In the current debate over Israeli settlement of Palestinian lands, attention is being diverted away from the reality of the Hebrew state taking possession of additional Arab lands in the occupied West Bank and dismantling the bases of the sought-after Palestinian state, and towards the discrepancy between estimations made by the administration of President Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu's government. This week Obama sent, almost at the same time, his Vice President Joseph Biden to Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan, and his Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This means that US action has in fact linked the talks engaged in by the two US officials, and as a matter of fact made their task one and the same: to launch indirect negotiations between the Netanyahu government and the Palestinian Authority and to gather support for strengthened sanctions against Iran to prevent it from achieving its presumed plans to obtain nuclear weapons. In this sense, Washington considered that the Israeli slap-in-the-face directed at Biden while he was present in occupied Jerusalem also reached Gates's mission in the Gulf. This is what was expressed, boldly this time, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she considered that the step taken by Israel of announcing housing plans in East Jerusalem were “a deeply negative signal about Israel's approach to the bilateral relationship”. This means that the State Secretary established a clear link between the Israeli stance that undermined indirect negotiations with the Palestinians, which was the purpose sought-after by Biden, and the confrontation with Iran, which was the purpose Gates was working on. In other words, the US's approach makes holding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations the other face of the confrontation with Iran, while the Netanyahu government does not want to pay the price of such a link. Indeed, it asserts at the same time continuing to build settlements, without concern for it undermining negotiations with the Palestinians, and insistently demands that the United States escalate pressures on Iran, without concern for the fact that the elements of such pressure, some of which are Arab, cannot be obtained without a concession from Israel on the issue of negotiations with the Palestinians. That is the meaning of the “fundamental” dispute aroused by Clinton during her meeting with Netanyahu two days ago. She was not fooled by the lie about the timing of announcing the decision to build housing complexes in East Jerusalem, and the Israeli apology for it, like Biden was. Indeed, the Secretary of State hinted to the fact that Israel's purpose was to sabotage US policy, while the Vice President did not consider, at least publicly, that Israel had any ill intent. And while the Palestinian Authority, and with it the Arabs, continue to wager on US intervention and pressure on Israel, in order for it to retract its new settlement-building plans, the Netanyahu government is wagering specifically on such plans in order to remain in power, thus pleasing the radical parties it is formed of, and in order to keep the Likud united under the leadership of the Prime Minister. And while Netanyahu clings to remaining at the head of the ruling coalition, he conceals his radical right-wing policy behind the demands of his extremist allies in Shas and Yisrael Beitenu, on the background of the suspicious silence of the Labor Party and its leader Defense Minister Ehud Barak, while the leader of Kadima, Tzipi Livni, has laid down the conditions of getting rid of the religious extremists and of complying with circumstances appropriate for negotiating with the Palestinians in order to join the government. Thus it seems that the end of the US-Israeli test of strength is not near, that a return to corresponding approaches between the United States and Israel will not take place under Netanyahu's current government, and that any negotiations with the Palestinians will not prove fruitful in terms of permanent solution issues. In the absence of a surprise that would radically alter matters in the region, the Obama Administration will not succeed at bringing Israel closer to its method and approach to the two problems of negotiations with the Palestinians and the Iranian nuclear issue. In fact, the US will remain hostage to being tossed around by Iranian and Israeli extremism, in a game in which it will lose more of its credit and credibility …while waiting for Washington to change this approach or to push for anticipated elections in Israel in order to remove Netanyahu.
