Israel Update for July 2009

Indeed, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told his cabinet ministers on July 19-just one day after Ambassador Oren was summoned to the State Department-that "I would like to reemphasize united Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel. Our sovereignty over it cannot be challenged. This means that residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city." He then went on to strongly hint that the new Obama administration's complete building ban demand is actually racist and discriminatory in nature: "In recent years, hundreds of apartments in Jewish neighborhoods have been purchased by or rented to Arab residents, and we did not interfere."

Israeli press reports said Netanyahu later privately castigated President Obama's total building halt campaign during a closed meeting with his inner security cabinet, which was focused on the Iranian nuclear threat among other pressing issues. He reportedly told his top security ministers that the charismatic US leader was in essence aiding Israel's enemies, and therefore actually putting back the peace process, by publicly demanding an immediate and total construction freeze, especially inside Jerusalem's municipal boundaries.

Exasperated over what he sees as an unnecessary dispute, Netanyahu was said to have rhetorically asked his top ministers if Obama really expected that the leader of Israel's nationalist political camp-who oversaw the controversial construction of the Har Homa neighborhood in southeast Jerusalem when he was last Premier in the late 1990s-would now block the building of a mere 20 new Jewish apartments next to Judaism's most sacred ground on earth after allowing some 20,000 apartment units to go up in Har Homa ten years ago. "If I didn't cave in to Bill Clinton then, I certainly won't to his wife or Barack Obama now," one news report claimed he stated.

Obama Accepts Racist Arab Demand?

Demonstrating that the Prime Minister's position is vigorously supported by everyone in his ruling party, the most liberal Likud cabinet member, Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor, who also serves as a deputy premier, forcefully endorsed Netanyahu's public statements. Going even further by turning the tables on Obama, he insisted that it was the new Democratic party administration in Washington that was going back on previous agreements made with government leaders in Jerusalem.

Meridor noted that America's last president, George W. Bush, had orally accepted Ariel Sharon's 2004 request to continue "natural growth" construction within existing contested communities, while halting any brand new full scale community development in lands claimed by the Palestinians, as Israel has complied with (apart from a few small outposts that have arisen without government permission and are in the process of being dismantled).

This request was then incorporated into Bush's Road Map peace plan, subsequently endorsed by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It called for a total Israeli building freeze, but only when the Palestinian leadership blocked all organized Arab terror attacks upon Jews. The verbal accord came after Sharon agreed to the painful White House request to evacuate all Israeli residents and soldiers from the Gaza Strip, which occurred one year later. "It is of great importance to us that what the (Bush) administration agreed to is not overlooked," Meridor stated at a news conference in Jerusalem.

That the first ever African American president is apparently endorsing what is widely perceived in Israel as the Palestinian's extremely racist demand for an independent state containing few if any Jews inside its borders-an idea from another, much darker era-is highly disappointing to many Israelis, and not just to conservative religious Jews.

In fact, some commentators said it was progressive secularist Jews, who generally viewed Obama's electoral victory as a triumph for civil rights and equality in America and a beacon of light for the world, who are the most disappointed that the US leader has seemingly adopted the PLO's traditional "Judenrein" (the Nazi term for "clean of Jews") statehood demand as his own, instead of challenging the same as his Republican predecessor did, at least to some extent.

Many pundits noted that Israel contains over one million Arab citizens with full voting rights and elected representatives in the Knesset, while the envisioned Palestinian state will apparently be "Jew-less" as one radio commentator succinctly put it in English, despite the fact that it is proposed to arise along the spine of the Jewish people's ancient ancestral biblical heartland.

Concern Or Contempt?

With voices of concern rising in America over the Obama administration's policies regarding Israel-even among many of his staunchest Jewish supporters-the President summoned 15 of the country's top Jewish leaders to meet with him at the White House on July 13. The meeting had mixed results, according to Israeli media accounts, with many participants said to be shocked over what was seen as an attitude bordering on contempt for America's main Middle East ally. This was reportedly demonstrated most glaringly in Obama's insistence that if Israelis want his valuable assistance in arriving at a final peace accord with the Palestinians, they must first "engage in serious self reflection" before this lofty goal will be achievable.

Commentators pointed out that the American leader seemed to be averring that Israel is mainly responsible for the current peace process impasse, instead of the divided Palestinians, ruled by the Palestinian Authority in Jordan's former West Bank and the radical Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip. In other words, only if and when the Israeli people and their leaders stop and think-and apparently alter their intransigent ways-will a final peace accord be reachable.

The American editor of the prestigious Commentary magazine, Jonathan Tobin, reacted to the meeting in a Jerusalem Post editorial, saying the popular President's reported remark reflected his "breathtaking condescension toward the Jewish state," with its seeming "implicit dismissal of the last 16 years of Middle East history." This evaluation was echoed by other commentators in Israel, and was said to reflect the reaction of many senior Israeli government officials.