Obama continues to fight Israel

After meeting, deafening silence
By: Laura Rozen and Ben Smith
March 23, 2010 11:51 PM EDT

The Obama administration shifted this week from red hot anger at Benjamin Netanyahu to an icier suspicion toward the Israeli Prime Minister, who made clear in a marathon of meetings with U.S. officials that he would give ground only grudgingly on their goal of stopping the continued construction of new Israeli housing units on disputed territory.

Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office Tuesday evening for an unexpectedly-long 89-minutes until about 7:00, then stayed to consult with his own staff in the Roosevelt Room, according to a source briefed on the meeting. The two then met again for 35 minutes at 8:20 at Netanyahu's request, the source said. But the meetings were shrouded in unusual secrecy, in part because U.S. officials, who just ten days earlier called the surprise announcement of new housing in East Jerusalem an “insult” and an “affront,” made sure to reward Netanyahu with a series of small snubs: There were no photographs released from the meeting, and no briefing for the press.

And as of late Tuesday evening, neither side had released the usual “readout” of the meetings’ content – a likely indicator of the distance between the sides.

But any impression that Netanyahu’s trip would mark a renewal of the troubled relationship between U.S. and Israeli leaders had faded by the time the men met. Netanyahu had spent the previous 24 hours of a U.S. visit lobbying allies in Congress to push back against public American criticism and to turn the focus to Iran, congressional sources said, and delivered a defiant speech to the pro-Israel group AIPAC, insisting on Israel’s right to build in Jerusalem.

He also complained to U.S. officials of his limited power over the housing construction, though he promised in meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden to do his best to avoid future unpleasant surprises, officials said.

The limits of Netanyahu’s promise became clear minutes before his scheduled meeting with Obama, when the Jerusalem municipality gave final approval to a settler group to proceed on a controversial development in the city, an announcement which prompted a lawmaker from one of Israeli’s liberal opposition parties to call the prime minister a “pyromaniac.”

“This is exactly what we expect Prime Minister Netanyahu to get control of,” a senior U.S. official told POLITICO Tuesday evening. “The current drip-drip-drip of projects in East Jerusalem impedes progress.”

The clearest sign of Netanyahu’s rift with the White House, however, may have been his intense focus on Congress, which has blunted the attempts of many of Obama’s predecessors to pressure the Jewish state.

“We in Congress stand by Israel,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, standing beside Netanyahu Tuesday. “In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.”

But while Congress was speaking publicly with one voice, behind the scenes Netanyahu seemed to be trying to drive a wedge between it and the White House.

The Israeli leader met separately with groups of congressmen and senators, finding support on both sides of the aisle, but particular warmth from Republicans.

In an interview with POLITICO after his meeting with Netanyahu, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican member of Congress, made it clear that he supports the Israeli government’s plans for new housing in East Jerusalem rather than what he described as the Obama administration’s overreaction in criticizing the move.

“None of us believe we ought to go back to the ’67 lines,” Cantor said. “That brings into question why in the world would some construction in Jerusalem that no one thinks would be part of a Palestinian state ... be an issue.”

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana was more critical. He called the White House stance on the Jewish state “absurd,” saying President Barack Obama needs to stop trying to “micromanage” Israel on settlement issues.

“I never thought I’d live to see the day that an American administration would denounce the Jewish state of Israel for rebuilding Jerusalem,” Pence told reporters.

While Republicans presented themselves as the more steadfast champions of Israel, Democrats were circumspect.

Asked about the Republican criticism, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) sounded as though he had not been talking to the same person as Cantor and Pence. “Well, that’s certainly not what [Prime Minister] Netanyahu’s message was to us today,” he said, adding, “it was a very positive, upbeat meeting.”

“I think that the Republicans are spending an enormous amount of time being critical and disparaging without offering any sort of alternatives to anything,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry.

In a meeting with Jewish members of Congress, Netanyahu did most of the talking and determinedly turned the subject from settlements to Iran, according to a Democratic Hill staffer who did not want to be quoted by name.

“He knows that this is something that is going to move members of Congress, even if they are angry about the expansion of Jewish housing, that they are going to respond to Iran as a threat,” the staffer said. “He connected Iran to just about every subject that was raised.”

Netanyahu, according to this account, pushed members to get a reconciled Iran sanctions bill to the president’s desk soon, even if there is collateral damage and that ordinary Iranian people would be hurt by the sanctions, not just the regime.

Netanyahu also complained that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is “not a partner; [he] won’t come to the table,” another Democratic Hill staffer said, summarizing. Netanyahu “made excuses for the complicated [housing] approval process ... the point being he had no idea what happened when Vice President Joe Biden was there.”

But with the special relationship between the two countries in a state of unusual ferment, Netanyahu’s tortured meetings with the series of Americans appeared anything but decisive.

Netanyahu “is too smart not to understand that Washington has changed,” veteran Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller told POLITICO on Tuesday. “And that a potentially transformative president who is now king of the world for a day is facing off against Benjamin Netanyahu, king of Israel. And the fight between the two is not today. What we see now is positioning."