Netanyahu and the president both made mistakes, but only
one purposely damaged U.S.-Israel relations.
By
MICHAEL
B. OREN
June 15, 2015 7:09
p.m. ET
‘Nobody has a monopoly on making mistakes.”
When I was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 to the end of
2013, that was my standard response to reporters asking who bore the greatest
responsibility—President Barack Obama or Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—for the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.
I never felt like I
was lying when I said it. But, in truth, while neither leader monopolized
mistakes, only one leader made them deliberately.
Israel blundered in
how it announced the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods and communities in
Jerusalem over the border lines that existed before the Six Day War in 1967. On
two occasions, the news came out during Mr. Netanyahu’s meetings with Vice President
Joe Biden. A
solid friend of Israel, Mr. Biden understandably took offense. Even when the
White House stood by Israel, blocking hostile resolutions in the United
Nations, settlement expansion often continued.
In a May 2012 Oval
Office meeting, Mr. Netanyahu purportedly “lectured” Obama about the peace
process. Later that year, he was reported to be backing Republican contender Mitt
Romney in the presidential elections. This spring, the prime minister
criticized Mr. Obama’s Iran policy before a joint meeting of Congress that was
arranged without even informing the president.
Yet many of Israel’s
bungles were not committed by Mr. Netanyahu personally. In both episodes with
Mr. Biden, for example, the announcements were issued by midlevel officials who
also caught the prime minister off-guard. Nevertheless, he personally
apologized to the vice president.
Mr. Netanyahu’s only
premeditated misstep was his speech to Congress, which I recommended against.
Even that decision, though, came in reaction to a calculated mistake by
President Obama. From the moment he entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an
agenda of championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with
Iran. Such policies would have put him at odds with any Israeli leader. But Mr.
Obama posed an even more fundamental challenge by abandoning the two core
principles of Israel’s alliance with America.
The first principle
was “no daylight.” The U.S. and Israel always could disagree but never openly.
Doing so would encourage common enemies and render Israel vulnerable. Contrary
to many of his detractors, Mr. Obama was never anti-Israel and, to his credit,
he significantly strengthened security cooperation with the Jewish state. He rushed
to help Israel in 2011 when the Carmel forest was devastated by fire. And yet,
immediately after his first inauguration, Mr. Obama put daylight between Israel
and America.
“When there is no
daylight,” the president told American Jewish leaders in 2009, “Israel just
sits on the sidelines and that erodes our credibility with the Arabs.” The
explanation ignored Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and its two previous
offers of Palestinian statehood in Gaza, almost the entire West Bank and half
of Jerusalem—both offers rejected by the Palestinians.
Mr. Obama also voided
President George W. Bush’s
commitment to include the major settlement blocs and Jewish Jerusalem within
Israel’s borders in any peace agreement. Instead, he insisted on a total freeze
of Israeli construction in those areas—“not a single brick,” I later heard he
ordered Mr. Netanyahu—while making no substantive demands of the Palestinians.
Consequently,
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas boycotted negotiations,
reconciled with Hamas and sought statehood in the U.N.—all in violation of his
commitments to the U.S.—but he never paid a
price. By contrast, the White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu for
building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would remain
part of Israel.
The other core
principle was “no surprises.” President Obama discarded it in his first meeting
with Mr. Netanyahu, in May 2009, by abruptly demanding a settlement freeze and
Israeli acceptance of the two-state solution. The following month the president
traveled to the Middle East, pointedly skipping Israel and addressing the
Muslim world from Cairo.
Israeli leaders
typically received advance copies of major American policy statements on the
Middle East and could submit their comments. But Mr. Obama delivered his Cairo
speech, with its unprecedented support for the Palestinians and its recognition
of Iran’s right to nuclear power, without consulting Israel.
Similarly, in May
2011, the president altered 40 years of U.S. policy by endorsing the 1967 lines
with land swaps—formerly the Palestinian position—as the basis for
peace-making. If Mr. Netanyahu appeared to lecture the president the following
day, it was because he had been assured by the White House, through me, that no
such change would happen.
Israel was also
stunned to learn that Mr. Obama offered to sponsor a U.N. Security Council
investigation of the settlements and to back Egyptian and Turkish efforts to
force Israel to reveal its alleged nuclear capabilities. Mr. Netanyahu
eventually agreed to a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction—the first
such moratorium since 1967—and backed the creation of a Palestinian state. He
was taken aback, however, when he received little credit for these concessions
from Mr. Obama, who more than once publicly snubbed him.
The abandonment of the
“no daylight” and “no surprises” principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear
program. Throughout my years in Washington, I participated in intimate and
frank discussions with U.S. officials on the Iranian program. But parallel to
the talks came administration statements and leaks—for example, each time Israeli
warplanes reportedly struck Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria—intended to
deter Israel from striking Iran pre-emptively.
Finally, in 2014,
Israel discovered that its primary ally had for months been secretly
negotiating with its deadliest enemy. The talks resulted in an interim
agreement that the great majority of Israelis considered a “bad deal” with an
irrational, genocidal regime. Mr. Obama, though, insisted that Iran was a
rational and potentially “very successful regional power.”
The daylight between
Israel and the U.S. could not have been more blinding. And for Israelis who
repeatedly heard the president pledge that he “had their backs” and “was not
bluffing” about the military option, only to watch him tell an Israeli
interviewer that “a military solution cannot fix” the Iranian nuclear threat,
the astonishment could not have been greater.
Now, with the Middle
East unraveling and dependable allies a rarity, the U.S. and Israel must
restore the “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles. Israel has no
alternative to America as a source of security aid, diplomatic backing and
overwhelming popular support. The U.S. has no substitute for the state that,
though small, remains democratic, militarily and technologically robust,
strategically located and unreservedly pro-American.
The past six years
have seen successive crises in U.S.-Israeli relations, and there is a need to
set the record straight. But the greater need is to ensure a future of minimal
mistakes and prevent further erosion of our vital alliance.
Mr. Oren, Israel’s former
ambassador to the United States and a member of the Knesset, is the author of
“Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide” (Random House, 2015).
***
Two questions
remain. First, why did Oren recommend against
Netanyahu’s Congress speech? After all, the only way to stop Obama’s insane Iran deal was to warn Congress. Second, why did Oren in an interview
with Ari Shavit say “Obama is a true friend and
he is a most serious person and one shouldn’t underestimate him and his
determination.”?
