Obama takes aim at Israel

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Last update - 02:31 08/04/2009

U.S. giving Palestinian security forces top-level training

By Avi Issacharoff

Tags: Palestinian security forces

The United States has been training senior Palestinian security officials in an advanced officers course in Ramallah for top-brass, Haaretz has learned. The new course, entitled "senior leaders' course," is a two-month long program conducted in Ramallah with the assistance and supervision of the U.S., and is part of the project overseen by the U.S. security coordinator in the territories, Gen. Keith Dayton. So far, the program has produced 80 graduates divided into two 40-student classes. A third class, made up of commanders from the Palestinian National Security - the largest security force with 15,000 members, tasked with policing borders, providing military intelligence, military police services and presidential security - is currently being trained in Jordan. That class is undergoing special training by Jordanian instructors under American auspices. Most students so far have been army lieutenant colonels and colonels, but the course also accepted commanders from the civilian police, the general intelligence service, the preventative security force and the civilian defense authority.

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Obama, Gates take aim at Israel's Arrow-3 missile

By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI Senior News Analyst
Published: April 9, 2009 at 11:37 AM

WASHINGTON, April 9 (UPI) -- Israel's Arrow-3 anti-ballistic missile may be one of the first victims of U.S. President Barack Obama's defense spending cuts.

Ynet, the Web site of the respected Tel Aviv daily Yediot Aharonot, reported Monday that U.S. funding for the Arrow-3 program is likely to be eliminated.

However, in compensation, the Obama administration is prepared to help Israel buy the U.S. Navy's Standard Missile 3 anti-ballistic missile system instead, the report said. The SM-3 is built by Raytheon as its primary contractor.

Ynet said the U.S. Congress is expected to take up the issue soon, possibly as early as its next session.

Offering the SM-3 makes a lot of sense and could prove a wiser course of action for Israel than pushing ahead with the Arrow-3. The SM-3 is far more expensive per unit at $10 million to $12 million each, compared with the individual projected cost of the Arrow-3 at only $1.5 million to $2 million each. But the SM-3 is a mature technology whose costs will not rise unexpectedly. The Arrow-3 is still in the developmental stage, and no one knows how high its real costs will reach as opposed to the optimistic projections made for it.

Far more important from Israel's point of view, SM-3s can be sold and deployed quickly, while the Arrow-3 is still at least three years away from operational deployment by the most optimistic assessment. But Iran already has a formidable intermediate-range ballistic missile arsenal and is now developing a far higher and faster intercontinental ballistic missile capability as well.

The SM-3 showed last year when it shot down a plunging U.S. satellite on Feb. 21, 2008, that it has the capability to destroy targets following the ballistic flight paths and with the speed and acceleration of an incoming ICBM. Ynet noted that the USS Lake Erie, a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser, destroyed the satellite by firing only a single SM-3, even though the target was plunging to Earth with a combined closing velocity of 22,780 mph at an altitude of 133 nautical miles above the Pacific Ocean.

Also, as we have noted in our analyses of the problems with Israel's Iron Dome very-short-range anti-ballistic missile defense system, the Jewish state, with a land area comparable to New Jersey and a population of only around 6 million, is world-class at upgrading existing military technologies, but it does not have the resources to develop many new systems of its own.

This problem may be less in the case of the Arrow-3, which is planned as an exoatmospheric interceptor that can hit and destroy intermediate-range ballistic missiles 60 miles above the surface of Earth. But the Raytheon SM-3 is already an established, reliable technology with a long record of successful IRBM interceptions under its belt.

The threat Israel faces from a potentially nuclear-armed Iran became imminent in February when Tehran successfully launched its first communications satellite on its own multistage ballistic missile. In effect, as we have often noted, any nation with the capability to launch a satellite into orbit on its own multistage booster already has the intercontinental ballistic missile capability to send a nuclear weapon, not just to Israel, but also 9,000 miles to the Eastern Seaboard cities of the United States.

Ending U.S. funding for the Arrow-3 would be consistent with President Obama's well-documented skepticism about ballistic missile defenses. Defense Secretary Robert Gates proposed Monday a slashing of funding for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Kinetic Energy Interceptor and Airborne Laser programs -- moves that would in effect kill both of them.

However, Ynet suggested that Raytheon may have applied pressure as well to try to kill the Arrow-3.

Ynet reported that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a strong enthusiast for the Arrow-3 program, recently met with a delegation of visiting U.S. senators and congressmen; following that meeting, he briefed a private meeting of his Labor Party, in which he warned of the pressures to kill the Arrow-3.

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Obama signs PLO office waiver

JOSH GERSTEIN | 4/9/09 11:29 PM EDT

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The waiver is released at about the same time that Obama was having a Passover Seder at the White House. Photo: AP

President Barack Obama signed a waiver Thursday that will allow the Palestinian Liberation Organization to retain its office in Washington, D.C.

A law passed in 1987 barred the operation of such an office, but legislation has permitted presidents to waive the requirement for six months at a time. President Bill Clinton allowed the PLO mission to open in 1994, and presidential waivers have been regularly issued ever since.

"I hereby determine and certify that it is important to the national security interests of the United States to waive" the restriction, Obama wrote in the determination sent Thursday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The waiver was released at about the same time that Obama was having a Passover Seder at the White House with friends and members of his staff.

The $83.4 billion supplemental spending bill Obama sent to Congress Thursday contains $800 million "to support the Palestinian people, strengthen the Palestinian Authority and provide humanitarian assistance for the crisis in Gaza," a statement from the Office of Management and Budget said.

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Israel shocked by Obama's approval of large Turkish arms sale to Lebanon

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
April 22, 2009, 10:49 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile quotes senior Israeli military circles as staggered by the discovery that US president Barack Obama had approved a large Turkish arms sale to the Lebanese army, including the services of Turkish military instructors. This was taken as further proof that the US president is deaf to Israel's immediate security concerns.

Lebanese president Gen. Michel Suleiman has more than once threatened neighboring Israel. When he signed the arms deal in Ankara Tuesday, April 21, he once again pledged publicly to place the Lebanese army at the disposal of the Shiite terrorist Hizballah in any confrontation with Israel.
If that happened, said one Israeli source, Israel could find itself under attack not just by Hizballah as in the past, but by a Lebanese army, well trained and armed by Turkey. He noted that more than 50 percent of Lebanon's fighting manpower are Shiites loyal to Hizballah.

The conviction is growing in Jerusalem that the US president endorsed the transaction as a means of breaking up the long-standing military pact between Israel and Turkey, because it interferes with his Middle East objectives. Our sources note that neither Washington nor Ankara bothered to inform Israel of the transaction or its scope.

After meeting Turkish president Abdullah Gul, Suleiman at the head of a large Lebanese military delegation signed the contracts for the sale and declared with deep satisfaction: "We reviewed the new [US] policies towards the region in the light of President Obama's recent visit to Turkey."

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Israeli Intel To Natanyahu: We Are Obstacle To Obama Policy

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

TEL AVIV — A classified assessment relayed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Obama and his senior advisers would incrementally diminish U.S. strategic cooperation with Israel developed over the last 20 years.

"Obama wants to make friends with our worst enemies and until now the worst enemies of the United States," an Israeli source familiar with the intelligence assessment said.

"Under this policy, we are more than irrelevant. We have become an obstacle."

[On April 21, Obama said he would meet Netanyahu in Washington as part of revived U.S.-led peace efforts in the Middle East, Middle East Newsline reported. The president said the summit would take place over the next few weeks.]


Israeli sources said the administration would reject Israel intelligence on such threats as Iran and Syria while advancing the Obama agenda to reconcile with the two states, both listed as state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Dept.

On April 20, Israeli military intelligence commander Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin warned the Cabinet that Obama was prepared to allow Iran to retain its capability to assemble nuclear weapons and support Hamas and Hizbullah.
"Obama wants to advance the peace process in the direction of realistic discussions with extremist elements," Yadlin said.

The Israeli intelligence assessment envisioned that Obama would maintain his reconciliation policy with Iran and Syria through at least 2010. The sources said the assessment determined that Obama was convinced that such a policy would enable a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Obama will want to show Iran, Syria and radical Muslims that the United States could pressure Israel on a strategic level," the source said. "The pressure has already begun and will intensify throughout the next year or two."

The military intelligence chief said Obama was also courting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Yadlin said both Damascus and Teheran have not significantly reduced their support for insurgency groups throughout the region.

"President Bashar Assad hopes to turn over a new leaf with U.S. President Barack Obama," Yadlin said. "However, while Western powers are being hosted at the palace in Damascus, Syria is continuing to be used as the back yard of the axis of evil. Assad is letting Hizbullah and Iranian forces freely conduct their affairs in Syria and use its territory for Hizbullah deployment."

