(Thecable).When Shimon Peres met with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House Tuesday, the White House had to walk a fine line: Honor the president of a close U.S. ally, but don't make overmuch of the visit of a figurehead who has publicly supported the Middle East peace process and was granted a meeting at the White House before Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
So, while the White House made no secret of the Peres-Obama meeting, there was no press conference featuring the two leaders in the Oval Office; just a chance to catch photos and a few comments from Peres as he departed the White House meeting.
National security advisor James Jones, NSC senior director for the Middle East Daniel Shapiro, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and White House political advisor David Axelrod were in the room with Peres and Obama.
At first glance, it's a team that makes sense to be included in a meeting that straddles policy and politics. Jones, as Obama's national security advisor, and Shapiro, as the NSC official on the Middle East, convey the national security dimensions of the relationship. Emanuel and Axelrod are two high-level Jewish members of Obama's administration; they have been increasingly enlisted in recent weeks to build support within the Jewish-American community for a two-state solution in the face of resistance from the new Netanyahu government.
The presence of Emanuel and Axelrod in the room told the Israelis something important, Israel watchers suggested. "This is a significant decision," said Steve Cohen, president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, which conducts track-two diplomacy between Israel and the Arab world. "The Israelis have tried to intimidate Rahm to say, in effect, ‘Don't forget you are a Jew born in Israel.'" His presence, Cohen said, "told the Israelis in the most clear possible way that ‘I serve the president of the United States and there is no distance between my role with regard to this search for peace in the Middle East and that of the president.'"
Axelrod's presence is also significant, Cohen said. "Axelrod also has been the most significant person relating to the Jews and everybody else during Obama's election campaign. Axelrod has had a very good relationship with the Jewish community of Chicago."
He added, "I think this was another sign that the old game is over," referring to what he described as past Israeli attempts to "get around the strategic assessment of the U.S. president by putting pressure on him from allies within the United States." Cohen sees signs that efforts to "slow down the president by going to Congress ... which has been so often used to slow down the peace process" will thus be discouraged or will not succeed.
An Israeli diplomat said that there was no offense taken by the Netanyahu government that Peres got the first meeting with Obama. "Quite the contrary. Peres is there to soften the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, to provide an elder statesman's view of how things ‘will eventually work out.'" Peres and Netanyahu are fully coordinated, another observer said.
But in other ways, too, sources tell The Cable, the lineup had some notable inclusions and omissions that says something larger about how the Obama administration's foreign policy is being made and communicated by the White House. For instance, Clinton was not at the meeting, though as noted earlier she met with Peres separately at his hotel.
"The White House won't let her on TV on the Sunday morning talk shows," a plugged-in Washington Middle East hand observed."Who is talking about foreign policy on those shows? Axelrod. Who is showing up at the meeting with Obama-Peres? Axelrod. They are controlling the message."
"They've never even had her even on Charlie Rose," he added. "You have not really seen the secretary of state in the U.S. media; you've seen her in the international media. Who is their main messenger on foreign policy?"
(An aide confirmed Clinton hadn't been on the Sunday talk shows since the campaign.)
The plugged in Washington Middle East observer noted that Clinton was not sent by the administration to address the AIPAC conference, either. Instead, Vice President Joseph Biden was dispatched, where he called for Israel to stop its settlement expansion.
"Biden is the person who is perceived as a very experienced foreign-policy hand who has a very solid relationship with Israel, but that relationship is solidly based on American strategic analysis," Cohen said. "And not affected so much by the Clinton experience of being a [former] New York senator."
"The combination and timing of Biden at AIPAC, Peres' ‘What, me worry?' face after meeting Obama and the nuclear non proliferation treaty issue causes severe nervousness here," the Israeli diplomat said Wednesday. "And further builds a drama over Netanyahu's" upcoming trip to Washington.
