for this $1 Million campaign donation? Going once. Going twice….”
May 29th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
The settlements may not do Israel any good, but dismantling them won’t accomplish anything, either. Hezbollah and Hamas simply aren’t interested in a peaceful 2 state outcome, and the split state theory (West Bank and Gaza) would work about as well as East Pakistan did. There are no good answers here; the Israelis are partly down the road to believing that their maximal positions cannot be attained, but the Palestinians still believe that a total victory is possible. Until both sides are willing to accept less than maximal conditions, no amount of engagement by any American administration will make any difference. Sound and Fury, signifying nothing.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Bibi is gone in six months. I’d bet anything on that.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Good for Obama. Finally someone in our government has realized that the Israelis can’t exactly go elsewhere to replace us if we decide not to blindly support them.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Total victory is not just possible, it’s inevitable. Racist colonial regimes fall sooner or later, no matter how brutal they are.
May 29th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Unless the U.S. government is willing to cut off support, who cares what Obama and Hillary say? The Israelis can keep expanding the settlements and wait to see whether Obama is willing to bite after barking.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
abb1 – there were no “Palestinians” until the 1960’s, when the designation was suddenly invented – so the idea that Israel is a colonial power is somewhat at odds with reality.
Reality is a lot messier. The area was mostly an uninhabited (beyond transient tribal people) wasteland until the late 19th century, when the Zionist movement started to send settlers there. The early Jewish settlers made enough of the area that Arabs moved in to trade with the new settlers. Things moved along like that for awhile, with the only real change being the Balfour declaration during WW1. At the time, the Brits managed to get local Arab leadership to publicly accept the idea of a Jewish homeland in the area.
After WWII, Jews (quite reasonably) decided Europe wasn’t terribly home-like in large numbers, and many of them went to what was then British Palestine. Israel was declared a nation in 1948 (with UN approval, so again, the idea of some usurping colonial power being introduced is a bit odd). This time, the Arab states went to war and – somewhat surprisingly – lost.
Things have stayed locked in that kind of mode ever since, with the displaced Arabs (those who fled or were driven out; both happened) calling themselves “Palestinians” starting in the 60’s. Before then, that wasn’t a designation in use, and the Arabs who were living there are mostly of the same vintage as the Jews who live there, in terms of length of residence…
May 29th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Nobody buys your bullshit, James Robertson. You’re a disgrace, an apologist for racist colonial regime, and probably a paid agent too.
Incidentally, before playing the UN card go tell your Zionist bosses to accept the borders defined by the UN partition. Come back when they do.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
James, that is 1970’s era revisionist, Israeli propaganda. Probably the best demolition of this narrative is Finklestein’s treatment of Joan Peter’s “From Time Immemorial”. Whatever you think of him, his work there is unimpeachable and I haven’t even seen anyone no matter how crazy ultra-zionist even attempt to rehabilitate that narrative after he was done. It’s not just bad scholarship, it’s intentionally malicious and mendacious and you can prove it with the source material.
You not only don’t know what you are talking about, but you have been actively miseducated.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
It’s actions like these that make me think Obama really is a canny strategist and not just another puppet in the game of Rich vs Poor. Generally speaking, I tend to give Obama a pass on issues like the banking crisis because of certain, shall we say, political realities. After all, if it took 30 years of walking into the woods to get us into this mess, don’t be surprised if it takes about that amount of time to get back out.
So the tests of his administration are on the margins at this point. Here we see that where the almighty bond traders don’t hold sway, Obama all of a sudden turns a lot less conciliatory. Gives me hope for the future.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Racist colonial regimes fall sooner or later, no matter how brutal they are.
This just shows the idiocy of substituting childish name-calling for analysis.
So, let’s try some analysis. The whole purpose of colonial regimes is to exploit the cheap labor of the colonized. So when the colonized unite and refuse to cooperate, the regime is in big trouble. But Israel isn’t a colonial regime and has long since stopped relying on Palestinian labor. The Palestinians just don’t have much leverage. So I wouldn’t get too excited about Hamas’ “inevitable” victory.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
I feel this is something that should have clicked a long time ago. Although some people are criticizing Obama saying he needs to focus his efforts elsewhere.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
abb1 – try actually rebutting instead of name calling – it might make sense. Ed: Try reading Mark Twain’s travelogue from the area when he visited in the 19th century. It was virtually uninhabited, outside of the (then small) center of Jerusuleum.