Yadlin said Obama's policies have generated dismay among Arab allies of the United States. He said Arab countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia were concerned that U.S. reconciliation efforts would merely encourage Teheran and its proxies to intensify destabilization efforts. In April 2009, Egypt reported a Hizbullah network that operated in Cairo and the Sinai Peninsula.

"The Arab world is starting to understand that Iranian proxies are a threat to the region," Yadlin said. "The Hizbullah activity in Egypt is not an isolated incident. Iran has infrastructures across the world seeking to perpetrate terror attacks against Israel." At the same time, the Obama administration was expected to restrict U.S. arms exports to Israel in an effort to deny systems that could be used in any attack against Iran or Syria.

The intelligence sources said this policy was implemented during the last year of the Bush administration and would intensify under Obama. Only under the Democrat controlled congress.

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April 28, 2009 7:46 AM
Obama's Stance On Hamas Worries Israel

Posted by Robert Berger | 79

This story was filed by CBS Radio News' Robert Berger in Jerusalem.

(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Israel is concerned that the U.S. may be planning to approve funding for a future Palestinian unity government that would include the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Israeli officials say the Obama administration has asked Congress to change a U.S. law to allow such indirect funding for Hamas, even though the group is on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration requested the changes this month as part of an $83-billion emergency spending bill that also includes funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bill would provide $840 million for the Palestinian Authority and for the reconstruction of Gaza following the Israeli assault on the territory in January.

Gaza is ruled by Hamas, while the more moderate Palestinian Authority, led by U.S.-backed President Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah party, controls the West Bank. The rival factions have been holding reconciliation talks in Cairo with the goal of forming a national unity government.

"Every step that strengthens Hamas only distances peace," an unnamed Israeli political official in Jerusalem told the nation's Haaretz newspaper. "In the event that the report is true, it is painful and worrying."

Israel believes Hamas should be boycotted until it meets requirements set down by the Quartet of world powers involved in Mideast peace negotiations — the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia.

The Quartet has said Hamas must renounce violence and recognize the Jewish state. Officials in Jerusalem say Hamas is a terrorist group that should be isolated, and any U.S. funding for the group would weaken Palestinian moderates and harm the peace process.

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Secret U.S.-Israel nuclear accord in jeopardy

By Eli Lake
Wednesday, May 6, 2009

President Obama's efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons threaten to expose and derail a 40-year-old secret U.S. agreement to shield Israel's nuclear weapons from international scrutiny, former and current U.S. and Israeli officials and nuclear specialists say.

The issue will likely come to a head when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Mr. Obama on May 18 in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu is expected to seek assurances from Mr. Obama that he will uphold the U.S. commitment and will not trade Israeli nuclear concessions for Iranian ones.

Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, speaking Tuesday at a U.N. meeting on the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), said Israel should join the treaty, which would require Israel to declare and relinquish its nuclear arsenal.

"Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea, ... remains a fundamental objective of the United States," Ms. Gottemoeller told the meeting, according to Reuters.

She declined to say, however, whether the Obama administration would press Israel to join the treaty.

A senior White House official said the administration considered the nuclear programs of Israel and Iran to be unrelated "apples and oranges."

Asked by The Washington Times whether the administration would press Israel to join the NPT, the official said, "We support universal adherence to the NPT. [It] remains a long-term goal."

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Avner Cohen, author of "Israel and the Bomb" and the leading expert outside the Israeli government on the history of Israel's nuclear program, said Mr. Obama's "upcoming meeting with Netanyahu, due to the impending discussions with Iran, will be a platform for Israel to ask for reassurances that old understandings on the nuclear issue are still valid."

For the past 40 years, Israel and the U.S. have kept quiet about an Israeli nuclear arsenal that is now estimated at 80 to 200 weapons. Israel has promised not to test nuclear weapons while the U.S. has not pressed Israel to sign the nuclear NPT, which permits only five countries - the U.S., France, Britain, China and Russia - to have nuclear arms.

The U.S. also has opposed most regional calls for a "nuclear-free Middle East." The accord was forged at a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and President Nixon on Sept. 25, 1969, according to recently released documents, but remains so secret that there is no explicit record of it. Mr. Cohen has referred to the deal as "don't ask, don't tell," because it commits both the U.S. and Israel never to acknowledge in public Israels nuclear arsenal.

When asked what the Obama administration's position was on the 1969 understanding, the senior White House official offered no comment.

Over the years, demands for Israel to come clean have multiplied.

The Iran factor

Iranian leaders have long complained about being subjected to a double standard that allows non-NPT members India and Pakistan, as well as Israel, to maintain and even increase their nuclear arsenals but sanctions Tehran, an NPT member, for not cooperating fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

On Monday, Iranian Deputy Foreign MinisterMohammad Ali Hosseini told a U.N. meeting preparing for a major review of the NPT next year that nuclear cooperation by the U.S., France and Britain with Israel is "in total disregard with the obligations under the treaty and commitments undertaken in 1995 and 2000, and a source of real concern for the international community, especially the parties to the treaty in the Middle East."

The Obama administration is seeking talks with Iran on its nuclear program and has dropped a precondition for negotiations that Iran first suspend its uranium enrichment program.

"What the Israelis sense, rightly, is that Obama wants to do something new on Iran and this may very well involve doing something new about Israel's program," said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington think tank.

Bruce Riedel, a former senior director for the Middle East and South Asia on the White House National Security Council, said, "If you're really serious about a deal with Iran, Israel has to come out of the closet. A policy based on fiction and double standards is bound to fail sooner or later. What's remarkable is that it's lasted so long." Mr. Riedel headed the Obama administration's review of strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan but does not hold a permanent administration position and has returned to private life as a scholar at the Brookings Institution.

The open secret

The U.S. also has opposed most regional calls for a "nuclear-free Middle East." The accord was forged at a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir and President Nixon on Sept. 25, 1969, according to recently released documents, but remains so secret that there is no explicit record of it. Mr. Cohen has referred to the deal as "don't ask, don't tell," because it commits both the U.S. and Israel never to acknowledge in public Israels nuclear arsenal.

When asked what the Obama administration's position was on the 1969 understanding, the senior White House official offered no comment.

Over the years, demands for Israel to come clean have multiplied.

The Iran factor

Iranian leaders have long complained about being subjected to a double standard that allows non-NPT members India and Pakistan, as well as Israel, to maintain and even increase their nuclear arsenals but sanctions Tehran, an NPT member, for not cooperating fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

On Monday, Iranian Deputy Foreign MinisterMohammad Ali Hosseini told a U.N. meeting preparing for a major review of the NPT next year that nuclear cooperation by the U.S., France and Britain with Israel is "in total disregard with the obligations under the treaty and commitments undertaken in 1995 and 2000, and a source of real concern for the international community, especially the parties to the treaty in the Middle East."

The Obama administration is seeking talks with Iran on its nuclear program and has dropped a precondition for negotiations that Iran first suspend its uranium enrichment program.

"What the Israelis sense, rightly, is that Obama wants to do something new on Iran and this may very well involve doing something new about Israel's program," said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington think tank.

Bruce Riedel, a former senior director for the Middle East and South Asia on the White House National Security Council, said, "If you're really serious about a deal with Iran, Israel has to come out of the closet. A policy based on fiction and double standards is bound to fail sooner or later. What's remarkable is that it's lasted so long." Mr. Riedel headed the Obama administration's review of strategy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan but does not hold a permanent administration position and has returned to private life as a scholar at the Brookings Institution.

The open secret

Aparently this site has something which will not let me go further on this article *It is an important article and should be read - I will retry (by posting this part, then add on the other pages to it...

If not, then the readers will have to go to the URL and read pages 3 & 4 for them selves

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Obama prepares to throw Israel under the bus
Wednesday, 6th May 2009
Melanie Phillips

As predicted here repeatedly – Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus, and he’s getting American Jews to do his dirty work for him. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly told the Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Sunday that efforts to stop Iran hinged on peace talks with the Palestinians. General James Jones, National Security Adviser to Obama, reportedly told a European foreign minister a week ago that unlike the Bush administration, Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel. Ha’aretz reports:

Jones is quoted in the telegram as saying that the United States, European Union and moderate Arab states must redefine ‘a satisfactory endgame solution.’ The U.S. national security adviser did not mention Israel as party to these consultations.

Of course not. If you are going to throw a country under the bus, you don’t invite it to discuss the manner of its destruction with the assassins who are co-ordinating the crime. As I said here months ago, the appointment of Jones and the elevation of his post of National Security Adviser at the expense of the Secretary of State was all part of the strategy to centralise power in the hands of those who want to do Israel harm.

