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Opinion

Obama's Mini-Victory in Netanyahu's Middle East

By Christoph Schult in Jerusalem

At first glance, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer to recognize a Palestinian state looks like a step towards peace. But the conditions he has set are so tough that there is little chance of an agreement working. Still, it shows that Obama's message has been heard.

It is often the case that the location of a speech says more than its actual content. US President Barack Obama chose Cairo University and the Islamic university Al-Azhar as the co-hosts for his recent speech aimed at Arabs and the Muslim world. For the Israeli response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, chose the religious Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. In his Sunday speech, Netanyahu said that Israel was prepared to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state under certain strict conditions. But the locale -- an institution popular among the Israeli settler movement with a Web site that speaks of "the compatability of the Torah with science" -- spoke volumes.

Indeed, the director of the right-wing Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, who issued the invitation to Netanyahu, recently declared the two-state solution as "irrelevant."

Many people had been clinging to hopes that Netanyahu had learned from his first term in office 10 years ago. "He has changed," was the off-the-record message sources close to the prime minister repeatedly gave journalists in recent months. On Sunday morning, the daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot announced Netanyahu's address as the "speech of his life."

But Netanyahu is no Frederik Willem de Klerk, the last president of apartheid-era South Africa who threw his former beliefs overboard. He is not even an Ariel Sharon, who altered course in evicting all the Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Netanyahu does not even compromise when faced with a much greater threat than that of Palestinian rocket and terrorist attacks, namely Iran and its nuclear program. Instead of making an effort to meet moderate Arab governments and the Palestinians halfway, in a bid to unite the front against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's ambitions for regional power, he took Ahmadinejad's re-election as an occasion to impose limits on the Palestinians.

In his speech, Netanyahu did recognize the existence of a "Palestinian community." He said it has to be accepted that, in addition to the Jews, another people has a legitimate claim to part of the "Jewish homeland." He even used the term "Palestinian state" three times -- a revision to his famous 2003 speech where he said that a "yes" to the Jewish state meant a "no" to a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu, though, has established a number of conditions which are almost impossible for the Palestinians to accept. No army, no control of external borders, no control of its own airspace, no freedom to forge international pacts -- hardly the definition of a sovereign state. Furthermore, Netanyahu has ruled out given the Palestianians East Jerusalem, captured by the Israelis in 1967, as their capital.

The office of the moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas promptly responded by saying that Netanyahu had "sabotaged" the basis for negotiations.

The Abbas response is excessive. But he likely isn't the only one dissatisfied with Netanyahu's remarks. The statement from Washington was carefully crafted and avoided specifics. It welcomed Netanyahu's initiative, calling it -- without going into further details -- an "important step forward."

The vagueness was not surprising. Netanyahu may have acceded to Obama's first major demand, namely that Israel recognize a Palestinian state. But in response to his second -- that Israel put a total stop to settlement building in the West Bank -- Netanyahu responded with a clear no, saying that the "residents" in the settlements need to be able "to live normal lives ... like families elsewhere." He meant that existing settlements would be expanded.

Netanyahu is betting that, in return for his commitment to a Palestinian state, the US will drop its demand for a full ban on settlement construction. That, though, might be a mistake. Netanyahu already seems not to have taken seriously Obama's announcement of an "aggressive" peace policy. Now, he is fighting US public opinion. According to a poll by the US market research firm Zogby International, 50 percent of American voters support a tough approach by the US president on the settlement issue. Among those who voted for Obama, that figure is 71 percent.

"Netanyahu should know that if he makes empty promises and tries to wriggle out of a profound disagreement with the US over the settlements, he will risk insulting and angering not only the American president but also a large swath of the American people," warned the political consultant Dan Fleshler, who is the author of the recently published book "Transforming America's Israel Lobby: The Limits of Its Power and the Potential for Change," in an op-ed for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Indeed, Netanyahu's lobbyists have tried in recent weeks to win the support of US senators for -- at least -- the expansion of existing settlements. But even the main pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has spoken out clearly in favor of the establishment of a Palestinian state. AIPAC, writes Fleshler in his op-ed, "is terrified of a confrontation with a wildly popular Democratic president whose party controls Congress."

But with his cautious commitment to a demilitarized Palestinian state, Israel's prime minister has demonstrated one thing: If the Americans exert pressure, he makes concessions. Maybe not right away, but someday. And maybe not much, but a little nonetheless.

In his speech, Netanyahu referred to former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, for whom the BESA center is named and who signed the 1978 Camp David Accords which led to Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula. Begin's son Benni is now a minister in Netanyahu's coalition government and is one of the toughest hardliners in Netanyahu's Likud Party. "If the two-state solution is the only solution, then there is no solution," Begin told an audience of veteran Likud politicians in a speech last week.

Benni Begin already served as a minister under Netanyahu 10 years ago. At the time, he resigned when Netanyahu handed part of the West Bank city of Hebron back to the Palestinians. Only when Begin is once again forced to resign will Obama have achieved something in the Middle East.