Facts are hard things, especially for ideologues who want to push a narrative. If I could rewind the clock to 1947, I’d redo US policy to invite all the Jews who went to Israel into the US instead, because setting up the modern state of Israel hasn’t made the Jews who went there safer, and it’s provided a non-stop political football for everyone, across the entire political spectrum. It also gives the Arab states a convenient way to distract their own populations from their own failings – it’s a non stop game of “look, a monkey!” for them. However, I can’t rewind the clock to 1947; the situation in that region is what it is.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
1. This is false. Palestinian nationalism first reared its head in the 19th century with the revolt against Mohammed Ali’s Egyptian armies. It has strengthened over time but to act like a bunch of Arabs took acid in the 60s and hallucinated a new Palestinian identity is pretty ignorant of the facts. Finkelstein took it down, as did Kimmerling, Khalidi, Hourani, etc.
2. Let’s pretend it’s true. So what? Over 700,000 people were expelled from their homes and have been occupied and/or in exile ever since then. Who cares how long they’ve been calling themselves Palestinians vs. something else?
May 29th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I suspect this’ll reinforce the statement I made a few days ago: the Israeli government is going to wait out the Obama Administration… on the assumption it’s only 3.75 years.
The real test will come with the next settlement project to turn earth. Will the Administration “do” something, even if only by inaction (ie. “Sorry Bibi, I’ve misplaced my checkbook”)? Or will they just whine about it?
May 29th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
James, I’ve read Twain’s book and if you haven’t you might want to be aware the man was a satirist with a particular eye for religious iconoclasty.
What you need to read is the census data from the Ottoman Empire and the Brits. There is a reason the best thing people pushing that bit of incredibly bad historical revisionism have to lean on a piece of comedy.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Use some common sense if nothing else, why in the hell would it be uninhabited?
May 29th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
It had a lot fewer residents because there wasn’t much in the way of systematic irrigation and land development going on before the Zionist era. It was largely unproductive desert before then.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
No, the members of Congress continue to be in the pocket of AIPAC and are making sure Obama knows his place:
http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2009/05/27/1005475/aipac-hits-75-percent-mark-again
This is all posturing, wishful thinking. If Obama really meant what he said, he would back it up with action. Honestly, tell me, anyone, what are we going to do if Israel refuses to budge on settlements? Sanctions???? Cut aid????
HAHAHAHA
Nothing has changed. Get real. Obama doesn’t mean sh**.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
So, let’s try some analysis. The whole purpose of colonial regimes is to exploit the cheap labor of the colonized.
OK, if you insist: racist colonialist settler regime. Importing cheap labor from Asia and sex-slaves from Eastern Europe.
James Robertson, I wouldn’t give a fuck about what did or didn’t happen in 1947, or what Mark Twain visited or didn’t visit. I can see what’s happening now.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Re Ed Marshall
Mr. Ed Marshall repeats the old canard of the Ottoman census. Unfortunately, the Ottoman census included Bedouins who were nomads and not permanent settlers. Thus, we have no way of knowing haw many of the Arab population were what are now known as Palestinians and how many were Bedouins. And I am afraid that Mr. marshall is going to have to do better then a lying sack of shit like Norman Finkelstein, associate of Holocaust deniers and favorite of stormfront.
Re spokeytown
And Mr. spokeytown forgets all about the equal number of Jews who were expelled from Arab countries after the 1948 war, most of who have been resettled in Israel. But of course, to the spokeytowns of the world, they don’t count.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Obama is doing the Israelis a huge favor. Most of them understand that the settlements are a disaster for Israel and need to be undone, but they can’t stick their necks out and oppose them.
Unless…aw, gee, would you look at that? The mean ol’ Americans are making us. Geez, that’s terrible. Oh, well, I guess we have no choice.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Zionists are a disaster for Israel. Until they are marginalized and removed from power no improvement is possible.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
It had a lot fewer residents because there wasn’t much in the way of systematic irrigation and land development going on before the Zionist era.
There is a story I believe in “pity the nation” where an Israeli was talking about the olive orchard they had moved to in the 60’s, they couldn’t figure out how the irrigation system worked. An Arab came out one day and started showing them how it works and they realize it used to be that guys orchard.
Palestine wasn’t an empty desert full of subhuman morons waiting for Jews to show up and fix everything, it’s just very convenient for people to pretend that’s how it’s was.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Re abb1
Zionism today,Zionism tomorrow, Zionism to the far horizon.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:37 pm
Zionists are a disaster for Israel.
