Benjamin Netanyahu - Tag Search

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington today for a series of meetings at the White House. He'll hold one-on-one talks with US president Barack Obama before a "working lunch" with Obama, vice president Joseph Biden, and several other officials.

Obama's top priority during these talks will almost certainly be pushing for an extension to Israel's temporary West Bank settlement freeze, which is due to expire in September. The end of the freeze would forestall any possibility of direct talks between the Israelis ri the Palestinians.

"There has been a distinct improvement in the White House relationship with Israel since the last meeting" between Obama and Netanyahu on March 23, said Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at Israel's Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. "Obama will be looking for a payback," perhaps in the form of an extension to the settlement freeze, Spyer said.

But from Netanyahu's perspective, the domestic politics of extending the freeze are... difficult, to say the least. His administration has nothing to show for the current freeze: Israeli-Palestinian "proximity talks" have yielded little concrete progress, save for a rumored land swap proposal offered by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

(Updated below) Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to quietly mend fences with Turkey: He dispatched Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, his industry minister, on a secret "mediation" trip to Ankara, according to Israel's Channel 2 news.

The flotilla disaster has already chewed up a month or so of the four months earmarked for Israeli-Palestinian proximity talks.

And the Likud party delivered a reminder today that the window for talks is unlikely to be extended: The party's central committee voted in favor of resuming settlement construction when the 10-month West Bank settlement freeze expires in September.

This post will be about yesterday's decision to revive the "King's Garden" plan in East Jerusalem's Silwan neighborhood, which would demolish 22 Palestinian homes to make way for a tourist center. First, though, a bit of media criticism.

Israel's decision to slightly ease the Gaza blockade drew a very caveated reaction from around the world. Britain's foreign office said "further work is needed"; Catherine Ashton, the European Union foreign policy chief, urged Israel to allow "many, many more goods... in to Gaza."

It seems crass to talk about "winners" and "losers" after Israel's deadly attack on the flotilla of ships bound for Gaza last month. Nine people were killed, after all; dozens of others were wounded.

Still: It's worth stepping back and thinking about how the flotilla incident has reshaped the politics of the region. My initial take -- bearing in mind that it's too early to predict long-term consequences -- is that the Israeli attack has mostly accelerated existing political trends, rather than creating new ones.

It has accelerated Israel's isolation from several of its neighbors and allies; it has sharpened divisions within Turkish domestic politics; it has deepened perceptions that the Obama administration as too close to Israel. And it seems to have had a remarkably minor impact on Palestinian domestic politics.

Well, that didn't take long. The new week is less than a day old, and Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations that just officially began already seem to be sinking under the weight of that old bugaboo: settlement construction.

I was cautiously encouraged when I read that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to freeze new construction in Ramot Shlomo. PJ Crowley, the State Department spokesman, announced the decision this afternoon, and Netanyahu confirmed it tonight, according to Israeli media reports.

Sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the American announcement later Sunday, confirming that the housing project intended for the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood would not be built in the coming two years.

Encouraging news, right? The approval of 1,600 new homes in Ramot Shlomo sparked an uproar when it was announced two months ago; Netanyahu would be making a meaningful concession by freezing that construction.

Well, they've officially started. I'll spare you a long post on the subject -- I've written too much about proximity talks this year as it is -- but three quick points:

How long will the talks run? I've heard several different timeframes, but the most common number is four months -- that's how long Palestinian officials are willing to give the talks.

What will they discuss? Borders seem the most likely issue, but Benjamin Netanyahu wants to talk about interim borders, Mahmoud Abbas wants final borders, and neither man seems willing to budge. If they don't discuss borders, I really have no idea what will be on the agenda. Small confidence-building measures -- releasing prisoners, for example -- won't be enough to lead to direct talks.

Could they stall early? Absolutely. The most likely reason is more construction in East Jerusalem. Palestinian officials have been clear that they're counting on the U.S. to preempt any "surprises"; if there's another Ramot Shlomo-esque announcement, the talks are probably dead.

Finally, not to be the skunk at the garden party, but a question: Israel-PA talks are great, but what about Hamas? What about Gaza?

