Obama offered Netanyahu a gentlemen's agreement on Jerusalem

[Jefferson23]

If the Independence Day speeches delivered this week by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin were any indication, Jerusalem Day came early this year.

As they took the podium to vow that "united Jerusalem" would never be divided, both were no doubt aware that President Barack Obama's adviser, Dan Shapiro, was making his way to the region.

They could be sure that Shapiro, who heads the Middle East department at the White House, had not gone to the trouble of visiting Israel's eternal capital simply to drive another nail into the coffin of the peace process, or to say kaddish over Israel's relations with Washington.
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Lieberman and Rivlin knew that Shapira and his colleague David Hale - deputy to U.S. special peace envoy George Mitchell and based permanently in Israel - would raise the subject of a building freeze in East Jerusalem in their meetings with the prime minister's staff.


Their strident declarations of a united Jerusalem and for development on both sides of the Green Line in the city point to concern - or perhaps an understanding - that the prime Benjamin Netanyahu has already caved in to pressure from Obama to freeze construction beyond the Green Line in the city.

When on Wednesday a senior U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal that Netanyahu had unequivocally rejected U.S. demands for a freeze in East Jerusalem, he conveniently provided the prime minister with a thick smokescreen to hide behind.

The alacrity with which the government confirmed such a 'damaging' report attests this - and we can now presume the crisis is over. As long as Jews aren't building in Sheikh Jarrakh or Ramat Shlomo, America couldn't care less was Israel says or doesn't say over a Jerusalem construction freeze.

Washington understands that Netanyahu can't afford to admit, not even obliquely, that he is treating Jerusalem like the West Bank settlements, where building has been banned until September. As far as the America's is concerned, Netanyahu can run and tell his friends that what goes for Tel Aviv goes for Jerusalem - as long Obama officials don't wake the next morning to newspaper reports that Israel has approved a new building program in the Holy City.


in full: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164679.html

[Jefferson23]

1. Obama administration is playing good cop, bad cop with Israel

Our leaders celebrated Independence Day by singing and giving speeches. But the morning after, they awoke to discover that not a single problem had disappeared amid the smoke of the ubiquitous barbecues.

On the eve of Israel's 62nd birthday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chose to give an interview to a foreign media outlet, ABC-TV, and was asked once again about the demands of U.S. President Barack Obama to stop construction in East Jerusalem. And, if we can judge by what he said in that interview about construction in Jerusalem, and by what The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, Netanyahu has made his choice. He will be keeping his current coalition - with Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas and Likud. He is better off losing Labor and distributing its portfolios to defectors from Kadima than he would be disengaging from his natural allies, Avigdor Lieberman and Eli Yishai, and becoming hostage to Tzipi Livni. "I am not about to place myself in the hands of Kadima," he says, appalled, to anyone who is pressing him to take the plunge.

As of this writing - Thursday morning - Israel had not officially replied to the United States. However, a member of Netanyahu's circle this week said that Obama and his staff already have a clear idea of the direction things will take. According to this source, vigorous contacts have been underway in the past few weeks between the Prime Minister's Bureau and the White House over Washington's demands. A report on Thursday claimed that an Obama envoy is in Israel and is holding intensive talks with Netanyahu's top aides, Yitzhak Molcho and Ron Dermer.
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If so, I asked the source, perhaps this is what motivated former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, an adviser to Obama's envoy George Mitchell, to write an article critical of Israel and then to grant a quite brutal, albeit instructive, interview to Army Radio on Wednesday?

"Maybe," the source replied, "but the day before that, an official no less important than Indyk - I am referring to Rahm Emanuel - gave an interview and said exactly the opposite, in both style and substance, about the relations between the two countries and the two leaders."

remainder: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164751.html