Yesterday Vice-President Joe Biden and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry turned the thumbscrews tighter, telling Israel to stop building more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.

This is all not only evil but exceptionally stupid. The idea that a Palestine state will help build a coalition against Iran is demonstrably absurd. The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear programme stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran.

The idea that if a Palestine state comes into being it will be easier to handle Iran is the opposite of the case: a Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.

It is of course, by any sane standard, quite fantastic that America is behaving as if it is Israel which is holding up a peace settlement when Israel has made concession after concession – giving up Sinai, giving up Gaza, offering all the territories to the Arabs in return for peace in 1967, offering more than 90 per cent of them ditto in 2000, ditto again to Mahmoud Abbas in the past year -- only to be attacked in return by a Palestinian terrorist entity, backed in its continued aggression, let us not forget, by the countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has made no concessions at all and is not being pressured to do so.

It is not the aggressor here but the victim of aggression that America is now choosing to beat up. In any sane world, one might think the Americans would be piling the pressure on the Palestinians to renounce their genocidal ambitions against Israel, to stop teaching and training their children to hate and kill Jews, to adhere to the primary requirement in the Road Map that they must dismantle their infrastructure of violence as the first step in the peace process; one might think, indeed, that they would view Mahmoud Abbas’s repeated statements that the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state to be the main impediment to peace.

But no. The repeated professions that America will never jeopardise Israel’s security are stomach churning when Obama is actually blaming Israel for measures it has taken to safeguard its security – the settlements were always first and foremost a security measure, and the travel restrictions are there solely to prevent more Israelis being murdered – and trying to force it to abandon them. Today comes further news that Obama will also try to force Israel to give up its nuclear weapons – which it only has as a last ditch insurance against the attempt to annihilate it to which several billion Arabs remain pledged.

Of course Obama doesn’t care that Hamas would run any Palestinian state. Of course he doesn’t care that Israel would be unable to defend itself against such a terrorist state. Because he regards Israel as at best totally expendable, and at worst as a running sore on the world's body politic that has to be purged altogether (see this bleak assessment by Sultan Knish). His administration is proceeding on the entirely false analysis that a state of Palestine is the solution to the Middle East impasse and the route to peace in the region. What that state will look like or do is something to which at best the administration's collective mind is shut and at worst makes it a potential cynical accomplice to the unconscionable. So Israel is to be forced out of the West Bank. Far from building a coalition against Iran, Obama is thus doing Iran’s work for it.

None of this, however, should come as the slightest surprise to anyone who paid any attention to Obama’s background, associations and friendships before he became President and to the cabal of Israel-bashers, appeasers and Jew-haters he appointed to his administration, with a few useful idiots thrown in for plausible deniability.

American Jews, meanwhile, are reacting as predicted – with a total absence of spine. As IsraelMatzav reports, AIPAC was sending delegates to visit Congress to 'convince' Representatives and Senators to sign a petition calling for a two-state solution. Inspired! Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardise their standing with America’s elite.

But the ordinary American people are a different matter. They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and certainly America’s Jews and everyone else. He must tell the American people the terrible truth, that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.

This is shaping up to be the biggest crisis in relations between Israel and America since the foundation of Israel six decades ago. Those who hate Israel and the Jews will be gloating. This after all is precisely what they hoped Obama would do. To any decent person looking on aghast, this is where the moral sickness of the west reaches the critical care ward.

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Train Wreck Ahead?
Why the U.S. and Israel may be headed for a collision.

2:54 p.m. ET May 7, 2009

For Israeli leaders, a public break with the United States is the third rail of politics. The possibility that Israelis might lose the support of the one nation that can guarantee their security awakens an existential dread that no politician can long survive. It is this factor, as much as any, that has restrained the Israelis from taking military action against Iran despite Tehran's efforts to build a nuclear-weapons capability.

But with the possibility of such a break at its highest in the past two decades, it's no surprise that, as he prepares for his first meeting as prime minister with President Obama on May 18, Benjamin Netanyahu has been "fine-tuning" his hard-line positions on peace and Iran, as a senior Israeli official described it. "As we speak, there are meetings going on to make sure we have a success" at the summit, the official said.

In his televised speech Monday night to the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful lobbying group, Netanyahu took the hard edge off the messages he has been sending since last year: that any peace with the Palestinians will have to await a resolution of the Iran nuclear issue. "We are prepared to resume peace negotiations [with the Palestinians] without delay," Netanyahu said. But he added what he described as "two provisos." First, he said, "peace will not come without security."

This sounds bland, but it appears to be code for a position that Netanyahu has been advancing for years and which he hammered home to Obama during their first visit last July, when the then-senator from Illinois visited as a presidential candidate: without addressing Iran's attempted rise as a nuclear-powered regional hegemon, there can be no security in any other area—especially the Palestinian conflict. As Uzi Arad, Netanyahu's national-security adviser, told me shortly after that meeting: "Should one fail to neutralize that Iranian threat now, it would undercut anything that would be achieved with the Palestinians, Syria or Lebanon …

If you follow that logic, the current efforts to move on the Palestinian issue are pathetic, because they would not be worth the paper they're written on if Iran is not contained. If Iran became nuclear it would mean the victory of the militants in Hamas and Hizbullah and undercut the moderates."

The second proviso, Netanyahu said, is that the "Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish state." This too is an ambiguous statement, but reading between the lines it almost certainly means that Netanyahu will not recognize any peace agreement that hands over the West Bank to the Palestinians as long as Hamas continues to wield the political power it does in the territories and refuses to recognize Israel (a position that Hamas leaders reiterated this week). It also means that, if talks do begin again, an issue that once was deemed "final status"—the right of Palestinians to return to Israel—is off the table.

To say that Netanyahu is "fine-tuning" his positions is a euphemistic way of saying that he doesn't like the message coming from top officials of the Obama administration, but he's not ready to commit political suicide. Already suspected by a large portion of the electorate, he can't afford to be seen to be on the outs with Obama. The Israelis, in other words, are going to do their best to avoid the perception that there is daylight between Jerusalem and Washington (that existential dread again). But the daylight is already streaming out.

Indications are that Obama intends to push all-out for a Palestinian state, and that he plans to negotiate in a broad-based way with Iran. The "tough love" message from Washington has emerged in a series of statements from top U.S. officials. Vice President Joe Biden, in his speech to AIPAC on Tuesday, said Israel "has to work for a two-state solution ... not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement."

National-security adviser James Jones, in comments to a European counterpart reported by Haaretz—which cited a classified Israeli telegram relaying the conversation—said the Obama administration "will convince Israel to compromise on the Palestinian question." Jones reportedly added: "We will not push Israel under the wheels of a bus, but we will be more forceful toward Israel than we have been under Bush." (The National Security Council did not return a call asking for comment.) White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, in his own remarks to AIPAC delegates, sought to allay some concerns while laying down the new line. "Relations between Israel and the U.S. are unbreakable," Emanuel said. But he added: "This is the moment of truth for Israel and the Palestinians."

It just as likely a moment of truth for Israel and the United States. For the last eight years Washington acted mainly as an unswerving supporter of Israel's actions—some critics would say cheerleader—despite a few serious differences, such as the timing of the 2006 Palestinian elections. But the potential now exists for the most serious rupture of relations at least since 1989, when Secretary of State James Baker stunned AIPAC by calling on Israel to abandon its "unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel" that included Gaza and the West Bank.

The biggest potential flashpoint is Iran's nuclear program. The Obama administration is staying quiet about the new strategic approach it is developing—but make no mistake, it will be a dramatic departure. "Things are undergoing a strategic shift, but we don't know what the details are yet," says a top European official involved in talks with Tehran. According to a Syrian official who has been involved indirectly in the new effort at engagement—the Syrians have offered to act as "facilitators"*—Washington is mainly awaiting the results of Iran's June presidential election, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is vying with several reformist candidates.


"The message we're getting from the Americans is there's no point of moving right now, let's see what happens with the elections," the official says. But the Obama administration has already begun to signal that if Tehran agrees to sit down, its fallback position has changed significantly from the Bush administration's, and the outcome of any talks may no longer have to be the complete cessation of Iran's uranium-enrichment program.

Netanyahu is signaling back that this fallback position is unacceptable to him. In particular, the Israelis do not want to allow Iran to follow the "Japan model"—becoming a so-called screwdriver state that has a nuclear program with the capability of building a nuclear weapon in weeks if necessary. "Let's say the path to nuclear weapons is a 1,000 yards," says an Israeli official. "You wouldn't want a situation where they could stop at 999 and just expand their base." Israeli officials, both in Washington and Jerusalem, suggest that for Netanyahu, the end of 2009 is his informal deadline for progress on the nuclear issue, even as the Americans are trying to launch regional-focused talks addressing all issues with Iran that will likely take years.

