by Mitchell Plitnick
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States has ended in an unprecedented failure. On the Palestinian front, the Iranian front and the domestic US front, Netanyahu’s efforts last week ran badly aground. Let’s review the categories.
Iran
Netanyahu himself illustrated his greatest failure: his attempt to [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States has ended in an unprecedented failure. On the Palestinian front, the Iranian front and the domestic US front, Netanyahu’s efforts last week ran badly aground. Let’s review the categories.
Iran
Netanyahu himself illustrated his greatest failure: his attempt to divert the conversation about Iran by making a big show of intercepting a ship carrying rockets, ostensibly, according to Israel, headed for the Gaza Strip. Bemoaning the lack of global outrage that he had hoped would sabotage the talks between Iran and world powers on the nuclear issue, Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet upon his return that: “”The goal of seizing the arms ship was to expose Iran’s true face. I say this in order to bring it to the attention of Ms. Ashton, who is now visiting Tehran, and I wish to ask her whether she asked her hosts about the shipment of weapons to terrorist organizations.”
In fact, there are very serious questions about the incident that are not being raised. It may be best that they’re not, because it is a reflection of the minor impact the incident has thus far had on the talks with Iran. The timing of the Israeli intercept was obviously staged to coincide with Netanyahu’s visit to the US to speak at the annual AIPAC conference and to meet with US President Barack Obama. As Amir Rappaport points out, the operation was being planned for months and was carried out far outside of Israeli waters, so the timing was no accident.
The plan fails in its very conception, though. At no point did Iran agree to stop its support for Hezbollah and Hamas in order to pursue these talks, nor did anyone expect them to. But other questions can be raised here as well. Was this, as Netanyahu alleges, Iran showing its “true face” as it masquerades behind the apparent moderation of Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif or was it, as many observers suspect, an attempt by Iranian hardliners to undermine the efforts of the moderates? Indeed, there is some question as to whether the weapons were even intended for Gaza.
It is also odd that weapons from Syria are brought to Iran to be smuggled all the way back to Gaza; the point of the Iran-Syria connection is for such flows to run in the opposite direction, although this could, perhaps, be explained by the ongoing civil war in Syria. In part, that explanation is connected to increased Israeli surveillance of Syrian munitions. That, however, raises the question of why Iran, knowing how closely Israel is watching Syria, would engage in such an operation now.
There are many questions about this incident, not the least of which is the veracity of Israel’s version of events, absent any proof they have made public about the weapons’ destination; they could have been heading for Hamas, to Islamic Jihad (as Israel claims) in Gaza, to anti-government militias in Egypt, to groups in Sudan… There is a lot here that is unclear at best in the Israeli version of events, although certainly nothing to prove that any part of it is untrue.
But what is clear is that the response from the United States and Europe is considerably less than Netanyahu had hoped for. No one believes this shows Iran’s “true face” because no one ever believed that engagement on the nuclear issue by itself was going to change Iran’s position and policy vis–à–vis Israel. What can do that, as Zarif has strongly indicated, is an agreement that the Palestinians clearly accept. So, where are we with that?
Palestinians and the Kerry peace plan
Netanyahu didn’t have much to say about peace with the Palestinians, but what little he did say was a clear attempt to negate any possibility of success on the part of US Secretary of State John Kerry. His very first remark to the fawning crowd at the AIPAC conference was a greeting “from Jerusalem, the eternal, undivided capital of Israel and the Jewish people.” Not surprisingly, this did not sit well outside the hall of sycophants at AIPAC. His only other substantive statement was a call on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state,” something neither Jews nor Israelis can even agree to a definition of and that everyone knows is a non-starter for Abbas.
This demand is a threadbare attempt to get the Palestinians to acknowledge, before an agreement, that they have no claim to a return of refugees (fair for Israel to try to win in talks if they want, but unreasonable to demand as a precondition, as Israel generally has), that Palestinian citizens of Israel must be content with second-class status and most of all, that the Zionist historical narrative is more legitimate than the Palestinian one. No leader of any people would ever agree to such a thing, and Netanyahu is well aware of this.
