Israel/Palestine
Related: About this forum'Israel and US choosing to escalate rift'
New York Times says officials 'making little effort' to mend ties and PM's reelection could lead to 'virtual freeze' in top-level relationship.Ynet Published: 01.31.15, 12:42 / Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama have chosen to intensify their ongoing conflict rather than diminish it, an analysis by the New York Times claimed Saturday.
The newspaper said that while a pattern of disagreements followed by pacification has been established over the last six years, senior officials now appear to be "making little effort" to repair the most recent rift.
After US House Speaker John Boehner announced that he had invited Netanyahu to address Congress without first notifying the president, Obama said he would decline to meet the Israeli leader during his visit, saying it would be "inappropriate" to meet him two weeks before the prime minister would run for reelection.
A US spokesperson criticized on Friday Israel's decision to issue tenders for the construction of 450 housing units in the West Bank, saying the move "would only undermine the ability of the Israelis to build support internationally".
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Israeli
(4,139 posts)The newspaper earlier reported that Netanyahu recently reached out to senior Democrats, but failed to alleviate tensions.
Efraim Halevy, former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency said in the report that Israel's government had decided to tacitly support the Republican Party. “Israel is now placing its bets on one side of the aisle,” Mr. Halevy reportedly said. “I think it’s a mistake.”
"This is a different kind of crisis," Eytan Gilboa, an expert on Israeli-American relations at Bar-Ilan University, told the New York Times.
Martin Indyk, a former special envoy for Israel-Palestinian negotiation, told the newspaper that the diplomatic crisis was unprecedented, and that it was unclear whether there was "a way back from the brink". “So the question is, is there a way back from the brink? Because if Bibi is re-elected, we have to find a way and he has to find a way. But it’ll take the two leaders to decide that they have an interest in burying the hatchet.”
Meanwhile, Edward Djerejian, a former American ambassador to Israel, said he "wouldn’t anticipate a major shift in the relationship until the presidential election in 2016,” according to the Times.
Meanwhile, Israel's ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, told The Atlantic that it was Boehner's role to inform Obama of his decision to invite Netanyahu to address Congress. "The prime minister and the president have disagreed on issues, but the prime minister has never intentionally treated the president disrespectfully—and if that is what some people felt, it certainly was not the prime minister’s intention," said Dermer.
Dermer added that he was told "the speaker’s responsibility and normal protocol for the Speaker’s office to notify the administration of the invitation. That is why I felt it would be inappropriate for me to raise the issue with the administration, including in my meeting with the secretary of state, until the speaker notified them."
Source : http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4621243,00.html
oberliner
(58,724 posts)How do you see the elections turning out?
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)But Israel's voters have seemed perfectly happy to keep him in charge all this time.
King_David
(14,851 posts)http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1134&pid=94399
Israeli
(4,139 posts)....only a fool would predict how the elections will turn out at this stage of the game .
Do I want him to be re-elected?......No .
Do I have hope that he wont be re-elected?.....Yes .
Why ? .....read this :
Something's in the wind in Israel: A change for the better
When Netanyahu's running scared, he doesn't run smart. Even Israel Hayom's lead columnist calls his planned trip to address Congress 'grievous,' motivated not by concern for Israel, but for electoral gain.
By Bradley Burston.
In Israeli politics, it often seems, nothing ever changes.
Until it does.
It's a little like the weather. One of the many quietly extraordinary properties of the Holy Land is that, with a glance at the horizon, you can often see a change in the weather long before it actually reaches you.
So it is, as well, with the fortunes of Israeli leaders. When there's a drop in his political barometer, people can sense it at once.
Now, with less than two months to go before the election, the political climate here feels like it's beginning to shift. Something's happening to the prevailing wind. It feels like it's just starting to change direction. A change for something better.
On Monday night, an opinion poll showed Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni's Zionist Camp widening a lead over Netanyahu's Likud by a margin of 26 seats to 23.
For the time being, struggling to check his slide in popularity, Netanyahu has been banking on a worsening security situation in the north, coupled with growing disarray in rival right-wing parties, to turn the tide. Likud strategists traditionally view military threats as a circle-the-wagons diversion from Netanyahu's Achilles heel, domestic social and economic woes.