In other words, people who favor a Jewish state are a disaster for the Jewish state. Very deep. Very Zen.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Zionists are a disaster for Israel.
What does that even mean? Zionism is the belief that there should be a country called Israel. This is like saying construction workers are a disaster for buildings.
May 29th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Re abb1
Before Mr. abb1 shows up with his totally erroneous claim that the Mossad was responsible for the exodus of Iraqi Jews, the following link is to a review of a book that give the lie to this nonsense.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346486533&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
May 29th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I do think Obama means what he says. I doubt that J Street et al. had much to do with Congressional solidarity with him on this issue however. Much more likely, being the careful politician he is, he lined this support up ahead of time. But to do that he had to have presented a coherent strategy to the Senators and Representatives he was lining up.
On the issue itself, I hope he can actually deliver something tangible in exchange for Israel delivering something tangible.
More generally, Obama seems to be aiming to put all parties to the test: Do they genuinely want a resolution of this conflict, and are they willing to make the concessions necessary to do achieve it? A “stress test” as it were. There’s some asymmetry here though. If Israel flunks the test, he has recourse. What does he do if it’s the Palestinians?
May 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Israel is a state, it’s not a “Jewish state”, it’s a state like any other state. Zionism is a militant ethnocentric political movement, similar to Nazism in Germany circa 1930s.
Zionists control Israel by excluding most of the native population and having imported millions of Zionists from all over the world and having made them instant citizens.
Their belief is not “that there should be a country called Israel”, obviously. I know you are not an idiot, so why are you saying this, may I ask?
May 29th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Israel is both a Jewish state and a “state like any other.” Abb1 may wish that weren’t so, but it’s always a mistake to confuse fantasies with reality.
I don’t even know what to say about Abb1’s odd belief that there’s some contradiction between being a Jewish state and being a state like any other.
May 29th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
[...] UPDATE: Two posts from Matt Y, here and here. [...]
May 29th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I don’t even know what to say about Abb1’s odd belief that there’s some contradiction between being a Jewish state and being a state like any other.
It’s not that odd, it’s more or less Judah Magnes or Einstein.
May 29th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
That’s like saying I forgot about the expulsion of Hutus from Rwanda. Seriously, what the hell? James Robertson was basically saying Palestinian identity is recent and therefore worthless and I said 1) not true and 2) even if true, it wouldn’t matter because uncertain political identity isn’t justification for someone to expel you from your house. Do you have a problem with that statement? And I know perfectly well about the Jews expelled from Arab countries and that sucks as well. In fact I remember exchanging posts with you and abb1 about this a week or two ago (my mistake, seriously get a room you two). Various other kinds of people have been expelled from their homes and that most likely also sucked. But “Hey, look over there!” isn’t a justification for ethnic cleansing, as you know perfectly well.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:30 am
To call Nazism a “militant ethnocentric political movement” is a bizarre understatement, at best, of its nature and goals.
It’s also a bizarrely partial characterization, at best, of Zionism. One might equally (mis-)characterize Irish, or Kurdish, or French Canadian, or Greek, or, of course, Palestinian nationalism, as a “militant ethnocentric political movement.” It would be strange to equate them with Nazism on this account.
Of course, the point of these disingenuous mischaracterizations of both Nazism and Zionism is to be able to equate them in the first place: the definitions are formed with the end in mind. It is, nauseatingly, necessary to repeat again that to compare Zionism with Nazism in this way is hate speech, because such a comparison is explictly intended and formed to wound people because of their religion or ethnic origin.
Masturbatory hate is an awfully ugly perversion.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:58 am
By the way Marty Peretz, Yglesias’s bete noir, points to an interesting article by Diehl in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803614.html
It accords with my own thinking about this situation. But I’m actually surprised by Abbas’s apparent indifference to the plight of Palestinians in Gaza. It’s true he has no control there. But he was elected to represent them.
I’m more optimistic that Obama knows what he’s doing than Diehl or certainly Peretz. But I could be wrong. If I were Israel, I’d accede to the freeze — but with a time limit and some serious milestones.
May 30th, 2009 at 2:20 am
Palestinian struggle is nothing like militant ethnocentric political movements of Zionism and Nazism. It’s a legitimate anti-colonial struggle of a native people for self-determination and freedom. Read any UN GA resolution on the subject. And, incidentally, they are entitled to use any means at their disposal to achieve their goal.
