Netanyahu to Form Committee to Tackle Int’l Lawsuits

"Netanyahu's Plan"

"The embarrassment is not just on the ground. It is climbing uphill," Shalom Yerushalmi writes in Ma'ariv today:

The political concerns and suspicion of Netanyahu are mixed together. In the course of this week I talked with many ministers, mostly from the Likud. None of them really know where Netanyahu is heading or how far he will go, if at all. None of them is willing to give an interview and get entangled in statements which are liable to anger Netanyahu already early on. All of them are drowning in the sea of threatening signals making their way from Washington and do not always quite understand the contradictory responses emerging from the Prime Minister's Bureau. And there is also some criticism. Hidden, of course.

The climax was Wednesday. The American downpour flooded the papers.

Vice President Joe Biden said again that Israel must adopt the two-state solution unequivocally, stop construction in the settlements and dismantle outposts. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said that the United States' ability to confront Iran depended on progress with the Palestinians. Obama's national security advisor, General James Jones, promised a tough stance towards Israel. "This matter has us truly worried," said sources in Netanyahu's bureau.

"As long as Obama and Netanyahu cannot be heard speaking in their own voices everything is open," says a senior minister. "Meanwhile its is a battle of ricochets. I am convinced that Netanyahu will not eventually say that he supports a two-state solution. He can't. He would cause himself electoral damage. He ran on a completely different platform. His credibility in the public's eye would be damaged yet again, and for him this is a critical matter. You can't take such a sharp turn, even if you're under constraints. Perhaps he will explain this to Obama."...

For Netanyahu, the political standstill is something of an ideology.

Negotiations, he believes, are a waste of time, because of Palestinian insistence on the matters of Jerusalem, the right of return and their refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He does not identify any leader on the their side who can make meaningful decisions in this situation in which the Palestinian Authority is divided. The most he is willing to offer them is gradual economic peace under the assumption that economic growth in the Palestinian Authority will weaken nationalist aspirations there. Yesterday he appointed Silvan Shalom, the regional development minister, the chairmanship of a ministerial committee which will propose various economic projects for the Palestinians.

"Netanyahu will do a lot of process but very little things concerning peace," says one of the ministers before the historic visit to Washington. It is not for naught that the minister reminds us of the event which took place in the beginning of January, a few days before the election, when Netanyahu, Begin, Bugi Yaalon and other ministers signed a hard line pact with Effi Eitam and the religious Zionists. "The Likud sees the enterprise of settling the Land of Israel as the defensive shield of the state and as the realization of the Zionist vision," it stated and was subsequently signed ceremonially. Sharon would have made a frame out of these agreements. Netanyahu model 2009 is perhaps a different story.

Posted by G, Z, & or B at 11:29 AM