The prime minister's rightist rival parties have indeed played into his hands of late. Once the Likud's chief right-wing competitor, the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Shas party, has bitterly splintered in two, and neither half is now guaranteed enough votes to clear the minimum required to enter the next Knesset.
Netanyahu's newer political frenemy, Naftali Bennnett's powerhouse Bayit Hayehudi, took an unexpected hit just this week. Bennett, looking to tap new veins of support, support, shocked his own party by unveiling a secret aimed at the very heart and gut of generations of nothing-but-Likud voters: Beitar Jerusalem soccer icon Eli Ohana, catapulted by Bayit Bennett to the coveted 10th spot on the ultra-hardline party’s patchwork dream team.
The move came at a time when the Likud’s traditional power base, the once-unassailable Fortress Beitar, has already been badly eroded. The base is already shorn of both its pro-democracy wing (Reuven Rivlin, Benny Begin, Dan Meridor - all exiled by Netanyahu to insulting effect, with Begin recalled as a last-minute campaign stopgap); and of much of its anti-democratic, often openly racist far-right flank, many of whose fiercely tribal activists and soccer hooligans have defected to Bennett.
Almost at once, the third-place Bayit Hayehudi rose in the polls, improving its projected Knesset strength to 16 seats from 15. But, in a move which left the Ashkenazi-dominated Bayit Hayehudi open to stinging charges of racism against Mizrachim (Ohana is of Moroccan descent), party leaders staged an unprecedented mutiny against Bennett, demanding that he rescind the nomination. On Thursday, to Netanyahu's relief, Ohana announced that he was quitting the race. In other internal battles, additional prominent Bennett hopefuls, like senior settlement official Danny Dayan, quit this week as well.
For Netanyahu, nonetheless, the blessing is decidedly mixed. The more the right is seen by its supporters as dysfunctional, Likud strategists fear, the more prospective Likud voters are likely to decide that they have no one to vote for, and sit out the election altogether.
At the same time, the distress of another right-wing party, Avigdor Lieberman's Israel Beiteinu, may prove to present Netanyahu with a thorny new problem. Gutted by a raft of corruption charges, Lieberman's party has plunged in the polls to dangerous lows.
This presents a huge incentive to Israeli Arab voters, whose turnout in the past has been tepid. Stated simply, if the vote for the new joint Arab list is high enough, it could help eliminate Lieberman's vocally anti-Arab party from the Knesset. In a particularly Israeli irony, it was Lieberman's party which proposed the electoral threshold law (parties which win the equivalent of less than four seats are dropped from the Knesset) - a bill originally aimed at removing Arab lawmakers from parliament.
Netanyahu knows that if Arab citizens - who represent fully one out of five Israelis - turn out in large numbers, they could also effectively topple him from the premiership and swing the election to Labor's new incarnation, the Zionist Camp.
The prime minister faces other challenges as well.
Consider, for example, the fracas surrounding Benjamin Netanyahu's scheduled speech before a Republican-dominated Congress, just two weeks before election day in Israel. The betting in the Prime Minister's Office and the Israeli Embassy in Washington had it that playing the Machismo Card – the scrappy little guy sticking it to the big man in the White House - would go over well with Israelis.
Now consider the view of Dan Margalit, premier columnist of the strongly pro-Netanyahu Israel Hayom newspaper, speaking this week about the planned address to Congress:
"I believe that this trip is grievous," Margalit told Channel 10. "I believe that this trip is cynical. I believe that this trip is not being taken for the sake of the interests of the state of Israel, rather for the needs of Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud, for the Likud election campaign."
Going behind Barack Obama's back was a move that was nothing short of "pasul," Margolit continued, using a word which connotes something abjectly unseemly, unfit, unacceptable, defective. Netanyahu should "certainly" cancel the trip, he said, adding "I don't ever remember anything resembling this."
"This is a rift not only with the White House, where Obama will be sitting for a long while yet to come, but a rift also with wings of the Democratic Party which are very important to us. This is unacceptable behavior. Things like this must not be done."
The polling numbers indicate that Netanyahu may have made a miscalculation much more serious electorally than the Congressional speech. Although he sorely needs to capture votes from Israeli centrists, his ferocious near-daily attacks on Herzog and Livni may be backfiring.