The Israelis fear that the Obamaites will be duped, as so many others have, by Tehran's Scheherazade-like approach to talks, endlessly stringing them out. "Clearly that is the Iranian strategy," says the Israeli official. Now, to the consternation of Israeli officials, the State Department is urging Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—a source of enormous embarrassment to a country that is believed to have scores of nuclear weapons but doesn't want to admit it (U.S. officials, in the past, have always avoided pressuring Israel on the NPT).

The sequencing issue is also a potential train wreck. Netanyahu's view remains what Arad laid out to me last summer: as long as Iran is threatening the region and underwriting Hizbullah and Hamas, encouraging the extremists in their refusal to recognize Israel, a Palestinian peace agreement would not be worth anything. In his AIPAC speech, Netanyahu sought to make his Iran-first argument in another way: by saying the threat from Tehran provided a remarkable "opportunity" to unite Arabs and Israelis through mutual fear. Obama's opposing view was laid out by Emanuel in comments reported by the Jerusalem Post: he said that strengthening the "international coalition that will be necessary to thwart Iran's nuclear program will be made easier if progress is made in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians."

Netanyahu will try to gloss over the differences by going through the motions of negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas, the weakened Palestinian president, but the push by the U.S. at some point is going to come to shove if Obama is serious about a Palestinian state by the end of his first term. It will happen sooner rather than later if Israel continues to accelerate the building of settlements on the West Bank, as it has been doing in recent months. Another trigger would be any efforts by the Obama administration to conduct secret talks with more moderate elements of Hamas, as a number of experts on the region are urging and as many Europeans appear to want.

The Syrian track may be the most hopeful right now, at least between the U.S. and Damascus. "In initial exploratory talks there was a lot of common ground," says the Syrian official. That could result, however, in additional pressure on Netanyahu from Washington to give up the Golan Heights. Syrian President Bashar Assad will want something substantial in return if he is to tack away from Tehran and supply cooperation at the Iraqi and Lebanese borders, especially after the way the Bush administration humiliated him.

Bottom line: the rupture is not going to happen right away. Both Obama and Netanyahu have big political reasons to make their first summit come out looking like a lovefest. But the first flashpoint is not far off: the end of the year on Iran. And after that things could get very heated over the Palestinian issue.

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DE-NUKING AN ALLY

May 10, 2009

As Iran races to acquire nuclear weapons, Team Obama has latched onto a -- shall we say? -- interesting response: nudging Israel, America's most reliable Middle East ally, to give up its nukes.

Interesting -- and extremely dangerous.

Speaking at a UN meeting Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller called on the Jewish state, among other countries, to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. She said this was "a fundamental objective of the United States."

Now, the NPT limits possession of nuclear weapons to the US, Russia, Britain, France and China. So pressing Israel to sign on is, in effect, pushing it to give up its nukes.

Which would be a big mistake -- for Israel, America and, indeed, much of the West. So big, in fact, that it's hard to imagine Jerusalem would ever agree to it -- though calling attention to Israel's nukes could well stir fresh anti-Israel animosity and, perhaps, even violence.

Israel, to be sure, has never officially acknowledged that it possesses nuclear arms. But it's an open secret that it maintains up to 200 nukes -- which it uses to deter large-scale attacks from its many lethal enemies in the region.

No US president, Republican or Democrat, has ever seriously pushed the Jewish state to give them up.

Again, forcing Israel to sign the NPT would require it not just to acknowledge its arsenal, but to scrap it -- even as Iran continues to move forward with its nuclear-weapons program.

Tehran has long complained of a US "double standard" when it comes to WMDs in the Middle East. Now, with Obama looking to engage Iran, Washington may be willing to push for a regional tradeoff: no weapons for either nation.

But here's the difference: Israel can be relied on never to use its arsenal for anything but deterrence or self-defense. But without nukes, Israel -- and the West -- will lose a key strategic deterrent.

Iran, by contrast, openly threatens Israel with destruction and sponsors global terror, including against US troops in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Iran is already an NPT signatory, not that it matters.

'Obama & Co. may be desperate for new diplomatic tools in the Middle East.

But pushing to strip Israel of its nuclear deterrent shouldn't be one of them.

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MAY 11, 2009
How Obama's America Might Threaten Israel
Determined fecklessness on Iran could lead to nuclear war.

By NORMAN PODHORETZ

Is there a threat to Israel from the United States under Barack Obama? The question itself seems perverse. For in spite of the hostility to Israel in certain American quarters, this country has more often than not been the beleaguered Jewish state's only friend in the face of threats coming from others. Nor has the young Obama administration been any less fervent than its last two predecessors in declaring an undying commitment to the security and survival of Israel.
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Nevertheless, during the 2008 presidential campaign, friends of Israel (a category that, speculations to the contrary notwithstanding, still includes a large majority of the American Jewish community) had ample reason for anxiety over Mr. Obama. The main reason was his attitude toward Iran. After all, Iran under its current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was vowing almost on a daily basis to "wipe Israel off the map" and was drawing closer and closer to acquiring the nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that would give the ruling mullocracy the means to do so. And yet Mr. Obama seemed to think that the best way to head off the very real possibility this posed of another holocaust was by entering into talks with Iran "without preconditions." Otherwise, except for campaign promises, his record was bereft of any definitive indication of his views on the war the Arab/Muslim world has been waging against the Jewish state from the day of its founding more than 60 years ago.

Still—lest we forget—Mr. Obama did have a history of involvement with associates whose enmity toward Israel was unmistakable. There was, most notoriously, his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In addition to honoring the blatantly anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan, Mr. Wright was on record as believing that Israel had joined with South Africa in developing an "ethnic bomb" designed to kill blacks and Arabs but not whites; he had accused Israel of committing "genocide" against the Palestinians; and he had participated in a campaign to get American companies to "divest" from Israel. None of this, however, nor all of it together, had elicited so much as a peep of protest from Mr. Obama, never mind provoking him into leaving Mr. Wright's congregation. He remained a member for 20 years, during which time Mr. Wright officiated at his marriage and baptized his children.

Then there was Rashid Khalidi, holder of a professorship at Columbia named after his idol, the late Edward Said. As befitted a reverential disciple of the leading propagandist for Palestinian terrorism, and himself a defender of suicide bombing, Mr. Khalidi regularly denounced Israel as a "racist" state in the process of creating an "apartheid system." Nevertheless, Mr. Obama had befriended him, had publicly acknowledged being influenced by him, and, as a member of the board of a charitable foundation, had also helped to support him financially. And there was also one of Mr. Obama's chief advisers on national security and a co-chairman of his campaign, Gen. Merrill McPeak, who subscribed to the canard that American policy in the Middle East was dictated by Jews in the interests not of the United States but of Israel. Others said to be advising Mr. Obama included a number who were no more notable than Gen. McPeak for their friendliness toward Israel: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Malley, Susan Rice and Samantha Power.

True, as the campaign proceeded, Mr. Obama either distanced himself from or repudiated the ideas of such associates. Yet he got around to doing so only when the political exigencies of his candidacy left him no prudential alternative.

Not surprisingly, a fair number of Jews who had never voted for a Republican in their lives were disturbed enough to tell pollsters that they had serious doubts about supporting Mr. Obama. Faced with this horrific prospect, Mr. Obama's Jewish backers mounted a vigorous effort of reassurance. No fewer than 300 rabbis issued a statement declaring that his "deep and abiding spiritual faith" derived from "the teachings of the Hebrew Prophets." Several well-known champions of Israel also wrote articles explaining on rather convoluted grounds why they were backing Mr. Obama. There was, for example, Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School: "The election of Barack Obama—a liberal supporter of Israel—will enhance Israel's position among wavering liberals." And Martin Peretz of The New Republic: "Israel's conflict with the Arabs . . . is mostly about history, and Obama is a student of history." And Martin Indyk of the Brookings Institution: "I believe Obama passes the kishke [gut] test."

The small community of politically conservative Jews did what it could to counter this campaign, but to no avail. In the event, Mr. Obama received 78% of the Jewish vote. This was a staggering 35 points higher than the pro-Obama white vote in general (43%), and it was even 11 points higher than the Hispanic vote (67%). Only with blacks, who gave him 95% of their vote, did Mr. Obama do better than with Jews. The results were just as dramatic when broken down by religion as by race and ethnicity: Protestants gave 45% of their vote to Obama (33 points less than Jews), and Catholics gave him 54% (24 points less than Jews).

