Israel and America

Building tensions

Relations between America and Israel reach a low point

After a raucous public slanging match, America and Israel are attempting to heal the worst rift between the countries in years. The row erupted during Joe Biden’s visit to Jerusalem last week after the Israeli government approved plans to build 1,600 new homes in a Jewish suburb located in East Jerusalem. America’s vice-president, sent to shore up relations and reassure Israel over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, took this as a gross and gratuitous insult both personally and to his boss, Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, berated Mr Netanyahu on the phone and went on television to inform the world what she had done. The next day tensions rose higher afetr Israel’s ambassador to Washington was reported to have said that the crisis was the worst between the two countries in 35 years. He later insisted that he was flagrantly misquoted. On March 16th Mrs Clinton, now trying to fight the flames, said that America had “an absolute commitment to Israel's security. We have a close, unshakeable bond.”

Mrs Clinton made it clear, however, that America still wanted answers to a string of demands she had laid out to Mr Netanyahu. These reportedly include shelving the building plans and committing to negotiate on the “core issues”, including Jerusalem, in “proximity talks” that were due to have begun with the Palestinian Authority last week but are now on hold.

The demands are designed to force Mr Netanyahu to confront his domestic political predicament, which he has managed with a policy of slickly juggling his rightist-religious coalition, and his own ideological predilection for hardline nationalism. He is still juggling hard. “No government of Israel for the last 40 years has agreed to place restrictions on building in Jerusalem,” he asserted to his Likud Party on March 15th, glibly eliding the distinction between building all-Jewish suburbs and forcibly inserting Jewish settlers into Palestinian suburbs, which Mr Netanyahu encourages or at least condones. Rising tensions in the city, triggered in part by these aggressive new settlements, spilled over on March 16th in a bout of violent rioting.

Plans are in the pipeline for more building projects in many of the Jewish suburbs. Mr Netanyahu would be hard put to stop them and ensure his political survival. Some fear that American pressure to suspend all building in East Jerusalem could be counter-productive, as was Mr Obama’s initial demand for a total freeze on all settlement-building in the West Bank, including in the heavily populated “settlement blocks” close to the old border. Almost a year was wasted in niggling negotiations between America and Israel that resulted in a vague and temporary compromise that satisfied nobody.

Equally awkward for Mr Netanyahu is the American insistence that he stop dodging the important issues of Jerusalem, borders and refugees. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, came close to agreement on all of these with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Mr Netanyahu says that nothing was signed and nothing is binding. The Palestinians, rueful now that they failed to nail down what was then on offer, want the new talks to resume from where the old ones left off.

The crisis has brought to the fore two deeper worries for the Israeli government. For the first time, a senior American general has linked publicly America’s failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with its military fortunes in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of US favouritism for Israel,” General David Petraeus said in testimony prepared for a Senate committee this week. Israeli officials and pro-Israel activists in America have been rattled by the surfacing of such sentiment. This is a “particularly pernicious” argument, says Abe Foxman, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League and a prominent spokesman for American Jews. It “smacks of blaming the Jews for everything.”

Mr Netanyahu’s other worry, underscored by the current spat, is that Mr Foxman and other Jewish establishment figures no longer have the mainstream to themselves. J-Street, a doveish pro-Israel lobby group with rising resonance, came out strongly in support of the Obama administration and against Israel’s government. J-Street promised the administration “vast support among American Jews and other friends of Israel for a bold new approach that aims to advance that interest and guarantees Israel a secure, democratic and Jewish future.” Will Mr Obama put that prediction to the test? Around Mr Netanyahu and his supporter there are increasing fears that he might.