From the first day, the
Obama administration has suggested to Israel that resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict would help the administration "line up its
ducks" across the Arab world to confront Iran.
In other words, the
administration implicitly, and at times explicitly, created linkage
between the Palestinian and Iranian diplomatic issues. The pressure was
on Israel to concede and compromise with the Palestinians so that
Washington could "better" tackle the Iranian nuclear threat.
Now that the
administration is seeking detente with Iran -- a detente that explicitly
includes American acceptance of Iran's nuclear enrichment program to a
certain degree -- the linkage argument has lost its force.
Not only does
Washington no longer "need" Israeli concessions to the Palestinians to
draft moderate Arab countries into a coalition against Iran, but the
U.S. has lost the support of the same Arab countries it wished to draft,
such as Saudi Arabia. Without connection to anything Palestinian,
President Barack Obama has pushed Israelis and Saudis into a coalition
more than ever before, against both Teheran and Washington.
At the Saban Forum in
Washington last month, Prime Minister Netanyahu reverted to a linkage
argument of his own. Netanyahu said the efforts to negotiate a peace
arrangement between the Palestinians and Israel "will come to nothing if
Iran succeeds in building atomic bombs. A nuclear-armed Iran would give
even greater backing to the radical and terrorist elements in the
region. It would undermine the chances of arriving at a negotiated
peace. I would say it would undermine those peace agreements that we
have already reached with two of our neighbors."
Netanyahu's argument
for linkage is diametrically opposed to the Obama administration's
contention. For Netanyahu, the linkage is in reverse. The rollback of
Iran is necessary for peace with the Palestinians to emerge, and not
vice versa.
It's hard to imagine
the flimsy regime of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas
surviving an Iranian-backed Hamas assault on a peace accord with Israel
as long as Iran continues to ride high and mighty in the region.
The Palestinians also
make a link between their issue and the Iranian issue. Specifically,
they learned from the American diplomatic collapse in Geneva to give
Washington no concessions in terms of territory, refugees or border
controls. After all, the Palestinians see that Iran's persistence in
retaining all its nuclear properties pays off. Washington acquiesced in
the easing of sanctions against Iran without Teheran really giving up
any significant hard assets.
Abbas learns from this
to hang tough and wait for Washington to shunt Israel's concerns aside,
just as Obama did on the Iranian issue in Geneva.
In the present situation,
Netanyahu has, quite bluntly, even less reason to trust the Obama
administration than he did before. Netanyahu should now be saying to
Obama: If you're not going to protect Israel and the region from the
Iranians, expect less cooperation from me on other files. You screwed
Israel over Bushehr, so don't expect me to give you Yitzhar. America is
not the only party that can play linkage politics.
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