But if the forecasts of a Jewish defection from Mr. Obama were all wrong, the prediction of his Jewish opponents that he would be less friendly toward Israel than George W. Bush has turned out to be more accurate than any "kishke test." Mr. Bush's friendliness manifested itself in various ways. One of the most important was his backing for the measures Israel had been taking to defend itself against suicide bombing—the building of a wall and the institution of checkpoints that would make it harder for suicide bombers to get through from the West Bank and into Israel proper. These measures were denounced almost everywhere as oppressive in themselves and as a species of apartheid, while the accompanying assassinations of the leaders who recruited, trained and supplied the suicide bombers were routinely condemned as acts of murder. But Mr. Bush—that is, the Bush who emerged after 9/11—would have none of this. So far as he was concerned, suicide bombing was a form of terrorism and therefore evil by definition. Israel had an absolute right to defend itself against this great evil, and in fighting it, the Israelis were struggling against the same enemy that had declared war on us on 9/11.

A similar logic guided Mr. Bush's view of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon in 2006 and of its attack on Gaza in 2008. Since, contrary to the confident assurances of their opponents, the wall, the checkpoints and the targeted assassinations had all but eliminated suicide bombing, the terrorists were now resorting to a different tactic. From its redoubt in Lebanon, Hezbollah rained rockets into the north of Israel, and from its base in Gaza, Hamas fired them into the south. In each of these cases, when the Israelis finally responded, they were furiously accused by most of the world of using "disproportionate" force that allegedly resulted in the wholesale "slaughter" of innocent civilians. But Mr. Bush would have none of these egregious defamations either. Both in 2006 and 2008, he again affirmed Israel's right to defend itself against terrorist assault, and he worked to fend off efforts by the U.N. to stop the Israelis before they could finish the job they had set out to do.

To be sure, Barack Obama (while still president-elect) said about the then impending Israeli incursion into Gaza, that "if somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything in my power to stop that and I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

This sounded very much like Mr. Bush. But whereas an altogether new conception of how to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians undergirded Mr. Bush's support for the tactics Israel had been using to defend itself against terrorist attack, there was nothing in Mr. Obama's record or in his past statements or in his history to suggest that he shared, or even was aware of, this conception.

George W. Bush was the first American president to come out openly in favor of a Palestinian state. But he also decided to attach a codicil that was even more novel. "Today," he declared on June 24, 2002:

Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.

To this he added the requirement that they elect "new leaders, not compromised by terror," which amounted to an implicit demand that Yasser Arafat be replaced.

Of course, Mr. Bush also challenged Israel "to take concrete steps to support the emergence of a viable, credible Palestinian state." Yet he most emphatically did not follow the usual practice of blaming Israel for the persistence of the war against it. Instead, in an entirely unprecedented move, he placed the onus on the Palestinian leaders and the Arab states backing them up. By saying up front that "there is simply no way to achieve . . . peace until all parties fight terror," he was blaming the absence of peace on the Arab states and the "Palestinian authorities" (who were "encouraging, not opposing, terrorism"), and he was exonerating the Israelis (who were being "victimized by terrorists," not supporting them).

Nor was this all. Two years later, in an addendum to his codicil, Mr. Bush said that "as part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders," and that these must include "already existing major Israeli population centers." To put it plainly, the United States rejected the almost universally accepted idea that a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian state was the forcible removal of every last Jew from the West Bank. In all other contexts, this is known as ethnic cleansing and regarded as a great crime. But in this context alone, and by a process of reasoning that has always escaped me, it has been magically transmuted into the exercise of a sacred human right. Not, however, to Mr. Bush.

Now, on a number of issues—most notably Iraq—Mr. Obama as president has surprised many people by in effect signing on to Mr. Bush's policies (while claiming to be reversing them). Yet even though he will certainly follow Mr. Bush in pushing for the establishment of a Palestinian state, it would be nothing less than astounding if he were also to accept the conditions prescribed by the Bush codicil and its addendum. For neither Mr. Obama himself nor those of his appointees who will be involved in the "peace process"—his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton; his special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell; his national security adviser, Gen. James Jones; and his ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, although she made the right noises at her confirmation hearing—have ever so much as suggested that it is the Palestinians and not the Israelis who are blocking the way to the holy grail of a two-state solution. On the contrary, Mr. Obama and his team are all great worshipers at the shrine of "evenhandedness," which has long served as a deceptive euphemism for pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions to Palestinian demands.

No wonder, then, that the Obama administration is already reverting to the old pre-Bush assumptions that have repeatedly been discredited in practice: that Israeli "intransigence" is the main obstacle to ending the conflict with the Palestinians, that "restarting" the "peace process" therefore requires putting the onus back on Israel, and that this in turn necessitates forcing Israel back to the 1967 borders. In other words, Jerusalem must be redivided and the major centers of Jewish population in the West Bank that Bush had promised would remain part of Israel must also be evacuated and the West Bank as a whole be made Judenrein.

Indeed, during Hillary Clinton's first trip as secretary of state to Israel, she went evenhandedly out of her way to castigate the Israelis over the issue of Arab housing in Jerusalem while making a great show of the $900 million the U.S. has pledged to Gaza.

It is too early to tell whether the return to this approach will go so far as to substantiate the fear expressed by the former U.N. ambassador John R. Bolton, who foresees "pressure on Israel to acknowledge the legitimacy of [Hamas and Hezbollah], and to negotiate with them as equals (albeit perhaps under some artful camouflage)." But it is not too early to tell that nothing will come of a reversion to the pre-Bush assumptions. Nothing will come of it with the Israelis because they—even most of the doves among them—have learned that withdrawing from previously occupied territories means the creation of bases from which terrorists will rain rockets on Israeli towns. Thus, when in 2000 they withdrew from the security zone they had established in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah moved in, and then their withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 resulted in a takeover by Hamas—eventuating in both cases not in peace or even improved prospects for peace but in war and more war. Furthermore, the withdrawal from Gaza, entailing as it did the dragging of some 8,000 Jews out of their homes, was so painful a national trauma that doing the same to more than 30 times that many Jews living in the West Bank has become unthinkable.

Nor will anything come of the old approach with the Palestinians. The writ, such as it is, of Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority extends only to the West Bank, not to Gaza, so that even if he were to reach an agreement with Israel, he lacks the power to deliver on it.

But a deeper reason may be at work here as well. When people quote Abba Eban's famous quip that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, the opportunity they have in mind is the achievement of statehood. And it is true that on at least three occasions when they could have had peace and a state of their own for the asking—in 1947, under the U.N. partition plan; in 2000, under the extremely generous terms proposed jointly by Israel under Ehud Barak and the United States under Bill Clinton; and in 2005, after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza—the Palestinians rejected statehood and chose war instead.

May it not be, then, that they failed to seize these "opportunities" because they have never really wanted a state of their own?

Giora Eiland, a retired general and the former head of Israel's National Security Council, argues that this is indeed the case. He writes:

The Palestinian ethos is based on values such as justice, victimization, revenge, and above all, the "right of return." . . . It's true that the Palestinians want to do away with the occupation, but it's wrong to assume that this translates into a desire for an independent state. They would prefer the solution of "no state at all"—that is, the State of Israel will cease to exist and the area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River will be divided among Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.

Adding to the plausibility of this theory is the most recent polling data showing that a large majority of Palestinians would reject the two-state solution even after "the settlement of all issues in dispute," and would be unwilling to accept a state of their own even with its capital in East Jerusalem and an unlimited "right of return."

But whether or not Mr. Eiland is right—and I for one think that he is, at least about the "no-state" solution—the futility under current conditions of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is so obvious that even devout American "peace processers" like Aaron David Miller and Martin Indyk acknowledge it. Hence (along with certain high-placed Israelis) they now advocate shifting to the "Syrian track." But nothing will come of this either. Even under the delusion that, in exchange for the Golan Heights, Syria would be ready to give up the dream of wiping Israel off the map that it shares with its closest ally Iran, it is hard to see how the Israelis would be willing to do unto the 20,000 Jews living there what they did to the 8,000 who lived in Gaza.

When I say that nothing will come of renewed American pressure on Israel to accept the demands that are the precondition of a deal with the Palestinians or the Syrians, I mean that nothing will come of it on the ground. It is, however, likely to result in the same souring of relations that developed in the 1990s when George H.W. Bush was in the White House and Yitzhak Shamir was prime minister of Israel, and that then carried over to their successors, Bill Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu. Unpleasant as this would be, it does not rise to the level of a threat.

