Netanyahu to Obama: You take care of Iran, and then we’ll talk; Update: Ayalon denies, says WaPo wrong

posted at 10:11 am on April 23, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

Give Benjamin Netanyahu credit for learning from the experience of others.  The new Israeli Prime Minister has watched Barack Obama get pushed around on the international stage for the past 100 days, and figures that he can redefine a relationship, too.  Bibi will tell Obama that Israel will move no further on Palestinian peace talks until the US removes the threat from Iran:

The new Israeli government will not move ahead on the core issues of peace talks with the Palestinians until it sees progress in U.S. efforts to stop Iran’s suspected pursuit of a nuclear weapon and limit Tehran’s rising influence in the region, according to top government officials familiar with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s developing policy on the issue.

“It’s a crucial condition if we want to move forward,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon, a member of the Israeli parliament and former ambassador to the United States. “If we want to have a real political process with the Palestinians, then you can’t have the Iranians undermining and sabotaging.”

The emerging Israeli position, a significant change from that of previous governments, presents a challenge for President Obama, who has made quick progress on Palestinian statehood a key foreign policy goal. Obama is also trying to begin engagement with Iran as part of a broad effort to slow its nuclear program and curtail its growing strength in the Middle East.

U.S. officials are wary of linking the two issues and, if anything, would like to do the reverse of what Israel has proposed, by using progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks to curb Iranian influence, which is wielded in the region through anti-Israeli organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

If that’s really the US position, then the Obama administration hasn’t got a clue.  Beating a proxy army doesn’t “reverse” the influence of its sponsors.  Israel has beaten Hamas and Hezbollah militarily in every clash of arms, but all that does is increase Iran’s influence.  The only way to stop Iran from influencing the Palestinians — really, from funding a proxy terror war on Israel — is to make that so costly to the Iranians to make them stop.

Talking to the Palestinians and giving them their own state will not decrease Iran’s influence one whit.  In fact, as Netanyahu knows, it will increase it immeasurably.  Iranian influence, strategy, and cash will have gotten the Palestinians partway to their goal, and Iran’s influence would only increase as Hamas at least pushed towards its annihilationist Final Solution for Israel.

The path to peace with Iran will not include a two-state solution.  They want total regional domination, and they want Israel destroyed — as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad keeps making clear, publicly, on the international stage.  What does it take for people to acknowledge that Ahmadinejad is just as annihilationist as Hamas, and that Iran’s backing of Hamas has that particular goal in mind?

Previous Israeli governments usually deferred to the US in public, even if they pushed back in private on policy in their back yard.  Netanyahu has apparently taken the measure of this President and decided that the traditional deference isn’t necessary, after watching him get humbled by the likes of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Il, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and others.  If our opponents feel that bold, why not our friends?

Update: Yid with Lid says that the Israeli government is denying this report.

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Bibi is no incompetent, like other leaders we know. I suspect they wanted this comment to be understood like it was, and then say it was misconstrued. Sends a pretty clear message.

Christian Conservative on April 24, 2009 at 12:35 AM

Consider what you would do if you lived in Texas and Mexico came in and took it over, forcing people (including your family) out of their homes and across the new border

I was wondering when you would appear to spew your anti-semitic bile….

get a clue, its the JEWS LAND…its not the Arab’s….and its always been that way. it was a wasteland for centuries, until the jews started to return, and then the arabs came to work for the jews, since its obvious they cannot produce an economy of any sort.

Turn that around, and you have what’s going on today.

unclesmrgol on April 24, 2009 at 12:10 AM

more BS and lies. whats going on today is that Islam wants to destroy or convert any who do not bow down to islam. this whole ‘palestinian’ thing is a cover. anti-semitic trash like you just buy it hook line and sinker.

its the jews land…the Lord Jesus gave it to them, and no one, not you, your muslim friends, or anyone else, will ever take it away from them.

pathetic.

right4life on April 24, 2009 at 7:26 AM

But I suspect that the act is doomed to failure if the US actively opposes. They do have to fly over Iraq…

unclesmrgol on April 23, 2009 at 11:55 PM

Nope, Israel has what is known as a Samson complex, it’s their military outlook on the world. If America actively opposes Israeli attempts to defend herself, Israel will treat American forces as hostile targets. If the US attempts to bring superior firepower to bear against Israel, Israel will as the Samson complex suggest bring the whole damned house down. Israel is a nuclear weapons possessing nation, if it looks like Israel is going down, she will take the whole world with her, period, end of story.

unclesmrgol on April 24, 2009 at 12:10 AM

FYI, the so called Palestinians are the descendants of (the Muslim conquer) Salidan’s invading army from the tenth century. They are not natives of Israel, but actually Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

doriangrey on April 24, 2009 at 8:08 AM

BO = wussy boy
BIBI = real man

Any questions?

