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Olmert: feeling the heat (file)
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| By Israel Insider staff December 5, 2007 |
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 Bookmark to del.icio.us |
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| "Yes, Madame Secretary." Now we know what this was all about.... |
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What a difference a week makes.
The depth of the crisis facing the US and Israel may be difficult to fathom, but the Prime Minister of Israel appears hard-put to confront it or even acknowledge it.
Back in Annapolis, Ehud Olmert enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame and glory, and the fleeting embrace of George W. Bush.
But after the Joint Understanding was filed away, and the reporters filed their stories, the Israelis began to realize the extent of the bait-and-switch that had been pulled on them, and what a sea-change in relations with the United States they were facing.
The ceremonial discrimination against the Israelis (forced to enter through the service entrance, banned from group photos, Israeli journalists banned from Arab events) and the post-gathering fiasco over the UN resolution was just the beginning. The release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was just the outward sign of the dramatic policy shift.
The bottom line is that the United States is fast pulling away from what had long been understood to be a strategic necessity: to deal Iran a military blow that would eliminate or radically reduce the existential threat that the current regime represents, emboldening Israel to make painful concessions that would allow a Palestinian state -- on some but not all of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) conquered by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967.
That was to be the deal, with Israel withdrawing to behind its security barrier, annexing three settlement blocs (Ariel, Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim), evacuating outlying settlements, and reaching some kind of accomodation in Jerusalem's Holy Basin. In return, the US and Israel would make sure that Iran would no longer be a threat.
Annapolis was to be an assembly of Arab moderates that would isolate Iran. But no sooner was Annapolis over than Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was jetting to Doha for the GCC Summit, holding hands and shmoozing with Iran's Ahmadinejad, looking for all the world like long-term lovers, even though the Iranian President was a first-time guest at the Summit.
Was it all a sham, then, the pre-Annapolis talk? Were the Israelis suckered into a formal, ceremonial endorsement of a one year plan to create another terror state on their doorstep, without getting any security in return? That's how Israeli leaders appear to be feeling today, as the United States feels suddenly distant and unresponsive, apparently unwilling to consider Israeli intelligence that Iran is racing at high speed to produce nuclear weapons, unwilling too to share real-time intelligence with Israel and even preventing Israel from launching a much-needed spy satellite to monitor developments in Iran.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak, for one, is taking a tough and forthright stance, openly challenging the American intelligence reports as being wrong and even intentionally misleading. Yes, he says, the Iranians did halt their nuclear weapons development program in 2003 but claiming that they have since restarted it. The NIE report doesn't rule out such a restart, but the possibility is downplayed as less than a high certainty.
The Israelis apparently have reason to believe that the certainty is very high, just as they believed that the Syrians were operating a nuclear factory -- possibly a proto-reactor but more likely to assemble a bomb from existing plutonium in Syria's possession -- an intelligence estimate that the Americans also were unwilling to endorse, just as they wouldn't sanction an Israeli strike to take out the factory, and thus were only informed of it when the strike was underway. So much for the value of US intelligence.
The question now becomes whether Olmert will continue to prattle about the accomplishments of Annapolis and the painful sacrifices other Israelis will need to make, or whether he will face up to the grim reality that his naivete and misjudgements have contributed to a perhaps unprecedented crisis in US-Israeli relations, in which he was played for a fool and set up to take the fall for the inevitable failure of his "understandings" with Abbas, in which the Americans will be entitled to play the role of "judge" that Olmert has officially sanctioned.
Because if Israeli leaders continue to believe that 2008 is the crucial year to prevent Iran from going nuclear and being in a position to make good on Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe Israel off the map, then the coming year will be one in which Israel -- far from signing a peace treaty -- is forced to go it alone in dealing with that existential threat, even in defiance of American preferences.
On the other hand, it is possible that Israel is being maneuvered into a position where it is compelling to "go it alone" so that the US is positioned to pick up the peace and forge a new order in the Mideast after Iran and Israel bloody each other, or to impose a solution on Israel should a surprise attack against the Iranians prove successful but fuel outrage in the Arab world.
With these kind of daunting prospects outstanding, it is perhaps understandable that Olmert sought to nail down Bush's planned visit by leaking it ahead of the White House announcement. The way things are going, the Israeli Prime Minister may be enroute to a snub, or at least a very cold slap of the reality of his nation's imminent isolation, as the President of the United States makes a barnstorming tour of the Mideast celebrating a new policy that goes directly against the Israeli self-interest. |
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