Advised to refrain from testing the limits of Obama's patience, Netanyahu is increasingly resorting to all sorts of diversionary and stalling tactics, for the purpose of throwing the ball into the Palestinian court. Prior to Mitchell's visit, Netanyahu declared that the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA) was conditioned on Palestinians recognising Israel as "state of the Jewish people". The statement is neither innocuous nor innocent. A Palestinian recognition -- even an informal acknowledgment -- of Israel as "a state of the Jews" would give Israel the right to expel, sooner or later, most or all the estimated 1.5 million citizens of Israel who are Palestinians on the grounds that Israel is an exclusively Jewish state.
The leaders of the Palestinian community in Israel are taking this issue very seriously as it relates to their very survival and continued existence in their ancestral homeland. Last year, a number of Arab Knesset members obtained a commitment from PA President Mahmoud Abbas that there would be no Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. In addition, the "Jewish state mantra" would also preclude the return of millions of Palestinian refugees to their homes and towns in what is now Israel. The refugees' plight, lingering ever since the creation of Israel in 1948, is rightly considered the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Commenting on Netanyahu's latest gambit, the US State Department on 19 April released a statement saying that the United States would continue to promote a two- state solution. The American rejection of Netanyahu's demand eventually forced the Israeli premier to change his mind, ostensibly, saying that the recognition of the Jewishness of Israel was a preference not a pre-condition.
According to Israeli commentators, Netanyahu is now exploring ways and means to evade a serious resumption of the peace process. Ideas being circulated in the Prime Minister's Office include using Hamas as a red herring, raising the "terror" issue anew, and imposing on Washington a linkage between the resumption of talks with the PA and an American commitment to force Iran to give up on its nuclear programme by whatever means necessary.
As to Israeli settlement expansion, Netanyahu is reportedly planning to tell the Obama administration that most of the settler units being built on occupied Arab land were planned and approved by the previous government and that Israeli law doesn't allow him to undo planned settlements. However, it is increasingly clear that the Obama administration is not in the mood of receiving "instructions" from Netanyahu and his extremist foreign minister.
Last week, the White House rebuffed Netanyahu by calling off a proposed meeting in Washington in early May. Netanyahu had hoped to capitalise on his attendance at the annual American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference to visit the White House. Moreover, Obama is now demanding almost incessantly a freeze on Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank. Sources in Washington have also indicated that the Obama administration is dropping erstwhile American opposition to Hamas becoming part of a future Palestinian national unity government.
In such circumstances, when relations with a given US administration go sour, or when Israel doesn't get what it wants from Washington, Israel asks the Zionist nerve centre in the US (of which AIPAC is one core) to use its muscles, especially to bully the US government to heed Israeli demands. However, Netanyahu and his supporters believe that it is too soon and too risky to resort to pressure tactics against the Obama administration lest this lead to an uncalculated and unexpected boomerang effect.
Last week, the Israeli press reported that "our man at the White House" (White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) told an unnamed Jewish leader that "in the next four years there is going to be a permanent status arrangement between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of two states for two peoples, and it doesn't matter to us at all who is prime minister in Israel."
The mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot also quoted Emanuel, whose father was a commander in the pre-state Itzel terrorist gang, that "any treatment of the Iranian nuclear problem will be contingent upon progress in the negotiations and an Israeli withdrawal from West Bank territory." "In other words, US sympathy for Israel's position vis-à-vis Iran depends on Israel's willingness to live up to its commitment to get out of the West Bank and permit the establishment of a Palestinian state there and Gaza and East Jerusalem."
In this light, it is expected that the Israeli government will spend the next few weeks meticulously studying "appropriate ways and means" to deal with the "new reality" in Washington. Some Israeli commentators have argued that Israel is facing a real dilemma in its relations with its guardian-ally. For if the Netanyahu government refuses to bend to Washington a real crisis will break out, while and if the governments capitulates to American pressure with regards to the two-state solution, it will risk its own collapse given the opposition of nearly all of Netanyahu's coalition partners to "territorial concessions" to the Palestinians.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/944/re2.htm