Analysis: Bibi at Odds with Obama and Himself

By Aaron David Miller

Israeli Prime Minister “Bibi” Netanyahu most likely will come to the White House today uncertain of his own diplomatic strategy and preoccupied with internal politics. Above all, Netanyahu is unsure of where he stands with a U.S. president who wants to do big things on Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking but who often seems detached and lifeless when it comes to conveying an understanding of Israeli fears and anxieties.

The meeting should go well. President Barack Obama played the flotilla fiasco in Gaza skillfully – working with Israel instead of against it. There’s no need for an immediate crisis.

Still, beneath it all, darker dysfunction brews. Obama has high expectations – a two-state solution and all the core issues resolved. Netanyahu, meanwhile, has a low delivery capacity.

Bridging this gap won’t be easy. And keeping the Palestinians in the process could be even harder.

Unlike Netanyahu, Obama does seem in a hurry. He wants a two-state solution on his watch. Time is not his ally.

It’s not entirely clear why Obama considers this matter so urgent. Without direct negotiations, it is true that Israel will not be able to renew the settlements’ freeze. But if Washington presses too hard with its own ideas now, it could lead to a crisis, the breakdown of negotiations or the need for a premature U.S. plan.

None of this would be good for Obama. His personal relationship with the prime minister is not good. His street cred with the Israeli public is low. Unlike Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who seemed in love with Israel and far more forgiving of its behavior, Obama seems detached. He is considered by many to be more inclined to empathize with the Arabs and Palestinians.

In addition, there isn’t much of a U.S. strategy yet. Presenting a U.S. plan too early could become the foreign policy equivalent of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Day 77 and counting and neither Israel nor the Arabs have accepted the U.S. initiative.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, is a man caught in a conundrum. As only the fourth Israeli prime minister to serve two nonconsecutive terms, he is pulled by competing impulses: his domestic politics and personal ideology in conflict with the requirements for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Bibi, the tough-talking Likud pol with a strong revisionist, ideological past, is always in conflict with Netanyahu, the self-styled, pragmatic statesman who wants to lead Israel out of the shadow of the Iranian bomb and into some kind of peace with its neighbors. This tension sustains a competitive yin and yang that frequently results in one step forward and a step – or two – back.

This was evident during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister. From 1997 to 1998, he signed two agreements with Yasser Arafat -which he had vowed never to do – and was the first Likud prime minister to cede any West Bank territory.

At the same time, he acted unilaterally in Jerusalem – opening a tunnel and breaking ground at a settlement project that provoked two crises with Palestinians.

Which version of the prime minister will show up in Washington? Both, of course.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been pushing him to be bold. The opposition leader, Tzipi Livni, is looking over his shoulder.

Netanyahu may well be forced to do something significant.

Still, his key objectives are to avoid a coalition crisis, keep Obama at bay and participate in a negotiating process with the Palestinians that doesn’t involve early decisions on core issues like Jerusalem. His real priority remains how to deal with Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon, knowing that the clock is ticking.

On the Arab-Israeli issue, time is still the prime minister’s ally. Netanyahu clearly hopes he can advance matters well into the fall without big decisions or a crisis. Then he can evaluate how Obama will have fared in the midterm elections.

For the moment, the sky is blue, the waters calm and the sailing easy. But clashing agendas, different clocks and divergent endgames could mean rough water ahead.

Unless these two smart, media-wise and politically savvy pols can find common ground on an approach to peacemaking that is also attractive to Palestinians, there are large icebergs looming in their future.

Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations. His most recent book is “The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace.”

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