About the only thing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas have in common these days is a conviction that the other
is bluffing when he says he is ready to make peace. But so far neither has shown
the courage to call the other’s bluff.
Abbas seems to change his
conditions for moving to direct talks almost daily. The only thing that seems
certain is that he is in no hurry to meet Netanyahu face-to-face. It’s easy to
get the impression that he wants to stall long enough for the Obama
administration to get frustrated enough to step in with an American peace plan
that it will impose on Israel – not a likely scenario, despite the alarmed
e-mails of the Jewish right.
Netanyahu has never had much enthusiasm for
the peace process and only under great pressure and begrudgingly was he
compelled to endorse the two-state solution and adopt a 10-month
perforated
moratorium on West Bank construction.
Like Abbas, he also hopes the
Americans will grow frustrated with the stalled process, but instead of
stepping
in he wants Washington to walk away from a situation it deems hopeless.
He looks
to his supporters in the US to make the price of pressing for peace
politically
unbearable for the administration, especially if Republicans do well in
November’s congressional elections.
NETANYAHU WAS in Washington this
month to make shalom with President Barack Obama after a year of rocky
relations
that have created political problems at home for Obama but done nothing
to
advance the peace process. The two leaders declared a mutual desire to
see peace
between Israel and its Arab neighbors, and to move quickly to direct
negotiations. It was part of Netanyahu’s strategy to put the onus for
any
stalling on Abbas.
Obama declared, “I believe Prime Minister Netanyahu
wants peace. I believe he is ready to take risks for peace.”
I don’t know
if he genuinely believed it, but I doubt he would have said that if he
had seen
a video that surfaced last weekend showing Netanyahu boasting how he had
snookered the Clinton administration – he called Clinton “radically
pro-Palestinian” – and derailed the Oslo peace process the first time he
was
prime minister a decade ago.
The newly surfaced tape was made in 2001,
two years after Netanyahu was defeated for reelection by Ehud Barak, who
is now
his defense minister. He was speaking to a group of terror victims in
the West
Bank settlement of Ofra and was unaware his comments were being
recorded.
“I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very
easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get their way,” he
said on
the tape aired by Channel 10.
“They asked me before the election if I’d
honor [the Oslo accords],” he continued. “I said I would, but... I’m
going to
interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to
this
galloping forward to the ’67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what
defined
military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far
as I’m
concerned the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go
argue.” As a
result, he bragged, “I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords.”
THAT WAS
nine years ago. Is there a “New Bibi?” Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy
wrote,
“Don’t try to claim that he has changed since then. Such a crooked way
of
thinking does not change over the years.” Netanyahu, he said, is “a con
artist”
who thinks “Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool
over its
eyes.”
Netanyahu told Obama that he believes it is possible to reach an
agreement with the Palestinians by 2012, which just happens to be the
president’s target date and, coincidentally, in time for bragging rights
in his
reelection campaign.
What he didn’t mention was that signing an agreement
is one thing (I’m not convinced Netanyahu really wants an agreement but
he finds
it useful to say so in light of Abbas’s continued refusal to confront
him in
direct talks), implementing is another; that could take years, perhaps a
decade
or two.
“Time is a crucial element both for security and for other
critical elements of a solution” and it is necessary to ”build in a time
factor
to any type of solution,” Netanyahu told the Council on Foreign
Relations.
Implementation must be gradual – the Egyptian peace treaty
took three years – but Netanyahu’s talk of the time element takes on new
significance in light of his boasting of how he killed the Oslo peace
process.
By now Abbas has seen the tape and read the transcript, and must
feel some justification for his mistrust of Netanyahu and refusal to
begin
direct talks.
Does Netanyahu think he snookered Obama the way he did
Clinton? What does this tape tell a president who already had serious
doubts
about Netanyahu’s sincerity? And does Obama really care, or has he
concluded
that with two such unwilling partners, peace negotiations aren’t worth
much of
an investment by his administration?
bloomfieldcolumn@gmail.com