Israel Must Take Risks

By Martin Indyk

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's press conference with President Barack Obama at the White House last week conjures memories of a time 16 years ago when a new, young president, committed to achieving Middle East peace, stood next to a newly elected Israeli prime minister and inaugurated a partnership in peacemaking.

Then, as last week, they had just concluded an extensive private meeting in which Yitzhak Rabin had told Bill Clinton he was willing to make a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights to achieve peace with Syria.

Reflecting the tone but not the content of that secret conversation, Clinton told the assembled press that Rabin had expressed a willingness to take risks for peace and that he had responded to the Israeli leader, "If you do that, my role is to minimise those risks."

Whatever happened in their private meeting, Netanyahu certainly didn't sound in public as if he had told Obama in private that he was willing to take risks for peace. Reflecting fear of antagonising his right-wing supporters, Netanyahu avoided publicly committing himself to accepting an independent Palestinian state as the outcome of peace negotiations.

Instead, he spoke of "self-government" for the Palestinians and laid down what sounded like a new precondition: the Palestinians would have to "allow Israel the means to defend itself". What Netanyahu apparently means is a Palestinian state minus the means to defend itself, or to control its airspace, or its international passage ways.

These are reasonable concerns given Israel's experience with its unilateral withdrawal from and uprooting of all settlements in Gaza; Hamas took control there and rained some 7000 rockets down on Israel's civilian population. Netanyahu is right to vow that he will not allow that to happen in the West Bank if Israel withdraws from there. But by refusing to declare his support for an independent Palestinian state, albeit with restrictions on its sovereignty, he focuses the Palestinians on what they will have to give up rather than what they will have to gain from an end of the Israeli occupation. It's an offer they can too easily refuse, leaving Obama in the unwelcome position of having to drag them to the negotiating table. That will hardly endear him to the new Israeli prime minister.

So too with the new potential for Arab state involvement in the peace process: Netanyahu correctly identifies the shared concern of the US, Israel and the Arab states about Iran's hegemonic regional ambitions and its aggressive nuclear program.

In Obama's view, too, working with Arab leaders to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could help counter Iran. But Netanyahu appears to have handed Obama the challenge of bringing these Arab leaders to the peace party without indicating what he will do either to get them there or to reward them for the risk of coming. That's an invitation they will easily refuse.

There's one Israeli action that may help move things forward, and Obama was not shy in bringing it up at the press conference: Israel's Road Map obligation to stop settlements. A real settlements freeze, and the dismantlement of unauthorised settlement outposts (another Road Map obligation), would give Palestinians renewed hope in negotiations and boost the failing fortunes of their President, Mahmoud Abbas. And if Netanyahu were willing to fulfil that commitment, Obama might be able to persuade the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs to reciprocate by normalising relations with Israel (through diplomatic engagement, direct flights, phone communications).

Such confidence-building steps could give Israelis greater faith in the potential for peace with the Arab world. Not exactly a breakthrough, but steps in the right direction. However, in his public statements Netanyahu has been silent on the settlements freeze. He will apparently attempt to dismantle the unauthorised outposts while hoping that will buy him Obama's acquiescence in expanding existing settlements to account for "natural growth". But subsequent statements from Obama spokesmen, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, indicate that Netanyahu failed to make the "natural growth" sale at the White House or on Capitol Hill. This will likely produce the worst of both worlds for Bibi: infuriated settlers and an angry Washington.

How about peace with Syria? When he was prime minister in the 1990s, Netanyahu engaged in secret negotiations with Hafez al-Assad, Syria's leader, behind the back of president Clinton who was pressing him to fulfil Israel's Oslo obligations to the Palestinians. In that negotiation, according to what Netanyahu's envoy later told Clinton, Netanyahu committed to making a full withdrawal from the Golan. If he were willing to do the same today, a peace deal with Assad's son Bashar could probably be negotiated quite quickly.

At least that's what they're saying in Damascus where the Syrian leadership believes Netanyahu, as a right-wing leader, can deliver on his commitments better than Israeli leaders they have dealt with before. A peace deal with Syria would hold out considerable advantage to Netanyahu and Obama because it would cut Iran's conduit of arms and financial support to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Yet there was no reference to Syria in the Obama-Netanyahu press conference and the Israeli Prime Minister told the American Jewish leadership after his White House meeting that Israel would negotiate peace with Syria but would not withdraw from the Golan. If that is his real position, there won't be any peace deal.

Perhaps Netanyahu's caution is governed by fear of Iran's existential threat to Israel. That would be reasonable given his concern that unless Iran is prevented from acquiring nukes, any Israeli territorial concessions will only bring Iran's rejectionist proxies closer to Israel's borders.

In his view, faced with Iranian nuclear weapons, all the Arabs will scurry to seek protection in Iran's cat's paw. But in this regard, Netanyahu received two reassurances from Obama. First, in a Newsweek interview published the day the Israeli Prime Minister arrived in Washington, the President said "all options are on the table", meaning he did not rule out using force to deal with Iran's nuclear program. At their joint press conference, the President went a step further, detailing a deadline of the end of this year for assessing the progress of his effort at diplomatic engagement with Iran. That should have been music to Bibi's ears. It did lead him to endorse Obama's efforts to curb Iran's nuclear program through negotiations with Tehran. But it did not generate what Obama needs from Netanyahu to help pressure Iran: a willingness to take risks for peace that would start to roll back Tehran from the Middle East heartland where it exploits the Arab-Israeli conflict to boost its bid for influence.

The last time Bibi was prime minister, in the 1990s, he made much of the argument that he was no sucker; that he would not give without getting.

Perhaps that's the explanation for his approach this time too; he is waiting to see what the US and the Arabs put on the table before signalling what he is prepared to do. But that puts Obama in an impossible position, having to do all the giving to Israel and all the getting from the Arabs. That's no way to build a new American-Israeli peace partnership.