(Aluf Ben-Haaretz). This week's meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama was marked by a lack of surprises. The meeting was thoroughly prepared in advance and each leader knew what to expect. Obama will give dialogue with Iran a chance until the end of the year, and Netanyahu agreed to discuss with the U.S. administration a freeze on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. These issues will be the focus of diplomacy in the coming months. All the rest is scenery, like the demand that the Arab countries begin normalizing relations with Israel, or issues like "the two-state solution" and "the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state."
Netanyahu was very impressed by Obama's grasp of details, even though he himself has a whole world's details to worry about. He was not aloof and I was not complacent, Netanyahu told an aide after the meeting.
Obama is not George W. Bush, who contented himself with reciting a few basic discussion points and saw the world in a simplistic way that hid a lack of intellectual confidence. Nor is he Bill Clinton, who liked to impress his Israeli interlocutors with a detailed knowledge of Jerusalem's back streets, and who still surprises people with his photographic memory. Obama studies the materials and gets down to the nitty-gritty in discussions, but he comes across as more of a forest man than a tree man. He aims for the goal, drawn in broad strokes. He called for a stop to settlement activity, but he will leave to his aides the discussion on whether the closing off of a balcony constitutes new construction.
His meeting with Netanyahu was all business. That also suited the prime minister, who doesn't go in for small talk or sports chat, and prefers to discuss policy and history. There were no gestures of personal friendship.
Obama's words of praise for the prime minister were aimed mainly at the future, discussing how Netanyahu "has both youth and wisdom [Netanyahu demurred on the question of youth] ... and I think is in a position to achieve the security objectives of Israel, but also bring historic peace. I'm confident that he's going to seize this moment."
Translated from American euphemism, this means: "You'd best follow the path I'm outlining." Obama wants peace in the region, with Iran curbed and an independent Palestinian state. This is what he is going to outline in his Cairo speech on June 4.
Netanyahu summed up the visit thus: He and Obama agreed on the goal of preventing Iran from attaining the ability to produce nuclear weapons, and he agreed to start talking with the Palestinians immediately and widen the circle of peace so the Arab states will move toward normalization. There was no agreement on the settlements or the phrase "two states for two peoples." It was decided to continue the discussions at working levels on all issues, whether there was agreement or not.
Netanyahu received a strong commitment to Israel's security in Obama's public statements and in the private summations, which promised to maintain Israel's "nuclear ambiguity" and not to endanger it in new initiatives for global disarmament.
The American summation, as described by columnist David Ignatius in The Washington Post, was that Obama was "upping the ante" on Netanyahu. The prime minister had wanted progress with the Palestinians to be conditional on progress with Iran; he was forced to accept progress on both tracks and give a chance to Obama's planned dialogue with the Iranians.
Obama took time to explain to Netanyahu why he wants to speak with the Iranians, and what about. As he sees it, Bush tried isolation and boycotts and achieved nothing, while dialogue will strengthen the international front against Iran. It's not clear what Netanyahu heard from him about the "other options" that America would examine should the dialogue fail or not even get off the ground.
Netanyahu is talking about a "historic opportunity," because Israel and the Arab states share concerns about Iran. But the concerns are not identical. Israel is worried about the Iranian nuclear program and the Arabs are worried about Iran's regional strength and its undermining of the regimes in Cairo, Riyadh and the Gulf emirates. The Saudis and the Egyptians aren't counting the centrifuges and the grams of enriched uranium the way the Israelis are. They are content with a warning that if the Shi'ites in Iran have nuclear weapons, the Sunnis in the region will obtain them, too. Otherwise they are more concerned about terror and subversion. America is trying to reassure them by reinforcing its military forces in the Gulf. The Arab governments though, like Israel, want to know what America will do on the day the dialogue with Iran fails.
Obama's stance is realistic: He repeated the word "interests" 13 times. America's interests, Israel's interests, regional interests, even Iran's. He did not mention the "occupation," "Palestinian rights" or advancing democracy and freedom in the Middle East. From his perspective, the two-state solution speaks to U.S. interests, and Israel is being asked to accept this, just as Israel expects American support for its security interests.
Netanyahu appeared tense and impatient in his meeting with Israeli journalists after he left the White House. This wasn't because of Obama; he spoke calmly with his people at Blair House and told them it had been a good meeting with the president. But his body language changed the moment he sat down with the journalists. He replied in short sentences, and after about half an hour asked whether there were any more questions. His aides interrupted him from time to time. It appears Netanyahu has not forgotten the way the media treated him during his previous term in office and his years in the opposition. Facing the Israeli reporters, he went on the defensive.
Two hours later, facing U.S. commentators, Netanyahu was much more relaxed, feeling at home in diplomatic English.