But outside of the lock-step supporters of Israel in AIPAC and their fellow travelers to the right of that organization, no one is buying into this demand even though its crucial for Netanyahu. For months now, it has been getting clearer and clearer that Kerry’s efforts were likely to fail and much of what both Netanyahu and Abbas have been doing and saying has been geared toward escaping blame, especially US blame, for this likely failure. Bibi needs the demand for recognition of a “Jewish state” to be seen as reasonable, but he’s not winning the battle.
“The level of mistrust is as large as any level of mistrust I’ve ever seen, on both sides,” Kerry told a House of Representatives Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday. With Netanyahu now back in Israel and Abbas slated to come to Washington next week, this is a clear statement of pessimism from the one man who, whatever the reality of the talks, has insisted on maintaining a show of optimism. The prospect of failure is becoming more certain, but thus far, Netanyahu has failed to gain the upper hand in escaping blame, as Ehud Barak did with Bill Clinton in 2000.
The US domestic audience
On the US front, the situation is unprecedented. The good wishes most US citizens hold for Israel remain steady, indicating the same widespread support for Israel’s security that has always existed. But the war-weary United States is withdrawing into itself and the diminishing support for Israeli policies is a reflection of this. However, that’s far from the only cause of the new situation Israel finds itself in.
Relationships between Israeli leaders and US presidents have varied. Barack Obama is not the first to have a rocky relationship with an Israeli Prime Minister. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush did not always get on well with Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, respectively. On the other hand, Bill Clinton was practically a groupie for Yitzhak Rabin and had a very warm relationship with his political successor, Ehud Barak. Similarly, George W. Bush called Ariel Sharon a mentor, and continued to get along famously with Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert. Yet through all these relationships, bad and good, Israel always maintained warm ties with both major US parties. AIPAC prided itself for decades on its bi-partisan reach.
Netanyahu has severely damaged that bipartisanship. From his deep ideological connection to US neoconservatives, to his barely hidden meddling in US electoral politics, he has alienated Democrats. Those Democrats remain dedicated to Israel’s security, or, in some cases, to AIPAC-directed campaign contributions. But with his repeated attempts to draw the United States into deepening conflict and possibly war with Iran, Netanyahu has forced Democrats to choose between their constituents and AIPAC. That’s a battle AIPAC would never win, but Netanyahu seemed to believe that AIPAC could do anything. For all those who accused John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt of demonizing “Jewish power” in their book on the Israel lobby, it seems it was Netanyahu who imagined an omnipotent lobby for his country in the US and wildly overestimated their power.
While Bibi spoke to AIPAC and other US audiences, article after article — in the Huffington Post, Foreign Policy, the Washington Examiner, Israel’s YNet, and other sites – proclaimed AIPAC’s diminishing influence. It really isn’t surprising. Bibi has tried to increase US involvement in the Middle East at a time when most in the US, despite being willing to continue to fund Israel and help it out at the United Nations, want to reduce our involvement in the region. And, while Bibi can talk the talk of the US right-wing, most Jews in the United States are liberals. With voices who support the rights of Palestinians as equal to Israelis gaining prominence, US Jews are looking for ways to reconcile their liberalism with their support of Israel in a way they have not had to in the past. Bibi is trying to push them back to the old narratives, and they aren’t working.
What if Netanyahu fails?
That’s a reasonable question. Right now, there is no serious challenger to Netanyahu on the horizon, but that can change if his bungling of the US relationship becomes more of a problem for the average Israeli. The challenge could come from the right, as Avigdor Lieberman is trying to position himself to make a run at the Prime Minister’s office. But if failure with the Palestinians and with the US is at issue, Lieberman wouldn’t be the answer, and no one more moderate than Bibi is currently poised to make any kind of challenge.
Still, it is now much more likely that the peace talks are going to collapse at the end of April. Netanyahu won’t be directly blamed by the Obama administration, but if they do think it is his fault they can easily communicate that in Israel and Europe, with profound consequences for Netanyahu. Meanwhile, more and more of Europe is turning against Israel’s increasingly right-wing and rejectionist policies. That could cost Bibi dearly.
Failure might not only harm AIPAC, but it could seriously harm more moderate groups in the US like J Street. If the two-state solution appears unrealistic, J Street will have little to hang their hats on. And without the moderate alternative, US support, apart from the annual military aid, is likely to diminish as well. Unfortunately, without a Palestinian strategy to take advantage of this changing state of affairs (beginning with unifying their body politic), it’s not going to lead to better days. And such does not seem to be forthcoming.
