Monday, September 6, 2010

Has Netanyahu changed because of Obama? Does he really trust Obama to deal with Iran?

http://tinyurl.com/2ckh4j4
At the Mideast peace talks, a changed Netanyahu

By Aluf Benn
He is usually depicted as a hard-liner,...But, contrary to popular wisdom, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is proving to be the most dovish leader that Israel has had in many years,...What caused Netanyahu to rethink his long-held ideology? To be sure, he did not go through a midlife left-wing epiphany any more than Nixon did. Rather, he succumbed to American pressure, and this, too, speaks in his favor. Statecraft requires reading power relationships correctly and acting accordingly.
Past right-wing Israeli leaders went through similar about-faces. Menachem Begin gave the entire Sinai back to Egypt only weeks after he pledged to spend his retirement in an Israeli settlement there. Ariel Sharon demolished the settlements in Gaza shortly after declaring them as important as Tel Aviv. Yitzhak Shamir, the toughest of the breed, put aside his beliefs to attend the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. All these leaders were said to have "reckoned with reality" -- which, in Israeli political parlance, is a euphemism for "dependence on America..." ****Ostensibly, Bibi is trading Obama's taking care of Iran's nuclear program for backing down on land for peace. Now, of course, Bibi is aware that Obama cannot be trusted to deliver on his end of the deal and so must be planning not to deliver on his end when Obama defaults. He's probably just marking time until Obama is no longer President. OK, that says that nothing draconian will be agreed to with respect to the Palestinians ( who also cannot be trusted and don't want peace, in any case.) It does not, however, say what Bibi can or will do with respect to the threat from Iran. At some point, he will have to cross Obama and attack Iran when Obama clearly won't.

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