The Big Bet

Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s position as Israel’s prime minister is held together by a fragile right-wing coalition that was formed after the January 2013 parliamentary elections and was sworn in on March 18^th of that year. The final coalition deal between Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu, Yesh Atid and the Jewish Home was signed on 15 March, with Hatnuah having already agreed to become part of the government in February. His Likud Party was unable to generate enough votes to “do it their way” without additional parties.

His “redline” speech (warning about Iran’s nuclear program) before the United Nations in September of 2014 went over badly in the global community, and his popularity seems to wane with every new election. (See the picture above). He has tried, with little success, to draw global attention away from the ISIS assaults, calling them a minor distraction of terrorists with machine-guns mounted on their Toyota pick-up trucks, and back to focus on Iran and its potential nukes. As the U.N. investigates Palestinian claims of human rights abuses by Israel and Palestinian leaders challenge Israel’s statements that it wants peaceful solution as it authorizes more Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, Netanyahu pushes harder for a much stronger hand against Iran, not trusting the diplomatic channels at all.

With Congress taking up the issue of new sanctions for Iran, just as Secretary of State suggests he is making progress in connection with the nuclear enrichment battle, it is a perfect time for the voice of Israel to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress… at the invitation of House Speaker, GOP John Boehner, without securing an OK from the President. Obama says he won’t even meet with Bibi when he makes that speech. For the GOP? A good slap in Obama’s face. All well and good if…

You see Bibi just might not be the voice of Israel, and he may not even survive the next election scheduled for mid-March. It seems he timed his speech for a couple of weeks before that election in the hopes of raising his profile back home enough to win enough support to continue as PM. But back home, the opposition candidates are fuming mad… at Bibi for doing this right before the election… and at the Republican-led U.S. Congress for letting him use them to grandstand for Bibi’s own political purposes.

One way or another, there are a lot of Israelis who are seriously annoyed at the partisanship that Bibi has added to foreign relations, and his risk of severely damaging their relationship with the Democrats, who, sooner or later, will probably come back into power. That the Republicans supported this move links them irretrievably to the Likud side of Israeli politics, which, sooner or later, will bite them in the behind. It is a big bet by Mr. Boehner, grandstanding for primary benefit of the Evangelical uber-conservatives fomenting Armageddon – which “forces” a Second Coming of Christ – in the Middle East.

“Michael B. Oren, who spent four years as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ambassador to Washington, has called on Mr. Netanyahu to cancel his speech to Congress about Iran. Amos Yadlin, a former military intelligence chief who frequently briefed the Israeli prime minister on security matters, denounced the event as ‘irresponsible.’

“Both men criticized their former boss for politicizing a vital Israeli interest. Both also have their own political motives: Mr. Oren is running for Parliament with a new center-right party, and Mr. Yadlin is the defense-minister designee of the center-left party Zionist Camp.

“If Mr. Netanyahu imagined that the speech, scheduled for two weeks before the March 17 elections in Israel, would bolster his status as statesman, the undiplomatic way it was arranged has instead given his challengers an opening to undermine his main campaign platform. The backlash, not only from the White House but also from Congressional Democrats, has reverberated in Israel, where maintaining bipartisan support in Congress is considered as crucial as preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons…

“As in America, conservatives like Mr. Netanyahu tend to have the advantage when election campaigns are about security, and so far his opponents have emphasized pocketbook issues and corruption. But political analysts say that international isolation is a prime public concern of Israelis, and that attacking Mr. Netanyahu for deteriorating relations with Washington, Israel’s main defender on the world stage, could be a winning message in a tightening race.

“‘It’s a huge miscalculation,’ said Eytan Gilboa, a professor at Bar Ilan University who specializes in political communication and Israeli-American relations. ‘People are now questioning his judgment. If the opposition would not just focus on economic and social issues, but also argue against his claims on security and foreign policy, I think this exercise might backfire.’” New York Times, January 27^th.

While the GOP top brass might believe that inviting Netanyahu to address Congress to talk about Iran’s nuclear program will bring the U.S. more in alignment with Israel (and the powerful Israeli lobby in the United States), strangely, it may well have the opposite effect. The Republican attempt to usurp the diplomatic initiative by completely avoiding the President might play well for their constituents in the short term, but the potential damage that this might cause between two essential and trusted allies could be severe.

I’m Peter Dekom, and amateur moves like this have eliminated the United States as a viable contender as peacemaker between Israel and Palestine and undermined our relationship with Israel that heretofore was not dependent on who their prime minister might be.