But what surely does rise to the level of a threat is American policy toward Iran. In making the ridiculous boast during his presidential campaign that he could talk Iran into giving up its quest for nuclear weapons (and the missiles to deliver them), Mr. Obama was careful to add that the military option remained available in case all else failed. But everyone, and especially the Iranians and the Israelis, had to know that this was pro forma, and that if elected Mr. Obama would pursue the same carrot-and-stick approach of the Europeans who had been negotiating with Iran for the past five years. He would do this in spite of the fact that the only accomplishment of the European diplomatic dance had been to buy the Iranians more time; in spite of the fact that they had spurned the carrots they were offered and defied the sanctions put in place by the Security Council; and in spite of the fact that the Russians and the Chinese—who had prevented stronger sanctions from being adopted—were still determined to veto measures like a blockade or a cutoff of gasoline imports that could conceivably do the trick.

How much time do we have? Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at first said that Iran was still five years or more away from the bomb. This estimate relied on the CIA, in which Mr. Gates worked for more than 25 years, including a stint (1991-93) as its director. But the CIA does not exactly have a brilliant record of tracking nuclear proliferation. It was wrong in 2007 about Iran's suspension of its nuclear program; wrong in 2003 about Syria's nuclear program; wrong in 2002 about Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction; and wrong in exactly the opposite direction before the First Gulf War in 1991, at whose end U.N. inspectors discovered that the Iraqi nuclear program was far more advanced than the American intelligence community had thought. By contrast, an increasing number of experts (possibly—to judge by hints he has thrown out—the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, among them) agree with the head of Israeli military intelligence, who warns that the Iranians have already "crossed the nuclear threshold." Perhaps this is why, in an interview with the Financial Times, Mr. Gates has now backed away from his complacent five-year estimate ("How much more time [we have] I don't know. It is a year, two years, three years"). Admit it or not, then, the awesome choice of bombing Iran or letting Iran get the bomb is hard upon us.

Although it is certain that Mr. Obama has removed American military action from the table, it is difficult to tell whether he still thinks that he can talk Iran into giving up its nuclear program. On the one hand, his secretary of state reportedly admits that this is "very doubtful," but on the other hand she invites the Iranians to a conference on Afghanistan, then Mr. Obama himself sends a videotaped message proclaiming his "respect" for the brutal and tyrannical regime in Tehran, and finally it is announced that the U.S. will now join the Europeans, the Russians and the Chinese in the farcical negotiations with Iran we had previously shunned. Naturally the mullahs, seizing this gift of an opportunity to buy yet more time for reaching their nuclear goal, welcome the renewal of "constructive dialogue."

Yet to Mr. Obama's offer of a "new day" in the relations between us, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of that regime, responds in a speech heaping scorn on the United States to the accompaniment of an audience chanting "Death to America." And far from having leaped at Mr. Obama's old offer of direct talks without preconditions, the Iranians have rebuffed it and insisted on a few preconditions of their own, beginning with an apology for all the "atrocities" we have committed against them and a promise of "deep and fundamental" change in our policy.

In order to avoid this humiliation, Mr. Obama (we learn from the New York Times) has chosen the slightly lesser humiliation of "seeking an understanding with Syria." The idea here, according to the Times, is that through the Syrians, "the United States could increase the pressure on Iran to respond to its offer of direct talks." And to compound the double foolishness of expecting the Syrians to lend us a helping hand with Iran and the Iranians to join with us against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Obama expects that "such an understanding [with Syria] would also give Arab states and moderate Palestinians the political cover to negotiate with Israel. That, in turn, could increase the burden on Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, to relax its hostile stance toward Israel."

Well, compared to this concatenation of wishful delusions, the prophet Isaiah's vision of the end of days when the lion will lie down with the lamb is a piece of hardheaded realism.

The upshot is that, barring military action by Israel (or a miracle), Iran will get the bomb, and sooner rather than later. What then? For some time now, many pundits with the ear of the Obama administration have finally recognized that neither carrots nor sticks nor any combination of the two can work. But instead of going on to support military action, they have fallen back on the position that we can "live with" a nuclear Iran. In line with the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, they soothingly tell us, the mullahs can be deterred by the fear of retaliation much as the far more heavily armed Soviets and Chinese were deterred during the cold war. They also say that Ahmadinejad—who in his fanaticism admittedly sounds as though he can hardly wait to use nuclear weapons against Israel—neither runs the regime nor speaks for it.

What they forget to mention, however, is that Ahmadinejad could never have issued his threats without permission from the Ayatollah Khamenei, who does run the regime, and who has himself described Israel as a "cancerous tumor" that must and will be excised. Besides, even Ahmadinejad's predecessor as president and the current speaker of the Assembly of Experts, the Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, known far and wide as a "moderate," has declared that his country would not be deterred by the fear of retaliation:

If the day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession . . . application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.

If this is the position of even a reputed Iranian moderate, how could Israel depend upon MAD to keep the mullahs from launching a first strike? Much anxiety has been voiced over the nuclear arms race that would be triggered throughout the region if Iran were to get the bomb, but in all truth we would be lucky if there were enough time for such a race to develop. For consider: if the Iranians were to get the bomb, the Israelis would be presented with an almost irresistible incentive to beat them to the punch with a pre-emptive strike—and so, understanding this, would Tehran. Either way, a nuclear exchange would become, if not inevitable, terrifyingly likely, and God alone knows how far the destruction would then spread.

Measured against this horrendous possibility, even the worst imaginable consequences of taking military action before the mullahs get the bomb would amount to chump change. But to say it again, with American military action ruled out, the only hope is that such action—which could at the very least head off the otherwise virtually certain prospect of a nuclear war—will be taken by Israel.

Forget about the Palestinian and Syrian "tracks": If there is a threat to Israel coming from Mr. Obama, it is that, having eschewed the use of force by the United States, he will follow through on his vice president's declaration that the Israelis would be "ill advised" to attack the Iranian nuclear sites and will prevent them from doing the job themselves.

Mr. Podhoretz's 12th book, "Why Are Jews Liberals?," will be published by Doubleday in the fall.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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ARMS RACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST?
'There Is No Reason to Discuss Israel's Nuclear Weapons'

The administration of President Barack Obama has begun pressuring Israel. US history professor Jeffrey Herf told SPIEGEL ONLINE that any efforts to get Israel to abandon its nuclear arsenal amounts to appeasement.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: American politicians don't normally talk about Israeli nuclear weapons. Should the continue to be taboo?

Jeffrey Herf: Of course. There is no reason to discuss Israel's nuclear weapons any more than there is reason to discuss the nuclear weapons of other American allies, such as Britain and France.



Israel last year put it's modern air force on display in a message to Iran not to continue with its controversial nuclear program.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The head US negotiator for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT), Rose Gottemoeller, has called upon Israel to become an NNPT member-state. Was this a smart move?

Herf: I don't know what the purpose of such a proposal is. Is it to enhance the legitimacy of Israel's nuclear weapons? Or is it to place them on the negotiating table so that pressure can be brought to bear to bring about Israel's unilateral nuclear disarmament? If that is the purpose, it amounts to appeasement of Iran and reminds me of the Soviet Union's diplomatic efforts to disarm France and Great Britain in the course of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) negotiations in Geneva in the early 1980s. The British and French refused all such efforts and the Israelis will do so as well for exactly the same reason: such weapons are a deterrent of last resort. Moreover, it is Iran, not Israel, that is violating numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions. It is Iran whose nuclear ambitions threaten to make the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty a dead letter.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What would happen if Iran gets the bomb?

Herf: If Iran gets the bomb, a nuclear arms race in the most volatile part of the globe would be the likely consequence and that could be the effective end of the NNPT.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How would you describe the direction of the Obama administration's policy approach toward Israel?

Herf: It is too early to make a definitive judgment. If the Obama administration is engaged in a diplomatic effort of very short duration to give Iran a chance to turn away from its nuclear ambitions, then perhaps there is some merit in doing so. But I find it hard to imagine that there is anything of significance that the United States has to offer Iran now that has not been offered in various ways by the Quartet of the Middle East (eds. note: the negotiating entity made up of the US, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations) in the past five years. If however, the Obama administration thinks that smiles and a new tone will change Iranian behavior, it is pursuing a policy that is both naive and potentially dangerous.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you count yourself as a supporter of this new approach?

Herf: If the Obama administration's new approach amounts to accepting an Iran with nuclear weapons, then I most definitely do not support it. If the new approach is one that strings out negotiations until Iran has the bomb, I don't support it. If the new approach is negotiations with clear time limits, greater economic sanctions on all states and businesses that are helping Iran build the bomb combined with the possibility of the use of military means to eliminate Iran's nuclear program if, and only if, all of these measures fail to do so, then I would support such a policy. In order to avoid such a grim prospect, it is vital that all the major powers, not only the United States, do everything they can do in the form of diplomatic pressure and severe economic sanctions to bring the Iranian nuclear program to an end now.