Far from projecting a statesmanlike image of a prime minister for all Israelis, Netanyahu has opted for machismo chest-beating and semaphore racism.
Try as he does to fight it, the guy can't help it: When Benjamin Netanyahu's running scared, he doesn't run smart.
He has relentlessly waved away Herzog as a loser, a nebbech, a henpecked lightweight, a child, not man enough for the big leagues (This from perhaps the most famously henpecked man in Israeli politics).
Netanyahu has pilloried the running mates of the centrist-to-a-fault Herzog and Livni as extreme radical leftists and "Anti-Zionist" - an astonishing characterization of the party of scions of Israel's two houses of political royalty, socialist Labor Zionism and rightist Revisionist Zionism.
In so doing, Netanyahu has put Israel on notice that anyone who, like Herzog and Livni, wants to see a two-state solution and opposes blanket support for settlements – that is to say, the majority – is Anti-Zionist.
By extension, of course, Netanyahu has also made the vast majority of American Jews into overnight Anti-Zionists.
This, then, is Netanyahu's direct message to an Israeli public which fights his wars, pays his taxes, suffers his disintegrating health and educational systems, bears his inaction on the housing crisis, endures his anti-democratic bills, despairs at his preference for settlements over negotiations: You have no place in my Israel, and no future here.
In the end, the Anti-Zionism charge may prove Netanyahu's undoing. Last week, after Bennett and Netanyahu suggested that only their own supporters love Israel, unlike other Israelis, Labor MK Stav Shafir, the youngest of Israel's lawmakers, took them on.
"Day to day, keeping each other safe, that's what it is to be Israeli, that is Zionism, to be concerned about the citizens of this country, in the hospitals, in the schools, on the highways, with welfare, that is Zionism. And you're taking it and destroying it," she declared in a Knesset speech which went viral.
"You forgot about the Negev and the Galilee, in order to transfer NIS 1.2 billion to the settlements in bonuses. You forgot Israel. You lost Zionism a long time ago."
Shaffir ended her speech with a plea for a politics of hope, having as its goals peace and equality of rights and resources, a politics "which believes that every single Israeli citizen deserves an equal portion, deserves to live a truly good life. That's real Zionism."
In all the many years Netanyahu has been in office, with all the enemies he has warned of and railed against, he has only managed to decisively defeat one of them: hope.
But even that victory may prove fleeting.
Source: http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/1.639381
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Elections are a month away.
You really don't have a clue, huh?
King_David
(14,851 posts)....not a clue oberliner.
You telling me that you do have a clue ???
Going by what ? ....the polls 
One would have thought you would have learned your lesson last elections 
...guess not .
So lets hear it from oberliner.....
How do you see the elections turning out?
oberliner
(58,724 posts)There are countless pundits making predictions based on those clues.
In the US, where I live, people are currently making predictions for an election that is well over a year away.
That's what we do.
King_David
(14,851 posts)And most will vote for one or another come what may.
With so many parties in Israel , wild shifts occur overnight.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Israel ought to adopt our system. Then they can marginalize their fringe lunatics like we usually can.
A lot of their paralysis in parliament comes from their proportional representation system. Pizza Parliament. Sometimes too much democracy can be a bad thing I guess. The most interesting thing is the israeli system is the choice of most palestinians for their new state- IIRC.
Israeli
(4,139 posts).....but ...you sure have a way in thinking that we all think just like you .
We dont ...far from it .
Nice side step BTW ......I answered your question .....why dont you answer mine ?
[b How do you see the elections turning out?
Not suprised you dont answer ..... considering how badly wrong you got it last time aound.
King_David
(14,851 posts)And I would hire you if I was in trouble.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I think you mean "around".
Anyway, that is exactly why I was asking you.
But you just decided to be rude and snippy instead.
Thanks anyway.
Israeli
(4,139 posts)...its difficult trying to communicate with you American Zionists in a second language ....spell checker helps ...but yes I meant around .
So ... I take it you dont want to commit this time around ?
Probably for the best oberliner......as you are as about knowledgeable about our internal politics as King David is .
