By Ira Sharkansky
JERUSALEM — We’re in the midst of a competitive talkathon. Barack has spoken twice, once to clarify things after Bibi spoke out against his first speech. Bibi has spoken to AIPAC and his bigger one will be to Congress. What came through Israel Radio’s coverage of the AIPAC speech was less intense applause than the same audience gave to the President, and a disturbance from anti-Bibi folks of the kind that was absent from the President’s appearance.
It is too early to suggest Barack Obama as a candidate to lead the Israeli government. He may be trapped in Europe due to that volcanic eruption in Iceland.
Reports are that unnamed but senior officials in the American administration are furious at Bibi for misrepresenting the President’s position on the borders prior to 1967. Israelis are divided on the issue. Likudniks and politicians further to the right are supporting him, at least when they are not criticizing him for being too generous with respect to Palestinian aspirations. Other politicians and some artful commentators are criticizing him for going too far in his comments about the President’s speech, ridiculing him for shooting himself in the foot or kicking the ball through the goal at the wrong end of the field.
Where are we?
- · Barack clarified that “pre-1967 boundaries as a basis for discussion does not mean a return to those boundaries.” That was clear, but Bibi spinned the President’s comments in order to stake a position against anything close to those lines, or maybe against anything.
- · Barack clarified, once again, that the ultimate borders must be agreed between the parties.
- · That is not too far from Bibi’s insistence that negotiations must not have any preconditions.
- · The President did not say that territorial decisions and swaps of land must leave the Palestinians with the same amount of land they had before 1967. However, some Israelis are reading his comments to say that, and we can expect Palestinians to adopt that position.
- · That is one indication that these negotiations, if they ever begin, will not be easy or quick. Another indication is the persistent issue of Palestinian refugees.
- · Numerous people are saying that refugees are not a problem. “Everyone knows they will not come to Israel.”Everyone of good hope may be saying that, but the Palestinians are sticking to their demand for the rights of refugees, their children, grandchildren etc to return to what they have been told are their homes.
- · Jerusalem also remains as a tough issue. While some Israelis are willing to hive off one or all Arab neighborhoods for the sake of a Palestinian capital, others want continued control over the entire city, Jewish as well as Arab.
- · We do not know which elements of each side’s rhetoric is meant only to stake out postures in anticipation of drawn-out negotiations that will involve give and take, and how much represents non-negotiable demands that will doom any prospect of agreement.
- · The President has adopted the position that Israel is threatened by the increase in Palestinian population. People may not like the looks of Israel’s security barrier, or where it is, but Israel will demand to keep it in place. It is designed to keep out those babies, as well as their older siblings, parents, and grandparents.
- · The President is urging Israelis to think about the increasing support he sees in the international community, and in the United States, for the rights of Palestinians. That is a cause for concern, even though it is still some distance from anything concrete.
- · The President worries about the participation of Hamas in the Palestinian leadership. The response of the Palestinian leadership is, “That is our business.”
The last item suggests that we can relax. The Palestinians are living up to their reputation. Once again they are likely to save us from ourselves; in this case from Bibi’s rhetoric.
The latest news to worry our friends who dream of a Palestinian state is the heart attack of Salam Fayyad. At 60 years old, Fayyad is one of the young men of the Palestinian establishment, and has been touted as a professional who might be able to rescue the Authority from intensely political infighting, nepotism, and other varieties of corruption that have been its fate. Fayyad has served as prime minister of the West Bank regime, and is credited with improving management and security, and attracting investments from overseas Palestinians. Fayyad’s has a PhD in economics from the University of Texas. That by itself gives him more credit among Israelis than Mahmoud Abbas’ PhD from the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, earned with a dissertation that smells of Holocaust denial. Fayyad was a technocrat with the International Monetary Fund before taking on the task of prime minister. He is a Palestinian nationalist who does not identify with a political party, acceptable to Fatah but not to Hamas.
First reports are that Fayyad’s heart attack was not life threatening. More worrying for the future of Palestine is his continued rejection by Hamas.
Israelis are concerned about the Prime Minister’s speech to the American Congress. His task is the difficult one of preserving Israel’s interest against the steps too far of President Obama, without playing the conservative Republicans in the Congress against the liberal Democratic President. That would break all the rules of how Israel has stayed in the good graces of the American government, no matter which party is in power.
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Sharkansky is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University. He may be contacted at ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com