Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa, North America | Analysis

MIDEAST: Defiant Netanyahu Plays his Jerusalem Card

Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Jul 23 2009 (IPS) - Israel’s newly installed ambassador in Washington says the “disagreement” with the U.S. over Israel’s settlement policy will be resolved “soon”. Speaking on Israel Radio, Michael Oren was giving his first interview since taking up his post.

His upbeat assessment is challenged by many other Israeli officials and by most political pundits who foresee the U.S. and Israel being on collision course. With the EU and Russia following suit.

Defining Israel’s ‘settlement policy’ is the nub: Does it include also occupied East Jerusalem?

A low-key U.S. demand for Israel to scrap a plan for a new Jewish housing project in East Jerusalem is the latest tussle since U.S. President Barack Obama shifted the diplomatic ground dramatically when he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at their May meeting that all settlement construction had to stop because otherwise his plan to resuscitate peace moves between Israel and the Arab world would be blocked.

At the end of last week the State Department summoned Ambassador Oren to tell him the U.S. wants plans by a controversial Jewish U.S. entrepreneur, Irving Moskowitz, to knock down an old hotel and instead build houses for Jewish settlers in the heart of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, to be frozen too. Moskowitz, who raises funds for contentious settlement projects through a “charity” bingo hall in California, received planning permission for the project earlier this month.

Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Russia have all lodged similar protests over the Shepherd Hotel project, but Netanyahu is focused on the row with the U.S. It’s almost as if he is the one spoiling, if not for a fight, then at least for a squabble with Obama.

And, as Israeli-U.S. relations head to their lowest ebb in two decades, it could well get worse: a settler front group called Elad (also backed by Moskowitz) has filed with the Jerusalem municipality for approval for four new building projects that are designed to settle more Jews in the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods. City Hall sources say it’s unlikely the plans will be thrown out, adding more fuel to the flames of a growing rift between Israel and the international community.

Both sides seem ready to up the ante. The U.S. wants to be credible to the Arab world while Netanyahu wants to be credible to Israelis.

When the issue was raised by State Department officials they made it crystal clear that when the President had talked about curbing settlements he meant it to include East Jerusalem, the part of the city which Israel conquered in 1967 and which it annexed as part of its “united and eternal capital.”

But, shifting the argument from the West Bank to Jerusalem was precisely what Netanyahu was looking for. There was a positive glint in his eye when, at Sunday’s weekly Israeli cabinet meeting, he tore apart the U.S. strictures: “We simply cannot accept that Jews aren’t entitled to live or to buy apartments anywhere in Jerusalem,” said the Prime Minister.

When he went on, “I told the President that I could not accept any restrictions on our sovereignty in Jerusalem – Jerusalem is not a settlement, so there is nothing to discuss about a freeze there,” it was music to the ears of most Israelis.

When Netanyahu lined up with the world’s insistence that he accept the principle of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, he knew that, on that issue, the U.S. administration and the bulk of the Israeli public were on the same side. While banking on another Israeli consensus – on Jerusalem – he’s ready to take the President on.

Israelis, who balk at Obama’s demand on concrete issues such as settlements, don’t much like what they consider the President’s moral hectoring either. More importantly, though, they begin to sense, like their Prime Minister, that the Obama approach may just not succeed and that his much-heralded Cairo speech to the Arab and Muslim world will soon be deflated.

The current row over Jerusalem is the first indication that Netanyahu is recovering from the “shock and awe” of their rather confrontational White House encounter. And Israeli officials seem have recovered their confidence that, unless there is substantial parallel movement from the Arab side, Israel will be able to parry the threat of naked U.S. pressure.

Last week at the White House, the President met for the first time with 15 heads of leading U.S. Jewish organisations. He told them that, as he had done in Cairo, he planned to speak openly and honestly with Israel. The President told the Jewish leaders he wants “to help Israel overcome its demographic problem by reaching an agreement on a two-state solution,” but that, in order to do so, Israel would need “to engage in serious self-reflection.”

In the Obama scheme, self-reckoning on all sides is the key.

Israelis balk at that. Arab unwillingness to come to terms to Israel’s existence is the heart of the matter, they contend. When Obama mentioned the Holocaust in Cairo, they applauded politely, but were infuriated by his read on the creation of Israel – “a distortion,” they complained. They resent what they say is his disregard of the link between the Jewish people and their historical homeland going back to Biblical times; in the words of a senior official in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “Cairo was, sadly, a huge missed opportunity to get the Arab world to accept that we have a rightful place here.”

Israelis are also irritated by the President’s preaching tone. “His rapprochement plan towards Iran which openly threatens to destroy Israel and his bid to reassure its fanatic leadership is delusional,” writes veteran columnist Yoel Marcus in Ha’aretz.

He goes on: “There is something naïve, not to say infuriating, about his rapprochement policy and the whistle stops he has chosen on his travels to deal with our conflict: he spoke in Turkey, he spoke in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Ghana, in Paris. The only place where he hasn’t been as President is Israel. He speaks about us, but not to us.”

Interestingly, as this settlement row between the U.S. and Israel expands, and the diplomatic quagmire over it deepens, it’s not just Israelis who are irked by Obama. Reflecting on the Marcus complaint, one Palestinian cabinet minister, who preferred not to be named, told IPS, “It’s much worse with us. The settlements, after all, are on our land, and he’s talking not to us about our future, but to the Israelis about us.”