Netanyahu ponders Obama’s vision of a new Middle East

President Barack Obama’s vision of a new Middle East, unveiled this week in the midst of the Arab Spring and in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden, has left Israel wondering how it is going to fit in.

This was not a soundbite or a media interview – this was the president of the United States addressing the world from a pulpit in the State Department. No amount of future spin will undo what he has set forth as US policy, which is to back all democracy movements across the Arab world, but at the same time has left Israel with a desperate conundrum: how can Israel continue to refuse to return to its pre-Six Day War borders without confronting its greatest benefactor? Binyamin Netanyahu may have rejected outright Obama’s policy – is it possible that he didn’t see it coming? – but it is hard to see what the Israeli prime minister can do about it other than hope that Obama’s words will be forgotten by the media after his visit to Washington is overtaken by other events, so that he can start stalling for time yet again. For now, this is the reality he will have to live with. Obama insists that in any peace settlement Israel must feel secure within its borders, but it is clear that in his view turning the clock back to 1967 is a starting point for any meaningful negotiations to end decades of strife and bring about the creation of a Palestinian state. But does Netanyahu want a Palestinian state? He seems quite at home with the decades-old status quo of brinkmanship involving conflict, followed by negotiations, followed by conflict, followed by more negotiations, ad infinitum. Netanyahu says the 1967 borders would be indefensible for Israel, and claims the Bush administration guaranteed in 2004 that Israel would not have to withdraw, not least because some major Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria would be left stranded in a new Palestinian state. Obama, who ignored the vexed question of what to do with Jerusalem, has admitted to aides that he expects Netanyahu to have a hard time trying to sell the withdrawal plan back home – but he wants to build on other developments in the region, such as a unity deal signed between Fatah and Hamas earlier this month, which for now, at least, has repaired the bitter rift between the two Palestinian movements which are dominant in the West Bank and Gaza respectively. The agreement removed the Israeli complaint that it cannot talk peace with the Palestinians because it doesn’t know who to negotiate with. And, with US pressure mounting on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to stop persecuting pro-democracy activists; Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi’s regime now closer to crumbling; democrats in Egypt and Tunisia promised US support; and Bahrain’s regime coming in for harsh criticism from Obama (even as David Cameron greeted Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa at Downing Street), Netanyahu’s intransigence looks oddly out of place in a changing world – more akin to the antics of the Arab despots he so despises but who are no longer there or will be departing soon. Israel has long boasted, and rightly so, that it is the only truly democratic state in the Middle East. That seems to be changing, but Netanyahu has said little about these developments – does he fear the birth of Arab democracies, or suspect that they will fail only to pose a greater future threat to his country? Either way, it is out of his hands. The Israeli leader has bitter opponents at home, where liberals – and there are many – have accused him of turning his country into a pariah state. Netanyahu has a chance to make history, treading carefully as he must, in the direction of a new Middle East order, which Obama at least clearly believes is unfolding. But will he?

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