Bibi’s gone back home now. But his trip here was notable for how much was at stake and how badly he did with it.
]]>by Jim Lobe
Seemingly overshadowed by the crisis in Crimea and the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just don’t seem to be getting the kind of momentum in their perennial jihad against Iran that they’re used to coming out [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
Seemingly overshadowed by the crisis in Crimea and the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just don’t seem to be getting the kind of momentum in their perennial jihad against Iran that they’re used to coming out of AIPAC’s annual policy conference.
It’s true that the more than 10,000 AIPAC activists sent to Capitol Hill to lobby their representatives immediately after the conference May 4 should have been pleased by the House’s passage a day later by a 410-1 margin of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act. It’s been a major priority for the group since last year and one that authorizes $1.8 billion dollars in additional U.S. weapons shipments to Tel Aviv, which already receives on average of about three billion dollars in annual U.S. military aid. It also opens the possibility that Israelis wishing to come to the United States would not require a visa.
But AIPAC’s and Netanyahu’s top priority — getting a new Kirk-Menendez sanctions bill against Iran enacted — clearly moved out of reach six weeks before the conference when all but 16 Democratic senators refused to sign on as co-sponsors and buck their president who had pledged to veto any such bill on the grounds that it risked undermining ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran. With Plan A thus scuttled, AIPAC moved to Plan B, a non-binding resolution that would lay out conditions — several of them clearly unacceptable to Tehran — for any comprehensive deal with Iran which, if not included as part of the deal, would result in Congress’s refusal to fully lift U.S. sanctions. In that case, too, the White House made its strong opposition clear, and the effort quickly collapsed.
That left Plan C — a (necessarily non-binding) letter from lawmakers to Obama — laying out what conditions its authors expected to be included in any final agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. As I described last week, there were actually two letters, both approved by AIPAC: a Menendez-Graham version in the Senate whose harsh tone and demands (a final deal “must require”, etc.) no doubt more accurately reflected the views of both AIPAC’s leadership and Netanyahu than the softer version (“We are hopeful that a permanent diplomatic agreement will require” etc.) that was co-authored by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Minority Leader Steny Hoyer. Both letters were ambiguous on key points — to what extent would Iran’s existing nuclear program have to be dismantled and specifically whether a limited uranium enrichment program would be deemed acceptable – and thus subject to different interpretations.) When the House version was subsequently endorsed by Senate Armed Services Committee chair Carl Levin (and, as I understand it, has since gained the support of more than 20 other Democratic senators, including most of the leadership) precisely because it appeared to give the administration more diplomatic space to negotiate a deal, AIPAC’s leadership was reportedly caught once more on the backfoot. Of course, as I noted last week, the White House still opposes both letters, but the fact that AIPAC’s plans 1, 2, and its preferred version of 3 have all been set back must give the administration considerable satisfaction. (I heard — but cannot confirm — that, at the conclusion of a White House meeting with top AIPAC officials back in early January, one of them told a senior administration official point-blank, “You have to know that we’re going to beat you on this.”)
AIPAC has kept silent on the number of senators who have signed either letter. At first I understood they were trying to persuade senators to sign the Menendez-Graham version only and actively lobby them against the Cantor-Hoyer-Levin letter. But that then embarrassed their allies in the House, so the group began asking — with some success — senators to sign both letters, thus contributing to the growing impression on Capitol Hill that the nation’s most powerful foreign policy lobby simply doesn’t have its act together.
In any event, AIPAC is now actively pushing House members to sign Cantor-Hoyer, which apparently is the best it thinks it can do under the circumstances. As of Wednesday afternoon, according to AIPAC’s tally, 293 members had signed the letter, but 138 — including a surprising number of far-right Republicans, like Michele Bachmann, Joe Barton, and Louie Gohmert, who probably think AIPAC has turned way too mushy — have not. This is now ten days after the end of the AIPAC conference! For an organization whose top lobbyist less than ten years ago bragged that he could get 70 senators to sign on a napkin within 24 hours and which is used to the kind of virtually unanimous votes that took place last week for the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act, this is pretty pathetic. It cannot help that AIPAC got virtually no press during its conference and has gotten some really terrible reviews in Israel, notably one by Gideon Levy (admittedly a peacenik) in Haaretz, which was reposted by M.J. Rosenberg here.
