What happens when you slight the most powerful man in the world? As Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu recently discovered, you get frostbitten. Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, will no doubt hope that policy fire and brimstone follows suit. It's no secret that under President Obama, US-Israel relations have deteriorated from “best friends in the Middle East” to “please stop talking.” The contrasting personalities of both leaders are partly to blame. Obama glides, not so much as walks, and speaks in measured tones. Netanyahu, meanwhile, is prone to impassioned hyperbole, and thundering the Hebrew equivalent of “Fee-fi-fo-fum”. This cold front escalated when Netanyahu gave a controversial speech to the US Congress. His March 3, 2015 address, at the invitation of the Republican party, was boycotted by almost 60 Democrats. Despite White House warnings, Netanyahu spoke his mind on the US-Iran nuclear talks, calling any agreement “a very bad deal. We're better off without it.” Along with his usual tirade against the ayatollahs, the bottom-line was that Obama could not be trusted with the security of Israel. Even as Republicans whooped in agreement, others shook their heads at Congress being used to bully the American president.
President Obama himself was unimpressed. Speaking to reporters the same day, Obama said Netanyahu's speech was “nothing new,” and offered no alternatives to just “double down on sanctions.” A no-deal, he said, would let Iran pursue its nuclear program “without constraint.” Netanyahu's dissing, however, was more calculated than simple Obama or Iran-bashing. He was running a reelection campaign, and the center-left coalition was catching up in the polls. His doomsday speech was meant to scare up right wing votes at home, and have the Republicans override Obama's veto on a new Iran sanctions bill.
On the happy trails of one-upmanship, Netanyahu kept saying the wrong things. In a March 16 interview with the NRG website, he stressed that no Palestinian state would be created on his watch. Then on election day, Netanyahu's Facebook page warned: “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.” Though he later apologized for both comments, the White House's immediate reaction was critical. Its spokesperson, Josh Earnest, labeled the comments a “transparent effort to marginalize Arab Israeli votes.” The US had been waiting for a chance to cut Netanyahu down to size, and his rhetoric duly obliged.
On March 21, 2015, the suggestions of a US policy shift toward Israel surfaced. In an interview with the Huffington Post, President Obama said he took the reelected Netanyahu “at his word,” that a Palestinian state “wouldn't happen during his prime ministership.” That said, America would “evaluate what other options are available” to avoid chaos in the region, if Israel no longer cared. Robert Danin, senior fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations, said that it is “a distinct possibility” that the US could abstain from future UN resolutions opposing Israel.
Since the early 1970s, America has vetoed UN Security Council resolutions unfavorable to Israel, such as those against its operations in Gaza and Lebanon. However, with mutual trust icing up, US opposition is no longer guaranteed, at least until 2016. It is as Eytan Gilboa, of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, says: “I think Netanyahu has given up on Obama and vice versa.” This suits the French just fine, and they are drafting a new resolution for Palestine. France's Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, happily noted: “I hope that the partners who were reluctant will not be reluctant anymore.”
The French plan seeks a binding timeframe in which to refine the two-state solution, based on Israel's pre-1967 borders, and Jerusalem as the shared capital. Robert Serry, the UN Mideast envoy, also recently urged the Security Council to update its dead-bill-walking on regional peace: Resolution 242. For years, the wording loopholes have prevented significant progress toward a Palestinian state. The Arab League insists that Israel has to give back all territory captured in the 1967 war. Israel counters that the resolution requires all its neighbors to recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state.
The Palestinian Authority owes Netanyahu a debt of gratitude, for his tactless politics are reenergizing the cause. Netanyahu's reelection sound bites have reinforced the worst assumptions about him, and resurfaced the “apartheid state” comment made by US Secretary of State John Kerry last year. Mahmoud Abbas wants to make the Israeli occupation costly, and the European Union looks eager to help. To that end, on April 1,2015, the non-state of Palestine became a full member of the International Criminal Court based in The Hague, Netherlands. This gives it jurisdiction over alleged war crimes committed in occupied Palestine since June 2014, much to Israel's chagrin.
Netanyahu mistook President Obama's easy gait for a lack of steel, and Israel may suffer the consequences. He could have gotten away with it in Obama's first term, but now it is legacy-building time for the US president. The renormalized relations with Cuba and successful nuclear talks with Iran are both paramount to this legacy. This is also why he has religiously stuck by his promise to bring all US troops back home, despite the Syria and Yemen conflicts. If Obama has indeed made this personal, the Palestinians can sneak in a few statehood milestones before Netanyahu shrugs off the frost.