Interview conducted by Gabor Steingart

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Last update - 03:11 14/05/2009
Obama warns Netanyahu: Don't surprise me with Iran strike

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran. The message was conveyed by a senior American official who met in Israel with Netanyahu, ministers and other senior officials. Earlier, Netanyahu's envoy visited Washington and met with National Security Adviser James Jones and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and discussed the dialogue Obama has initiated with Tehran.

The message from the American envoy to the prime minister reveals U.S. concern that Israel could lose patience and act against Iran. It is important to the Americans that they not be caught off guard and find themselves facing facts on the ground at the last minute.

Obama did not wait for his White House meeting with Netanyahu, scheduled for next Monday, to deliver his message, but rather sent it ahead of time with his envoy.

It may be assumed that Obama is disturbed by the positions Netanyahu expressed before his election vis-a-vis Tehran - for example, Netanyahu's statement that "If elected I pledge that Iran will not attain nuclear arms, and that includes whatever is necessary for this statement to be carried out." After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers to carry out another holocaust."

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak do not oppose American dialogue with Tehran, but they believe it should be conducted within a limited window of time, making it clear to Iran that if it does not stop its nuclear program, severe sanctions will be imposed and other alternatives will be considered.

The American concern that Israel will attack Iran came up as early as last year, while president George W. Bush was still in office. As first reported in Haaretz, former prime minister Ehud Olmert and Barak made a number of requests from Bush during the latter's visit to Jerusalem, which were interpreted as preparations for an aerial attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Following the Bush visit to Jerusalem, about a year ago the previous administration sent two senior envoys, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and the former U.S. national intelligence chief Mike McConnell to demand that Israel not attack Iran.

The previous administration also gave the message greater weight through Mullen's public statement that an Israeli attack on Iran would endanger the entire region. Since that statement, Mullen has met a number of times with his Israeli counterpart, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

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From The Times
May 15, 2009
Leon Panetta's mission to stop Israel bombing Iranian nuclear plant



James Hider in Jerusalem

America’s spy chief was sent on a secret mission to Israel to warn its leaders not to launch a surprise attack on Iran without notifying the US Administration.

As Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, prepares to visit Washington, it emerged yesterday that Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, went to Israel two weeks ago. He sought assurances from Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, that their hawkish new Government would not attack Iran without alerting Washington.

Concerns have been rising that Mr Netanyahu could launch a strike on Tehran’s atomic programme, in the same way that Israel hit Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in 1981. Israel has been preparing for such an eventuality. It has carried out long-distance manoeuvres and is due to hold its largest civil defence drills this summer. The country’s leaders reportedly told Mr Panetta that they did not “intend to surprise the US on Iran”.

Mr Netanyahu will leave for Washington this weekend. He will meet Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, and Mr Obama, whom he will try to convince of the need for tougher action against Iran. Mr Obama favours trying to engage Tehran, but his efforts have been received coolly by President Ahmadinejad.

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The Israeli leader is expected to insist that the US stays focused on Iran, rather than tackling stalled talks with the Palestinians.

Mr Netanyahu has held meetings with Arab leaders this week, including President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan. Both Sunni leaders share Israel’s fears of a resurgent Shia Iran.

In Aqaba, Jordan, yesterday King Abdullah told Mr Netanyahu there could be no regional peace without a Palestinian state. So far Mr Netanyahu has refused to commit to a two-state solution. Instead, he has talked about developing the Palestinian economy, with Palestinians having only limited sovereignty. That view is likely to cause confrontation with Mr Obama.

Mr Netanyahu raised the issue of Iran during a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Nazareth yesterday. “I asked him as a moral figure to make his voice heard loud and continuously against the declarations coming from Iran of their intention to destroy Israel,” he said.

“I think we found in him an attentive ear.” The Pope, who reiterated his calls for peace yesterday, did not give an account of the meeting.

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From The Times

May 18, 2009
Barack Obama attempts to ward off disastrous military air strike on ‘nuclear’ Tehran


(EPA/RON SACHS / POOL)

President Obama's meeting in the Oval Office with Israeli Prime Minster Binyamin Netanyahu comes amid fundamental differences on their approach to the Middle East

Image :1 of 2

Tim Reid in Washington

President Obama will seek today to persuade the hawkish Israeli Prime Minister that the White House’s recent overtures to Iran should be given time to work and that an Israeli military strike against Tehran could trigger disaster.

Mr Obama’s meeting in the Oval Office with Binyamin Netanyahu comes amid fundamental differences on their approach to the Middle East and mixed signals over whether the Israeli Prime Minister could endorse the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state — a cornerstone of US policy in the region.

Mr Netanyahu, who unlike his predecessors has refused to back the idea of an independent Palestinian state, arrived in Washington as his Defence Minister suggested that he may be prepared to endorse a peace process leading to such an outcome.

“I think and believe that Netanyahu will tell Obama this Government is prepared to go for a political process that will result in two peoples living side by side,” said Ehud Barak. A former Israeli Prime Minister and long-time rival of Mr Netanyahu, he has been a supporter of a “two-state solution” and is part of the current Prime Minister’s governing coalition.

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Yet no sooner had Mr Barak spoken than Ofir Akunis, a confidant of Mr Netanyahu and a member of his conservative Likud party, said that the Israeli leader would refuse to back a Palestinian state. Yisrael Katz, the Israeli Transport Minister, also said that Mr Netanyau would “oppose any creation of an armed Palestinian state on Israel’s borders, which would endanger Israel’s security”.

It is uncertain how much consensus Mr Obama and Mr Netanyahu will be able to reach, either on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or on Iran.

Mr Obama sees a two-state solution as vital to Middle East peace, and a key factor in the push to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. The US President will also argue today that Israel must stop building new settlements in the West Bank.

Mr Netanyahu does not believe that the Palestinians are ready to govern themselves, not least because they are fundamentally split. President Abbas’s increasingly shaky hold on power runs only in the West Bank. The rival Hamas militants control Gaza.

Mr Netanyahu says that he is ready to negotiate with Mr Abbas. He also says that he is ready to open up border crossings and invest in the Palestinian economy but has stopped short of endorsing a sovereign independent state.

Mr Obama’s recent offer of talks with Tehran has raised deep concerns in Israel and Mr Netanyahu views Tehran’s nuclear ambitions as an existential threat to the Jewish state. Both men agree that Iran’s nuclear programme must be stopped but have differing opinions on how to to do it, particularly as the Israeli leader sees no link — as Mr Obama does — between the issue of Palestinian statehood and efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear programme.

During his election campaign Mr Netanyahu hinted at his willingness to launch a military strike if Iran refused to halt the programme. This month Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli Foreign Minister, said that world powers should take action against Iran if it does not curb its nuclear activities by August.

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UN nuclear chief says Israel raid on Iran would be "mad"

Europe News
May 16, 2009, 9:46 GMT

Berlin - Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has warned in an interview made public Saturday that any Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would be 'mad.'

The German news magazine Der Spiegel quoted the UN nuclear chief saying, 'It would be utterly mad to attack Iran. That would turn the region into one giant fireball and the Iranians would immediately begin to build the bomb ... supported by the entire Islamic world.'

ElBaradei's term at the head of the Vienna-based agency ends this November.

He said the international community had for a long time ignored IAEA warnings about nuclear proliferation with the result that 'the risk that nuclear arms will be used has 'significantly grown' along with 'the risk the bomb will fall into the wrong hands.'

He appealed to Tehran to settle the issues with IAEA and offer a willingness to compromise in the light of offers from new US President Barack Obama: 'I advise the people I meet from Iran: Shake the hand that Obama is offering you.'

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The Two Leaders Meet to Discuss a Two-State Solution With Palestine and Iran's Nukes

By JAKE TAPPER and SIMON MCGREGOR-WOOD
May 18, 2009

President Obama and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet today to discuss Iran and a two-state solution. The U.S. president is expected to push Netanyahu on pursuing talks with Palestinian leaders, but Netanyahu and his Likud party have so far been unwilling to to accept a two-state solution.

More PhotosDifferences about Palestinian statehood and strategies for Iran and Syria are on top of Obama's agenda. He sees the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel as a crucial goal that's in America's interests.

As for what's on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's mind, the front page of one of Israel's leading daily papers Ma'ariv said it best: "Iran First."

Two-State Solution Tops U.S. List
The U.S. president is expected to push Netanyahu on pursuing negotiations with Palestinian leaders and halting settlements in disputed territories, including the growth of existing settlements.