In doing so, however, the group is misrepresenting what the letter actually says. For example, AIPAC says:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) are circulating a bipartisan letter addressed to the President delineating the necessary terms for a final agreement with Iran, including dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program.
But the actual letter states:
We are hopeful a permanent diplomatic agreement will require dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear weapons-related infrastructure, including enrichment-, heavy water-, and reprocessing-related facilities, such that Iran will not be able to develop, build, or acquire a nuclear weapon.
Of course, AIPAC is spinning the letter in favor of its hoped-for interpretation, but there is a substantial difference both tonally and literally in what the two statements say.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu appears increasingly and openly frustrated by the lack of attention his histrionics about Iran has been getting. Last week’s seizure by Israeli commandos of the KLOS-C merchant ship in the Red Sea off the coast of Eritrea and Sudan was no doubt timed to immediately follow Bibi’s anti-Iran tirade at AIPAC and his continuing presence in the U.S. He gave vent to that frustration in Eilat this week where he keynoted the display of the captured, supposedly Gaza-bound Syrian-made M-302 rockets which, according to Israel, had been hidden aboard the vessel in Bandar Abbas under sacks of Iranian cement, by fulminating about the “hypocrisy” of the West, especially EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who was then on a visit to Tehran, in not treating the incident with the seriousness that he believed it warranted (as if, for example, there were no “hypocrisy” in a nuclear-armed non-member of the IAEA constantly complaining to the same body about Iran’s nuclear program).
Now, it may be that those rockets were intended for Gaza, although Israel has not yet disclosed any of the evidence on which it based that charge, and most experts who have addressed this issue have expressed considerable skepticism about the Israeli thesis, especially in light of Egypt’s destruction of so many of the tunnels that link the Sinai to Gaza and the military regime’s enhanced intelligence cooperation with Israel on both the Sinai and Gaza since last July’s coup d’etat in Cairo. (Given that cooperation, why wasn’t the shipment intercepted by the Egyptians when it passed through southern Egypt or the Sinai?)
Still, I’m prepared to believe that high-level IRGC hard-liners who, like AIPAC and Netanyahu, are unenthusiastic, to say the least, about Hassan Rouhani’s efforts at rapprochement with the West, may have behind such a shipment, and may even have hoped that it would be discovered, precisely in order to undermine the nuclear talks. (I think Mitchell will be writing more about this question shortly.) But what is so interesting is precisely the lack of interest in Netanyahu’s charges on the part of western — and especially U.S. — mainstream media and politicians. Granted, the Ukraine crisis and the missing airliner are taking up an awful lot of news oxygen these days, but when the Israelis shout really loud, especially about terrorism and Iran, it usually gets attention. Not this time. Writing for Al-Monitor, Ben Caspit wrote an excellent piece about this Tuesday entitled “Israel fears it has lost world attention on Iran.” It seems the world has tired of Bibi and sees him increasingly as the boy who cried wolf, as hinted at in an interesting analysis posted Wednesday by Haaretz’s editor, Zvi Bar’El.
On the other hand, consider this colloquy at yesterday’s State Department press briefing. The final sentence is a little worrisome:
QUESTION: Can we go to Iran?
MS. PSAKI: Sure.
QUESTION: Your counterpart at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Marzieh Afkham, described the whole ship episode and the press conference that took place – the ship that was allegedly going to Hamas – as a farce. And she described it in very graphic terms like Mr. Netanyahu is trying to sort of complicate whatever efforts you’re having in the negotiations. Could you comment on that?
MS. PSAKI: I would stand by the comments I made yesterday about the ship containing Iranian weapons. I spoke extensively to that yesterday. So I don’t have any –
QUESTION: Okay.
MS. PSAKI: — I think the facts are the facts in this case.
QUESTION: So let me ask you again. You have your own evidence, your own gathered evidence that this ship was laden with arms.
MS. PSAKI: The Israelis are the lead on this.
Photo: Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu at a press conference in Eilat regarding weapons he claims were bound for Gaza by Iranian order. Very few foreign press were reportedly in attendance.
]]>