Benjamin Netanyahu became the Prime Minister of Israel for the second time this week. Two and a half months ago Barack Obama became President of the United States. Both men were replacing disgraced right wing leaders that their respective countries were more than happy to be rid of. The difference is that in America the new government is vastly to the left of the one it replaced; in Israel the new government is further to the right than the old one (especially when it comes to the all important issues of Gaza and the West Bank). In terms of outlook, worldview and simple ideology the two could scarcely be farther apart. But Obama is going to be around for at least four years, and possibly eight. Israeli governments tend to have shorter life spans and this new one has all but assured itself of failure before it even gets started.
Netanyahu’s first premiership, which ran from 1996-1999, was, by almost any measure, a failure. Reconciliation with the Palestinians had been making tremendous progress right up until 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The election the following year brought Netanyahu to power and three years of perfunctory negotiation. Netanyahu had inherited a peace process that had already gone father than he would’ve liked, but he could not walk back what had already happened. (The Clinton Administration hated his guts.) So he sat on his hands for three years, became increasingly unpopular and was soundly turned out of office. Now Netanyahu once again finds himself in the big chair and once again finds an American Democrat on the other end of the telephone.
The most prominent disagreements between the two men are the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the question of relations with Iran. Netanyahu has always been a proponent of the settlements and there probably isn’t much that Obama can do about it. When it comes to Iran though, Obama has a lot more freedom to act.
Amidst the usual hysterical bullshit about Iran in this country (e.g. the ridiculous letter from House Democrats to Obama) there have been signs of progress. It’s clear as day that Obama is determined to make a good faith effort at seriously improving relations with Iran. This stands in stark contrast to the way Iran is viewed by the new Israeli government, as this Haaretz article makes abundantly clear:
Upon taking office this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a strategic threat to Israel, and that neutralizing that threat is a top priority of his new administration.
In the interview with the Financial Times, Gates said he believed that Iran would not cross the nuclear threshold, or “red line”, this year. He estimated that it would take Tehran between one to three years to reach the point it possessed enough know-how to produce nuclear weapons.
Gates’ assessment is at odds with that offered by Israel’s defense establishment. Last month, Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin told lawmakers that Iran has “crossed the technological threshold” for making a nuclear bomb.
Iran is such a preoccupation in Israel that the new government is more or less openly talking about airstrikes, a plan of action so lunatic and counterproductive that the even Bush Administration didn’t go through with it. Of course, for Israel to bomb targets in Iran they’d need to fly over Iraq and to do that they’d need Obama’s permission. But he isn’t going to give it to them; doing so would cause enormous and violent reaction in Iraq, wreaking havoc with his plans to extract US forces by the end of 2011. To put it another way, which of the following two things does Barack Obama care more about, successfully getting America out of Iraq, or paranoid Israeli fantasies about Iran? Netanyahu can wail all he wants about Iran, but he cannot actually do anything except watch Obama try to negotiate with them and hope for the worst.
Meanwhile, Avigdor Lieberman, his controversial right-right-right-wing Foreign Minister, is off to a pretty bad start. He’s pissed of Egypt, far and away Israel’s most important Arab non-enemy. He’s openly dismissive of the Palestinians, which aggravates the American government. And he’s about to be charged with corruption, which may or may bring the government down (depending on whether or not his party leaves the coalition if he’s forced to give up his cabinet position).
Netanyahu’s government is, in other words, starting out in a terrible position and it has almost nowhere to go but down. So long as he’s willing to pay the price in terms of international scorn he can continue to hurt the Palestinians as much as he likes. But he cannot do anything about Iran other than try to undermine Obama’s diplomacy. Nor can he force Hamas from power in Gaza or make the world sympathetic to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He’s stuck and he hasn’t even started yet.
Israel is in a more difficult position than it was when Netanyahu assumed power thirteen years ago. He didn’t do much then, and, given the current situation, he looks unlikely to do much now. Barring a big surprise* or a change of character, the only real question is how long his government will stagger forward until it collapses under its own weight. A year? Two? Three? Who knows? Israel doesn’t have any good options at the moment, but the least bad one, embracing the two state solution and radically curtailing the settlements, is pretty much the opposite of what Netanyahu stands for.
So sit back, sports fans, for an Israeli government that’s going to be both lethal (mostly to Palestinians but to a few Israelis as well) and boring (because no substantive changes are likely to be made, other than further expansion of the settlements).
*Note: I read Seymour Hersh’s article about Syrian-Israeli negotiations in The New Yorker, but it would be wildly out of character for Netanyahu to agree to any proposal that would relinquish control over the Golan Heights. Moreover:
Netanyahu himself-in what was widely seen as a plea for votes-declared two days before the elections that he would not return the Golan Heights.
Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, who served on Israeli peace delegations in 1995 and 2001 and also as an adviser to Prime Minister Barak, said that Netanyahu “may have huge coalition problems, not least within his own Likud Party,” and that he “may have to publicly disavow any land-for-peace agreement, given his political position. Can the Syrians swallow that? If they can’t, it means that the only option left will be secret talks.”
This is the fundamental problem with the idea that Netanyahu could have a Nixon-to-China moment with the Syrians. His coalition partners might abandon him if he even publicly spoke with the Syrians; it’s very unlikely that they trust him enough to go along if he showed up one morning with an agreement in hand. Besides, Netanyahu doesn’t seem like the type to fall on his political sword in order to advance peace with Syria.
[...] months ago I predicted doom for Benjamin Netanyahu’s second stint as Israel’s Prime Minister. My conclusion was based on [...]