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U.S.-Israel ties at risk when Netanyahu meets Obama

By MARTIN SIEFF
May 18, 2009 at 9:58


President Barack Obama (R) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on May 18, 2009. (UPI Photo/Martin H. Simon/Pool)

WASHINGTON, May 18 (UPI) -- When the prime minister of Israel visits the president of the United States on Monday, Binyamin Netanyahu will say "Iran," and Barack Obama will say "Palestine." The two men look set on a collision course on both those issues.

Netanyahu has already prepared carefully for the meeting and is trying to avoid a head-on collision. But he is up against two huge problems: the aggressive confidence of the new Obama administration that they can and must push through a credible Israeli-Palestinian two-state agreement fast and the heritage of dislike and distrust that Obama administration foreign policymakers have carried over against Netanyahu from the Clinton administration.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Middle East peace negotiator George Mitchell and Iran envoy Dennis Ross are all veterans of Bill Clinton's two terms in office and of his commitment to the Oslo peace process. Netanyahu did not destroy the Oslo peace process.

It was Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat who did that in the Camp David II summit in July 2000, a year after Netanyahu was voted out of power. But the Clinton administration veterans who now run foreign policy and national security for Obama have never forgiven Netanyahu for eventually succeeding their beloved Yitzhak Rabin and expressing his own skepticism of their even more-beloved Oslo process.

Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and their advisers want focused talks designed to lead quickly to creating a Palestinian state. Netanyahu doesn't want talks at all and is skeptical about any prospect of getting a stable, credible peace agreement out of them. With Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, as firmly in control of Gaza as ever and poised to win the municipal elections later this year on the West Bank, he has good reason to be skeptical.

Netanyahu will want to avoid an outright break with the Americans and agree to talks, while backpedaling from his previous blanket refusal to consider the very possibility of a Palestinian state.

Obama wants no new settlement building and outposts demolished. But Netanyahu is committed to continue building in existing settlements. His defense minister, Ehud Barak, offered more concessions to the Palestinians at the 2000 Camp David summit during his stint as prime minister than any other Israeli leader ever has, and he is still relatively dovish on negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank.

But looking over Netanyahu and Barak's shoulders is their super-hawk Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who stripped a lot of right-wing support from Netanyahu in the Feb. 10 election to make his Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel is our Home") Party the third largest in Israel.

A member of Netanyahu's Likud Party said Saturday that the prime minister won't be prepared to accept Obama and Clinton's beloved two-state solution. If that proves to be the case, the first Oval Office meeting of the two men could prove to be a very icy one.

Obama and Clinton have steeled themselves to turn the screws on Netanyahu. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who is Jewish, has told American Jewish leaders that the administration is determined to push through its peace-settlement conception and won't let them stand in the way.

Obama has already started to pile on the pressure on Israel to prevent it from launching any unilateral airstrikes against Iran's rapidly expanding nuclear-weapons capability.

The U.S. president sent a letter to Netanyahu ahead of Monday's meeting warning that he doesn't want to be surprised with an Israeli attack on Iran.

Netanyahu, no doubt, will reply that he doesn't want to be surprised by an Iranian intermediate-range ballistic missile vaporizing Tel Aviv and the two-thirds of the population of Israel that are concentrated in its coastal strip. Israel is understandably concerned about a country that is led by people who have called for the Jewish state's destruction and have denied the Holocaust.

Netanyahu hasn't publicly accepted the idea of an independent Palestinian state, an idea several of his predecessors have accepted. Last week Pope Benedict XVI, who was in the Middle East, joined the call for such an outcome. Obama has been on that page all along.

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Iranian nuclear program can make USA and Israel become sworn enemies

Front page / World / Asia
20.05.2009

The visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the United States and his meeting with US President Barack Obama has received an extensive coverage in the media. The talks between the “Israeli hawk” and the “US peacemaker” are devoted to the current situation in the Middle East.

Pravda.Ru interviewed Georgy Mirsky, a Doctor of Historical Sciences, about the future situation in the troubled region.

“Why does the visit of the Israeli prime minister receive a lot of attention in the media?”

“US officials used to pay first priority attention to negotiations with their Israeli counterparts. The current visit comes somewhat late. Moreover, Obama had a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan, before Netanyahu’s arrival. The new US president was trying to keep Netanyahu at a distance for a certain period of time, which shows that the American leader was concerned about the activities of the Israeli government.”

“What could be the reasons for these concerns?”

“Netanyahu’s government is the most far-right government of all the previous Israeli governments. Unlike the previous cabinets headed by Sharon and Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu confuses Obama’s plans, who strives for a peaceful regulation of the conflict. The Israeli prime minister does not even want to think about it. The US administration believes that Netanyahu runs retrogressive politics.

“Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman does not want to hear anything about the Palestinian State and shares a tough approach even to Israeli Arabs. These views ruin all of Obama’s peaceful initiatives.”

“Does Obama seriously want to regulate the eternal conflict in the Middle East?”

“He wants to succeed as soon as possible. Russia is not one of Obama’s major objectives at the moment. He is concentrated on the problems of the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bush ruined the relations with the Islamic world and created a great deal of problems for the United States. Obama’s meetings with Muslim leaders demonstrate a change in the foreign politics of the USA.

“Netanyahu’s rise to power has become one of the biggest disappointments for Obama. The Israeli PM stands strongly against the concept of two states. He also demands the Palestinians should recognize Israel as the Jewish State. However, even adequate Palestinian leaders, like Mahmoud Abbas, are not ready for this. Arabs make 20 percent of the Israeli population.

They strongly reject the idea of the Jewish State. Netanyahu is not ready to block the construction of Jewish settlements on the West Bank of Jordan, which also raises concerns with the Arabs.”

“Does Netanyahu have any questions to Obama?”

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From The Times

May 22, 2009
God is stronger than Obama, say Israeli settlers defying bulldozers


Israeli settlers at Maoz Esther

James Hider

Israeli security forces demolished a tiny Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank yesterday days after Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, promised President Obama that he would take a tougher stance against the illegal communities built on Palestinian land.

Only hours after police left the prefab shacks and makeshift synagogue in ruins, however, settlers led by a nationalist member of the Israeli parliament moved back in and started rebuilding the settlement of Maoz Esther, an extension of the existing community of Kokhav Hashahar.

At their meeting in Washington earlier this week, Mr Obama called on Mr Netanyahu to dismantle scores of illegal “outposts” — effectively new suburbs of established settlements.

Mr Netanyahu reportedly agreed to the demands, but hours after the demolition he said that Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel and would “never be divided”.

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Palestinians seeking to establish their own state in a future peace agreement want their capital to be in the city. Saeb Erekat, a Palestinian negotiator, said: “He’s saying the state of conflict will be eternal.”

In Maoz Esther, no one from the outpost was arrested when security forces moved in with a digger to destroy the half dozen jerry-built homes and a shrine on a hillside.

Standing among washing machines, furniture and holy books that the settlers removed before the bulldozers moved in, the MP Michael Ben Ari of the National Union party helped to rebuild one of the destroyed wooden homes. Mr Ben Ari, whose party is a member of the governing coalition, said: “I have this drill and by tonight the family will be sleeping here again.

“This is just a political game played by Ehud Barak to placate his party,” he said, referring to deep divisions in the Defence Minister’s centre-left Labour Party.

The settlers were determined to continue on what they see as a divine mission to take back the lands occupied by Israel in biblical times. “We are not worried about American pressure,” said Aryeh Davis, a 26-year-old from the settlement of Kiryat Arba in Hebron. “It says in the Bible that this land is ours; it will stay ours and we will keep building more and more. God is stronger than Obama.”

He said that Maoz Esther had been demolished two months ago when only two families lived there: the settlers rebuilt it with six families. “Now we’re back and we’re going to build it twice as big again. We’re asking all settlers to double the number of places they are building to show our defiance.

“Lots of leaders in history tried to bother Israel, like Egypt and Babylon and other empires. We don’t hear about them today, but we still hear about Israel.”

Dana, a middle-aged settler in a headscarf and long dress, said that her house had been destroyed. She said the small synagogue that had been bulldozed was named after a student from Kokhav Hashahar who was killed last year when a Palestinian gunman attacked a Jerusalem seminary.

“The Defence Minister should be ashamed to destroy a synagogue named after a terror victim,” she said. “He may as well burn every Torah in Israel. Building settlements is the most important commandment in the Torah.”

Among those rehabilitating the smashed homes was Baruch Marzel, a notorious figure who was close to Meir Kahane, an assassinated rabbi whose movement was banned by Israel and the US for its anti-Arab racism.
Pointing at the shack that he had helped to resurrect, he said that most settlements in the West Bank started from equally humble beginnings.

“I lived in Maale Adumim in a house in worse condition than that,” he said, referring to a vast settlement suburb of Jerusalem cutting deep into the West Bank. “Now it’s a big city.”