Israel has the whip hand

OPINION: The very public row over the Israeli government's humiliation of US Vice-President Joe Biden has led to excited speculation that the US government might actually defy Israel this time.

Don't hold your breath.

Biden's visit to Israel last week was meant to bestow Washington's blessing on "indirect" talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority: that is, "proximity" talks, in which the Palestinians and the Israelis, both in the same building, would each talk to American mediators but not directly to each other. It was a clumsy arrangement, but the best the White House could do.

Binyamin Netanyahu became Israel's prime minister again a month after Barack Obama took office. Obama had promised to kick-start Middle East peace negotiations, but Netanyahu led a right-wing coalition that would collapse if he made any major concessions about Jewish settlements in West Bank. It was never going to be a comfortable relationship.

Obama had already got Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to agree to new peace talks by promising him that Israel would stop building Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. That was a bottom line for the Palestinians, who had watched the Jewish population of the West Bank double to almost 500,000 in more than 100 settlements since the Oslo Accords (the start of the "peace process") were signed in 1993.

So Obama asked Netanyahu to "freeze" further construction in the settlements. Netanyahu ignored his request for four months, then offered a "temporary" 10-month halt to construction in the West Bank – but work would continue on 3000 housing units already under construction, and on infrastructure projects.

This was a far cry from what Obama had requested, but he acknowledged defeat and switched his efforts to forcing the Palestinians to accept less than half a loaf. Mahmoud Abbas could not submit to this rebuff without committing political suicide, and so the direct peace talks Obama had envisaged were downgraded to "proximity" talks.

This arrangement entirely suited Netanyahu, whose main goal is to avoid a US-backed peace proposal that involves a halt to the current rapid growth of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian occupied territories, or even a retreat from them. So he didn't need the political ambush that wrecked Joe Biden's visit last week, and he probably didn't plan it.

While Biden was still in Israel, the interior ministry announced a decision by a Jerusalem district planning committee to build 1600 homes for Jews in occupied East Jerusalem. It made both Mahmoud Abbas and Joe Biden look like fools – and even if Netanyahu did not intend the insult, he refused to cancel the plan. He just apologised for the poor timing.

"This was an affront, it was an insult, but most importantly it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region," said David Axelrod, one of President Obama's closest aides. "For this announcement to come at that time was very destructive."

And the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, told consular staff that it is a crisis "of historic proportions" in US-Israeli relations, the worst in 35 years.

Really? So now Obama will start slowing down deliveries of American arms and cash to the Israeli state until Netanyahu comes to heel? Democratic members of Congress, already terrified of their re-election prospects in November, will nevertheless act in ways that bring the wrath of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the strongest advocacy group in the country, down on their heads?

Not likely. After a few days it will probably be swept under the carpet, Abbas will be hung out to dry, and normal US service to Israel will resume. Just as it always is.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan, one of Israel's warmest supporters, worried aloud to Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that some US Congressmen were getting uneasy about Israeli actions in the war in Lebanon.

"Don't worry about the Hill, Ron," Begin said. "I'll take care of that." Netanyahu can take care of it, too.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

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