Obama-Bibi Showdown

Posted by Scott MacLeod Friday, May 15, 2009 at 10:34 am

24 Comments • Trackback (2)

"Who the f*** does he think he is? Who's the f***ing superpower here?"

This is what President Clinton fumed after his first meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu after the latter became Israel's prime minister the first time in 1996. The anecdote comes from The Much Too Promised Land, Aaron David Miller's account of his years as a top Middle East advisor to six secretaries of state.

As President Obama holds his first White House meeting with Netanyahu next week, I hope that by now he has read Miller's frank, brilliant study. One of the things that Miller makes clear is that, although Netanyahu headed the government of a strong U.S. ally, Netanyahu and the Clinton administration did not see eye to eye on the peace process. So much did the Clinton team fear Netanyahu's potentially destructive impact, Miller writes, that during the runup to the Israeli elections in 1996 "much of what we did during that period was designed to support Peres and in so doing save Arab-Israeli diplomacy." The night Bibi was elected, Miller recalls, "all I could think about was how we were going to save the Oslo process from extinction."

Clinton, Miller recalls, "really didn't like Netanyahu, at least in the beginning." He records an episode in which Clinton became angry when Netanyahu retracted a concession to release Palestinian prisoners, and yelled at the Israeli prime minister, "This is just chicken shit. I'm not going to put up with this kind of bullshit." For their parts, Secretary Albright and National Security advisor Berger were "frustrated by Netanyahu's erratic and often obstinate policies, particularly on settlements." Miller says Albright had two small rubber lookalike figures of Netanyahu and Arafat in her office and "I could imagine her squeezing the hell out of them when she got frustrated." According to Miller, "all of us saw Bibi as a kind of speed bump that would have to be negotiated along the way until a new Israeli prime minister came along who was more serious about peace."

As he has done again after his recent election as prime minister, Netanyahu affirmed his desire for peace during the Clinton years. Despite his hard-line position and personal loathing of Arafat, he signed agreements with the Palestinians: the Hebron accord in 1997 calling for Israel's military withdrawal from the Biblical city in the West Bank; and the Wye River accord, arranging for the implementation of a previously agreed Israeli withdrawal from other West Bank areas. But Netanyahu's three-year tenure as prime minister, as Miller had feared on election night, effectively hammered most of the nails into the coffin of the Oslo peace process. Notorious Likud provocations, such as opening a controversial tunnel in disputed Old Jerusalem and building the Har Homa settlement in east Jerusalem, helped poison Palestinian confidence in the peace process, while Netanyahu's agreements with Arafat helped cause the eventual collapse of his right-wing governing coalition.

The mistake Clinton made was the decision to "work with" Netanyahu, in the belief that any progress would require the cooperation of Israel's prime minister. But in fact American hopes were destined to be dashed for the simple reason that despite the close alliance between the U.S. and Israel as countries, there was a total disconnect between Clinton's policies and Netanyahu's: Clinton supported Oslo, and presided over the signing of the accord on the White House lawn, and Netanyahu bitterly opposed it. By "working with" Netanyahu for three years, Clinton effectively cooperated with Netanyahu's agenda to scuttle the peace process. That indeed contributed to the eventual final collapse of Oslo in 2000, and made an embarrassing mockery of a superpower's claim to being an "honest broker."

MIller makes a good case for the notion that it was worth a shot at working with Netanyahu until another Israeli prime minister came along. I'm not sure Obama now has that luxury, however; the world has changed in the decade since Bibi last held office. To cite just one important factor: since 2002, the U.S. government has explicitly supported the creation of a Palestinian state, and with Obama's inauguration earlier this year, the U.S. has a president who believes it is a strong American interest to settle the Arab-Israeli conflict. Netanyahu, by contrast, continues to adamantly oppose a Palestinian state. It seems, then, that Obama and Netanyahu are on a collision course, at least where Middle East peace is concerned.

--By Scott MacLeod/Cairo