Opinion Settling scores

Israeli conservatives figured the American Eagle was toothless given that Obama had already backed down once on settlements. But the president has a lot to gain with Arabs disillusioned by the failure of the pre-emptive Nobel winner to make good on his vaunted Cairo promise to resolve the Palestinian issue.

The president and his inner circle are appalled at Israel’s self-absorption and its failure to notice that America is not only protecting Israel from Iran,but also dealing with a miasma of horrible problems at home. And Israel insults the administration over a domestic zoning issue that has nothing to do with its security?

“That’s not how you treat your best friend,” said one Obama official. During the campaign,Obama told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that “being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth,” to save them from themselves when they mindlessly let settlement gluttony scuttle any chance of peace.

After it was reported two weeks ago that Israel planned 600 other homes in East Jerusalem the Saudi foreign minister warned me that Israel’s ultra-conservative religious groups were “killing every option that comes out that has peace in its objective.” Goldberg told me: “it’s not entirely clear to me that the Shas Party knows who Joe Biden is or cares…What most right-wing Israelis don’t understand is that even American Jews,especially the nearly 80 per cent who voted for Obama,disaggregate what is in the best interest of Israel from what is in the best interest of the settlers.”

Obama knows that Jews no longer speak with one voice. That gives him enough room to keep the heat on Netanyahu. But the smackdown also obscures the fact that the administration has no real strategy for peace and no impressive team below Hillary and Biden pushing for peace. Arab leaders groused to me that Obama has gotten so weighed down by problems at home that he has lost the thread of his promises abroad.

In Israel,many citizens and columnists are embarrassed by Netanyahu’s behaviour. Yet post-Biden,the government is acting petulant and is inviting construction on more new homes in northeast Jerusalem. Perhaps Bibi will have the good sense to realise the Biden insult was a bit more than “regrettable,” as he tepidly put it. He may remember that the two most important things to Israel should be a security doctrine that prevents a neighbouring adversary from getting a nuclear weapon and cherishing the relationship with America — rather than zoning and earmarks.

The Iranians must be laughing at the Americans and Israelis arguing about who insulted whom,while they are busy screwing their nuclear bombs together.