Israel torpedoes peace

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu throws a tantrum, his ranting and raving produce an immediate and loud echo among the large and powerful “Israel right or wrong” chorus in the United States. That’s what’s happening right now as the Israeli PM tries mightily to throw a wrench into negotiations in Geneva between Iran and the P5+1 group of nations (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) over Iran’s nuclear program.

The Geneva talks seemed close to a breakthrough before Netanyahu threw a holy fit and France (which along with the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Russia make up the permanent membership of the Security Council), led a successful effort to stall the negotiations, which are now scheduled to restart in 10 days. Although the terms of the proposed agreement have not been disclosed, Netanyahu wasted no time in denouncing it as very bad and dangerous. He also rallied Israel supporters in the United States to oppose the deal, and next week he is sending a member of his defense cabinet to lobby members of the U.S. Congress.

Faced with a U.S. administration that, unconcerned about reelection, is dealing with issues such as the Iran nuclear program and Israeli-Palestinian peace talks with a modicum of fairness, a furious Netanyahu declared himself “shocked.” He found the direction the Geneva Iran talks seemed to be taking particularly disturbing. So he launched a fierce attack against an interim agreement not yet finalized or made public but backed by the United States. It was an unprecedented slap at Washington, which alone among all nations provides vast economic, military, political and diplomatic support to Israel.

Predictably, the right-wing press denounced this rare case of U.S. even-handedness as a betrayal and identified the culprit. “Obama Turns on Israel,” declared National Review Online. Not to be outdone, Newsmax said that “Obama’s Embrace of Iran Creates Crisis with Israel.”

But Israel has much more powerful undying supporters in the United States. Reuters reported that:

“U.S. lawmakers said on Sunday they aimed to tighten sanctions on Iran to prevent Washington giving away too much in a deal on Tehran’s nuclear program that diplomats said was still possible despite the failure of high-level weekend talks.

“Their comments reflected widespread Congressional skepticism about a rapprochement between Iran and world powers and coincided with renewed lobbying from Israel against a proposal it sees as leaving open a danger Iran could build a nuclear bomb. Tehran denies harboring any such ambition.

“Negotiators from world powers will resume talks with Iran in 10 days after failing late on Saturday to reach agreement on an initial proposal to ease international sanctions against Tehran in return for some restraints on its nuclear program.”

The restraints would among other things prohibit Iran from enriching uranium to levels required to produce nuclear weapons in return for a modest easing of international sanctions. But, Israel won’t accept any agreement that does not totally eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu as well as many other Israelis say they consider Iran an “existential threat” to Israel, an assertion blindly accepted by many Americans.

When you look at the facts, it’s hard to take that seriously. Iran may be ruled by fanatics but not by suicidal lunatics. The Iranian leadership is aware that Israel has as many as 200 nuclear weapons. The United States has many times that number. A nuclear attack by Iran on Israel, should Iran ever obtain a nuclear weapon, which is hardly a certainty, would mean the total annihilation of the Iranian nation, including its population, and the end of a millenarian civilization. And what would Iran gain? Nothing.

But it is not only on the question of Iran that Netanyahu is displaying his signature intransigence and bellicosity. After U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry managed to revive the peace process by convincing the Palestinians to drop a demand for the end of new settlements with the understanding that Israel would restrain building, Netanyahu announced a major expansion in settlements. This led a frustrated Kerry to tell an Israeli audience that one has to wonder whether Israel is serious about peace when it is building settlements on land which is to become Palestine. The Israeli PM’s hardline response, that no amount of pressure would force him to make concessions to the Palestinians or to risk the security of Israel, was vintage Netanyahu.

A few weeks ago I wrote that the Obama/Kerry nine-month project to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was doomed. Unfortunately, three months into the process, that prophesy seems to be coming true. The main problem is not the alleged existential threat from Iran or the Palestinians. The problem is that Israel has so much more power than the Palestinians that it doesn’t feel compelled to offer them anything remotely close to their minimum just aspirations. The only party left which in theory might pressure the Israelis to offer the Palestinians a fair deal is the United States. But both Israeli and U.S. politics strongly limit this option. An Israeli government that were to veer significantly from the usual intransigence would probably not survive. And the degrees of freedom that any United States president has to pressure Israel are greatly limited, especially by the nearly monolithic bias in favor of Israel in the U.S. Congress.

In the U.S.-Israel relation, the tail has been wagging the dog for so long that reversing the terms even modestly, as Obama and Kerry have been trying to do, is liable to fail in the face of both in Israel and, perhaps even more strongly, in the United States.