Monday, November 15, 2010

Buying Israel

It is said that everyone has his price. In this case PM Netanyahu has a
price for extending the building moratorium on the West Bank (Judea and
Samaria). Pres. Obama wants the building freeze to continue so he is
prepared to provide a generous package to Netanyahu to sweeten the deal.
But, will it be enough to satisfy the Palestinians?

The package consists of the gift of an additional squadron of 20 F-35
planes, worth 1 billion dollars, and a commitment to veto any anti-Israel
resolutions that come before the UN Security Council by the US in exchange
for a continuation of the building moratorium from its previous Sept 26
deadline for 90 days. This freeze, like the previous one, will not include
East Jerusalem, that Israel has annexed to Jerusalem itself, but that the
Palestinians and the US consider still part of the West Bank territory. This
might be the sticking point, since the PA has announced that it will not
continue to talk to Israel unless the freeze is extended to Jerusalem. But,
the US has agreed that this will be the last such freeze that it will
request. If the Pals don't bite by then they never will.

Netanyahu, while still awaiting the final negotiated offer, has asked his
Cabinet to consider the deal. It appears that he might have a majority of
one in the 15-member security Cabinet. This is partly because Shas has
decided that its two members will abstain from the vote. However, there is
opposition building from the right wing of Likud and Israel Beitanu that
will try to bring down the coalition whatever happens, using other votes in
the future. So this might be a short-sighted move by Netanyahu. However,
he is partly doing this to satisfy Obama and Secty of State Clinton, with
whom he had a 7 hour meeting last Thursday where they hammered out the
agreement. Obama has now said this proves that Netanyahu is "serious" about
peace.

There are some dangers for Israel in this vote. First, since Netanyahu
stated categorically that he would not extend the moratorium, to accept this
deal now indicates that Israel can be bought by a US President, it's just a
question of the price. Second, the fact that the US will "protect" Israel
using its veto in the UN SC, means that if the deal is not struck, or after
the period of the deal is finished, the US will no longer be bound to
provide that protection. The way things are likely to work out is that the
deal will be made between Israel and the US, but the PA will not accept the
exclusion of Jerusalem, and so will not continue the direct negotiations, so
the whole agreement will be for nought, except that the US will temporarily
protect Israel against a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian State.
However, after the period of the agreement the US will no longer be bound by
this US veto protection, and so the Palestinians will again come to the SC
to unilaterally declare a State and this time the US will not veto them.

So Israel will come out of it with a weakened coalition Government, a likely
unilateral declaration of a Palestinian State recognized by the UN SC and a
squadron of F-35's. But, Obama and Netanyahu can say they went the extra
mile to try to continue the direct negotiations, but they failed anyway. Is
it worth it?

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