That is why they are destined to succeed and Zionism and Nazism are destined to end up in the garbage dump of history. Same will happen to any other ethnocentric ideology.
And you can have your nationalism – sing your Hava Nagila all you want, no one stops you – just stay away from politics, especially the militant kind.
May 30th, 2009 at 7:48 am
I don’t even know what to say about Abb1’s odd belief that there’s some contradiction between being a Jewish state and being a state like any other.
Really, Ragout? You find it odd that a state openly and officially representing interests of an ethnic group at the expense of all other ethnicities might be considered a perversion of the common concept of ’state’ as an entity representing all its citizens, huh.
Well, what can I say. That you’re a troglodyte, I suppose?
May 30th, 2009 at 9:40 am
Just like Zionism is one of dozens of nationalist movements in the world, Israel is one of dozens of nation-states, no different than Ireland or Italy. What’s odd is that Abb1 smears the Jewish nationalist as Nazis, but not, say, Sinn Fein.
May 30th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Here we get to the nub of the actual issue: projecting the West’s guilt for its colonial sins onto the Jews, and then crucifying them for those sins. This is exactly the mechanism of anti-Semitism in the West historically.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Uh….
Zi⋅on⋅ism [zahy-uh-niz-uhm] Show IPA
–noun
a worldwide Jewish movement that resulted in the establishment and development of the state of Israel.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Almost every state, outside of the Americas and Africa, is a nation-state. Germany, France, England, Poland, Russia, Japan, China, India, Egypt, Bulgaria, Italy, Spain, Portugal…
What an odd statement.
Huh? The history of Western antisemitism goes back a millennium and a half before colonialism. Another odd statement.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:42 am
Really, Ragout, ethnocentric parties rule Italy or Ireland? That’s news to me. Wanna elaborate on this?
I know, I know, you’re pretending you don’t understand the difference between a nation and an ethnic group; pretending that ‘Jew’ the same sort of thing as ‘Italian’.
Well, fuck you, Ragout, and all your comrades, and the games you play; all you cowardly militant racist swine. You’re worse than Nazis, at least the Nazis aren’t afraid to say who they are.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Oh, and fuck you too, joe from Lowell. Pretending that France is a state of some ethnic group obviously makes you one of them. No one can be that ignorant and stupid.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
joe, my comment was a bit compressed. Of course the sins or worries, social and personal, that have been projected onto the Jews historically have varied depending on the sins or worries of the era. In the case of pseudo-liberal leftist hatred of Israel, the sins in question are the sins of Western colonialism, which are real enough G-d knows. Hence the emotion all out of proportion to the actuality. One would imagine that Israel has treated the Palestinians the way, say, the French treated the Algerians given the level of loathing one finds. The reality of course is that the French killed about a million Algerians. For that matter the British killed 50 thousand people in Kenya during the Mau-Mau rebellion. And of course we’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq. And the Germans under Nazism, with whom the Israelis are compared above, killed 10 or 12 million people in mass extermination camps. Not exactly equivalent. So then you have to ask, why would people think something like that. What function does it serve?
In a less virulent way, and even though he’s Jewish himself, Yglesias does the same thing.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Why, Larry, Zionists are still alive and kicking and you have nuclear bombs. You still have a fair chance to come out Number One in your competition with the Nazis.
May 30th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Mr. Abb1 would f*ck his mother if he knew who she was.
May 30th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
For #46 larry birnbaum:
“It is, nauseatingly, necessary to repeat again that to compare Zionism with Nazism”…IS TRUE
May 30th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
For # 58 Unrepentant Zionist who wrote;
“Mr. Abb1 would f*ck his mother if he knew who she was.”
Undoubtedly after your mother finished sucking his dick.
How does that feel, U.Z. – why don’t you grow up and give the lewd ad hominems a miss.
May 30th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Email me when the foreign aid is cut off. And the settlements actually stop expanding.
Until then, it’s STILL just talk.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Yeah “settlement” was mispelled. It is spelled “illegal land grab!”
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:03 am
[...] remarked twice before that I’ve been surprised by the level of seriousness with which Barack Obama seems to [...]
June 3rd, 2009 at 7:43 am
[...] his fickle fundamentalist allies and a liberal and determined American president, seems flustered (via): Referring to Clinton’s call for a settlement freeze, Netanyahu groused, “What the hell do [...]