. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:
Here are the principles, according to the New York Times:
#1 Israel to accept a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders
#2 Palestinians accept that they would not get the right of return to land
in Israel from which they fled or were forced to flee.
[AL: odd wording as it does not rule out "right of return" of refugees to
within Israel, just that they do not have the right to a specific address
inside Israel (e.g. the Lefties in Ramat Aviv don't have to worry that
someone will knock on their doors to kick them out of the property that they
claim their great grandfather once lived in, but that doesn't mean that
millions won't land at Ben Gurion Airport to settle somewhere else in Israel
demanding the compensation money they expect to receive for the Ramat Aviv
or other property they can't move into] - is Helene Cooper not familiar
with the terms of reference or is this the nuance wording the Obama team has
come up with that exploits the Israeli tendency not to actually read
anything longer than one word?
#3 Jerusalem would be the capital of both states
#4 Israeli security would have to be protected. [AL: Pigs can fly. Because
you cannot actually have #4 if you have the other points. ]
Invitation to Israeli Leader Puts Obama on the Spot
By HELENE COOPER The New York Times Published: April 20, 2011
WASHINGTON — A Republican invitation for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin
Netanyahu, to address Congress next month is highlighting the tensions
between President Obama and Mr. Netanyahu and has kicked off a bizarre
diplomatic race over who will be the first to lay out a new proposal to
reopen the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
For three months, White House officials have been debating whether the time
has come for Mr. Obama to make a major address on the region’s turmoil,
including the upheaval in the Arab world, and whether he should use the
occasion to propose a new plan for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
One administration official said that course was backed by Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the president himself, but opposed by
Dennis B. Ross, the president’s senior adviser on the Middle East.
As the administration has been pondering, Mr. Netanyahu, fearful that his
country would lose ground with any Obama administration plan, has been
considering whether to pre-empt the White House with a proposal of his own,
before a friendly United States Congress, according to American officials
and diplomats from the region.
“People seem to think that whoever goes first gets the upper hand,” said
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and a director at the New
America Foundation. Using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname, he said: “If Bibi went
first and didn’t lay out a bold peace plan, it would be harder for Obama to
say, actually, despite what you said to Congress and their applause, this is
what I think you should do.”
The political gamesmanship between the two men illustrates how the
calculation in the Middle East has changed for a variety of reasons,
including the political upheaval in the Arab world. But it also shows the
lack of trust and what some officials say is personal animosity between Mr.
Obama and Mr. Netanyahu.
White House officials are working on drafts of a possible proposal, but they
have not decided how detailed it will be, or even whether the president will
deliver it in a planned speech. If Mr. Obama does put forward an American
plan, officials say it could include four principles, or terms of reference,
built around the final status issues that have bedeviled peace negotiators
since 1979.
The terms of reference could call for Israel to accept a Palestinian state
based on the 1967 borders. For their part, Palestinians would have to accept
that they would not get the right of return to land in Israel from which
they fled or were forced to flee. Jerusalem would be the capital of both
states, and Israeli security would have to be protected.
Mr. Netanyahu has made it clear that he wants Israel’s security needs
addressed before any peace deal with the Palestinians. He has become even
more concerned about security because shifts in power among Arab states in
recent months have weakened Israel’s already fragile relations with its
neighbors, particularly Egypt.
The tussling between the Obama administration and the Israeli government
reached a peak last week when Mrs. Clinton, in Washington at a meeting of
the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, announced that Mr. Obama would be “speaking in
greater detail about America’s policy in the Middle East and North Africa in
the coming weeks.”
Her announcement electrified Israeli officials, who quickly got on the phone
with American officials and journalists to determine whether Mr. Obama had
decided to put an American plan on the table. He had not made such a
decision, and White House officials cautioned that the internal debate was
still going on.
But two days later, the House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, announced
his intention to invite Mr. Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of
Congress. “America and Israel are the closest of friends and allies, and we
look forward to hearing the prime minister’s views on how we can continue
working together for peace, freedom and stability,” Mr. Boehner said in a
news release.
Like many other foreign leaders, Mr. Netanyahu has addressed Congress
before. He did so in 1996, and four other Israeli prime ministers have over
the past 35 years. The platform gives American elected leaders the
opportunity to publicly demonstrate their support for Israel before the
politically crucial Israel lobby.
Mr. Netanyahu’s address will coincide with the planned meeting of the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee, arguably the most powerful of the
American groups that advocate for Israel.
Brendan Buck, Mr. Boehner’s press secretary, said that staff members had
received no pushback from the White House about the invitation to Mr.
Netanyahu. “Obviously, it’s a troubled time for the region,” he said. “Our
members have been very interested in demonstrating that we stand with
Israel.”
Last November, Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, told Mr.
Netanyahu that the new G.O.P. majority in the House would “serve as a check
on the administration,” in a statement that was rare for its blunt
disagreement on American foreign policy as conveyed to a foreign leader.
Mr. Cantor put out a statement after a meeting with Mr. Netanyahu saying
that he “made clear that the Republican majority understands the special
relationship between Israel and the United States, and that the security of
each nation is reliant upon the other.”
Brian Katulis, a national security expert with the Center for American
Progress, a liberal research organization, said that Republicans were trying
to “make Israel a partisan wedge issue.”
“And that’s bad for Israel, and that’s bad for the United States,” Mr.
Katulis said. But he added that the administration would never publicly, or
even privately, oppose the notion of an Israeli leader addressing Congress.
Two American officials, speaking on condition of anonymity out of diplomatic
caution, said they thought that if Mr. Netanyahu intended to make a bold
proposal for a peace deal with the Palestinians, he would do so before his
own people in the Knesset.
“Instead of focusing on peace-making, everybody seems to be focused on
speech-making,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president for foreign policy at
the Brookings Institution and a former United States ambassador to Israel.
“And unless the speeches generate peace negotiations, making speeches will
not generate peace.”
Much of the debate is taking place under a pending deadline of the United
Nations General Assembly meeting scheduled in September, when the Assembly
is expected to broadly endorse Palestinian statehood in a vote that could
prove deeply embarrassing to Israel and the United States, which are both
expected to vote against it.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 22, 2011
An article on Thursday about tensions between President Obama and Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel misstated the location of a speech
last week in which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that
Mr. Obama would offer details soon about America’s policies in the Middle
East. It was in Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the U.S.-Islamic World
Forum, not in Qatar.
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IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis
Website: www.imra.org.il
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