Obama still has leverage over Israel?

Link

In the FT/ here

"....... it is worth stepping outside the hothouse for a minute to examine whether it is that simple: whether Mr Obama will be content to see his ambitious strategy of reconciliation with the Arab and Muslim worlds held hostage by the obdurate obstruction of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu......

...... When he told Israel that “part of being a good friend is being honest”, the country’s political elites got an inkling that decades of double-talk on the conflict with the Palestinians were over. When he added that “just as Israel’s right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine’s”, any remaining doubts were surely dissipated. Weren’t they?

His implicit comparison of the “intolerable” situation of the Palestinians under Israeli “occupation” with the struggles of African slaves in America and South African black people under apartheid surely signalled to the irredentist right in Israel and their allies in Washington that they were dealing with someone who means business. This was language seldom heard from an American leader. Yet in the subsequent test of wills over US demands for a total freeze on settlement-building it does look as if Mr Obama has backed down.

... Netanyahu continues boastfully to expand the settlements, ..... Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, greets his few cosmetic gestures as “unprecedented”.....With nothing to show Abbas says he is withdrawing from politics.....

The Arabs believe that in 1992-96, at the height of the peace process, Israel got a peace dividend, without ending the occupation. ...

.... as US president he holds some cards.

Israelis have a record of turning against leaders who place the vital US alliance in jeopardy: Menachem Begin learnt this, Yitzhak Shamir learnt this and so, to a limited extent, did Mr Netanyahu, when he was voted out of office in 1999.

Vital to that alliance is US support in the UN Security Council, where it has cast 29 vetoes to shield Israel from condemnation for its actions in the occupied territories. Imagine the signal the US would send were it even to abstain. Or, better still, if the US and its allies took a blueprint for a two-state solution – the outlines of which have long been clear – to the council and voted it through. This game is not over yet."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 8:13 PM