You are welcome .
oberliner
(58,724 posts)I try to ask for your insights into the election and you respond with nastiness and snark.
למה אתה כל כך גס רוח
Israeli
(4,139 posts)...not an anti Zionist .
BTW ....you sound just like Bibi
oberliner
(58,724 posts)That might account for it.
What are the primary differences between Post Zionism and Anti Zionism?
Israeli
(4,139 posts).....he has always been more American than Israeli .
" What are the primary differences between Post Zionism and Anti Zionism? "
Bibi cant tell either oberliner .....see ...you have another thing in common
oberliner
(58,724 posts)Oh well.
King_David
(14,851 posts)Or with Golah Jews . They only like and respect talking to anti-Zionists from abroad.
That particular poster also doesn't seem to like American Jews and uses it as her biggest insult towards Bibi when G-d only knows there's plenty other things to insult him with
oberliner
(58,724 posts)And not really posting anything about US politics.
King_David
(14,851 posts)I wish we had Palestinians and Muslim people posting then we wouldn't have the USA posters that have never even been there speaking FOR them.
oberliner
(58,724 posts)There aren't many Israeli views - so you have one person claiming to be Israeli, and even using that as a screen name, and they become the de facto voice of the Israeli left.
If we had a dozen other Israeli voices, we wouldn't have that problem.
Although I'm not sure we have even a dozen posters here period.
King_David
(14,851 posts)leftynyc
(26,060 posts)I'm curious as to the (seemingly) nonexistent difference myself.
Israeli
(4,139 posts)..then I would start with Avraham Burg.
see : http://www.jpost.com/Israel-Elections/Former-Knesset-speaker-to-Post-Nationalism-most-dangerous-kind-of-politics-in-Israel-387054
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)*The ADL is supporting Netanyahu in principle about Iran, where Foxman is smarter than
Bibi is that he warned him to back off right away when the uproar followed the announcement
of Bibi speaking to our congress...he knows bi-partisan support is critical for Israel.
Note, JStreet's position here is about Iran, their position
on a two state solution would not allow for a viable Palestinian state. It is ironic how these
two groups fight with one another..in the end, neither is helpful toward a lasting peace.
ADL is also supportive of our SCOTUS to hear the case involving Jerusalem, which could
directly interfere with our executive branch and foreign policy..if they rule in favor of the
families request.
ADL pans J Street’s ‘Bibi doesn’t speak for me’ petition
http://www.timesofisrael.com/adl-pans-j-streets-bibi-doesnt-speak-for-me-petition/
ADL Welcomes Supreme Court Decision to Allow Lower Court Review of Jerusalem Passport Issue
http://archive.adl.org/presrele/supremecourt_33/6274_33.html#.VN4LTi50nIU
J Street: Israel's Loyal Opposition
J Street claims to support the two-state solution. In fact, it rejects it in favor of terms of settlement more amenable to Israel.
According to the international consensus, Israeli settlements are all illegal. This notwithstanding, Palestinian negotiators have offered Israel a deal that would permit it to annex approximately two percent of the West Bank so that some sixty percent of the settlers may remain where they are, under Israeli sovereignty. The conflict persists because successive Israeli governments have demanded, contrary to the terms of the international consensus, to annex, not two percent of occupied Palestinian territory, but eight to ten percent; keeping eighty to eighty-five percent of settlers in situ and—crucially—incorporating the major settlement blocs. The effect of this would be to trisect the West Bank and expropriate some of its most valuable resources. Not coincidentally, the route of the West Bank Wall incorporates the settlement blocs and approximately eighty-five percent of the settlers on the "Israeli" side.
J Street's new million-dollar "2 Campaign" maintains that through land swaps "roughly eighty percent" of settlers can be "incorporated into future Israeli borders." Our "vision" of a "reasonable settlement," Ben-Ami has written, would see the "major settlement blocs... remain inside Israel." (Note that for something to "remain" in Israel, it must currently be in Israel, which the settlements are not.) It bears recalling that the Annapolis negotiations broke down precisely on this issue: whereas Palestinian negotiators were willing to compromise on individual settlements, they refused to accept Israel's annexation of the major settlement blocs.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/15562/j-street_israels-loyal-opposition