That's sort of a rhetorical question: They're not!

George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, is back in the region meeting with Israeli and Palestinian officials. The proximity talks were supposed to start today, but they've been postponed until after a PLO executive committee meeting on Saturday.

Hamas released an elaborately-produced cartoon this weekend (embedded after the jump) aimed at pressuring Israel to restart negotiations for Gilad Shalit's release -- and at bolstering its own weakening position in Gaza.

Shalit's father, Noam, is shown walking around Israel with a photo of his son; clips play in the background from the two recordings of Shalit that Hamas has released since capturing him in June 2006. He walks by posters of Israeli politicians promising his son's return, and grows progressively older throughout the cartoon.

Near the end of the recording, Shalit is shown receiving his son's flag-draped coffin at the Erez crossing point; then he wakes up and realizes he was dreaming.

Depending on which account you read, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu either secretly agreed to freeze new construction in East Jerusalem, refused to freeze new construction, or has yet to stake out a position one way or the other.

Ever since the White House floated the idea of an "Obama peace plan," via Helene Cooper and David Ignatius, we've heard a range of reactions from Washington. Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah think it's a good idea; Marc Lynch is far more skeptical; critics on the right think it's arrogant and foolish.

The Israeli reaction has been slower to emerge; what we've heard so far, though, has generally been negative.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not attend President Obama's nuclear security summit in Washington next week, his office announced tonight.

Netanyahu is hardly the only high-profile world leader skipping the event. British prime minister Gordon Brown, facing a tough parliamentary election on May 6, will stay home to campaign. Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd is busy debating health care reform (sound familiar?).

David Ignatius reports on the White House deliberations over a new Middle East peace plan -- one that reportedly includes linkages (there's that word again!) between the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Iranian nuclear program.

The American peace plan would be linked with the issue of confronting Iran, which is Israel's top priority, explained the second senior official.

[...] He said the plan would "take on the absolute requirements of Israeli security and the requirements of Palestinian sovereignty in a way that makes sense."

I assume the White House envisions a quid-pro-quo: Israel will agree to certain conditions (finally fixing its borders, for example) in exchange for a U.S.-led push for substantially tougher sanctions against Iran.

U.S. president Barack Obama will ask Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a four-month freeze on new construction in occupied East Jerusalem in exchange for a push for direct talks with the Palestinian Authority, according to a report in Ha'aretz.

I'm sure there is a fierce debate in the White House right now about rethinking America's Israel policy (I'm skeptical this debate will produce meaningful changes, but at least it's happening). In Jerusalem, though -- despite a rash of angry editorials and worried analysis -- it seems like business as usual for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.

Yedioth Ahronoth quotes a bunch of unnamed "commentators" -- every journalist's best friend! -- who think Netanyahu's coalition government is about to collapse. So does an unnamed minister from the Labor party, who thinks Bibi will have to replace right-wing parties like Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu with Kadima.

Chutzpah (n.):

The Jerusalem municipality has given final approval to a group of settlers construct 20 apartments in a controversial hotel in East Jerusalem, Haaretz learned on Tuesday. The announcement comes... hours before the premier was to meet with President Barack Obama in Washington.

I know, I know, this is a municipal government decision; it's not like Netanyahu personally signed off on the construction. But after the Ramot Shlomo incident, he promised U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton that there would be no more surprises -- and this announcement, hours before he visits the White House, would seem to count as a "surprise." An unpleasant one!

Sheikh Jarrah is the site of routine demonstrations, by the way; the Israeli government has expelled a number of Palestinian families from the area in recent months.

Update: A little backstory: This project was preliminarily approved in July of last year (and the U.S. issued a statement at the time criticizing that decision). It received final approval in the last few days, when the settlers finished paying the required fees/taxes.

There were a few reports over the weekend that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had "caved" to American demands and suspended illegal construction in occupied East Jerusalem. A few projects appear to have been suspended -- not by Netanyahu, but by the legal adviser to the Jerusalem government.

But Netanyahu's speech last night at the AIPAC conference left little doubt that he's determined to allow construction to continue in East Jerusalem.