Mojave Mark on April 24, 2009 at 8:32 AM

Consider what you would do if you lived in Texas and Mexico came in and took it over, forcing people (including your family) out of their homes and across the new border (after all, there’s a lot more land in America than just Texas, and those gringos ought to just go and settle there).
unclesmrgol on April 24, 2009 at 12:10 AM

^^This analysis is a shocking indictment of our education system. I cannot believe the stark lack of knowledge it reflects.

First of all … you make the popular “assumption” that the Isralis simply “plopped” down in Palestine and overthrew some long-established Palestinan Utopian Government. That’s not even close to being truth. The homelands of Palestine have, for over a millenia – been controlled – not by the natives living there – but by various other states that enforced their will on the natives living in that region. The Ottomans controlled Palestine from 1516 to 1917 (except for a 10 year stint in the 1800′s when Egypt briefly took it in the Egypt / Ottoman Wars). Go back through the history of Palestine and you’ll be hard pressed to find ANY TIME when the region was self-governing for any significant amount of time.

FACT: The Israelis established the first viable self-governance for the region known formerly as “Palestine”. FACT: The Israelis established the first true democracy in the region known formerly as “Palestine”.

Additionally – you can blame the British and the French for the precarious condition of the Palestinian region during the early part of the 20th Century – well you can also blame the Arabs too … but you can’t blame the Jews because they had no real political power in the early 20th Century over anything in this region. The chaos that existed there was a product of the European Powers and the Arabs.

Let’s not the Balfour Declaration of 1917 – which committed the British Empire to the establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. A huge part of the stimulus for Jews to immigrate to Palestine was because that is where the European powers wanted them to go. This was hastened by Hitler – a European.

Once they were there … what were they to do? Not participate in the political process?

In 1947 … the UN General Assembly voted to partition the territory into separate Jewish and Arab States, under economic union, and the Jerusalem area (encompassing Bethlehem) coming under international control. The Zionist leaders accepted this plan while the Palestinian leaders and every independent Muslim and Arab State voted against it. This is when the sectarian violence broke out – and this is when the Israeli – Arab conflict became an eternal blight on this world.

The lesson you should take from this is … the Jews didn’t “take” anything over in Palestine. They immigrated (legally) and participated – people have that right don’t they?

The other lesson you need to take away is that the Arabs have been offered peace overture after peace overture – and they always reject them because they DO NOT accept a solution that involves anything less than all the Jews packing up and moving back to Europe.

“We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” – Golda Meir

HondaV65 on April 24, 2009 at 8:39 AM

I SO <3 BIBI

seejanemom on April 24, 2009 at 8:41 AM

Consider what you would do if you lived in Texas and Mexico came in and took it over, forcing people (including your family) out of their homes and across the new border
unclesmrgol on April 24, 2009 at 12:10 AM

Mexico is Mexico bcs the Spaniards came & took it from the Indians.
So in reality the Mexicans of Spanish ancestry have no right to be there.
I guess the gringos don’t either. But we came & lived there & took it & that’s the way it goes.
So it goes with Israel. Only they have much more at stake here-extinction-no matter where they live they have been persecuted.
It’s high time they have their original home back & let everybody leave them the hell alone.

Badger40 on April 24, 2009 at 10:58 AM

The Israeli government is the ONLY democrattic government with any STONES. The American people (not including the trolls) would support BIBI in any way they could. I fear they will have to use their hammer without support from the Pantywaist-in-Chief.

HomeoftheBrave on April 24, 2009 at 11:01 AM

Stand strong Bibi!! (A rhetorical statement as I know you WILL)

rtsidedragon on April 24, 2009 at 1:02 PM

FYI, the so called Palestinians are the descendants of (the Muslim conquer) Salidan’s invading army from the tenth century. They are not natives of Israel, but actually Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

doriangrey on April 24, 2009 at 8:08 AM

Actually they are the sum bloodstock of all the various peoples who passed through or lingered there including Jews and Christians. Your comment is a lame attempt to suggest that Palestinians who lived there for many centuries have an invalid claim to stay but Jews who emigrated during the last twenty years have a valid claim on the land.

lexhamfox on April 24, 2009 at 1:41 PM

lexhamfox on April 24, 2009 at 1:41 PM

I think he was just saying they have no more of a claim than the Jews do.

HondaV65 on April 24, 2009 at 5:49 PM

Not to ignore a larger scope, Ed Thomas’ summation regarding the region’s piracy impacts Israel.

“Show Me the Mullah”
By Ed Thomas, American Thinker, 25 Apr 2009

I am struck by the lack of coverage in the media of the obvious beneficiary of the rise in Somali piracy. Let’s just ask the question; who stands to gain from this phenomenon? It’s pretty simple really. The piracy in the northern Indian Ocean raises large sums of money for fundamentalist Mullahs and puts a big hurt on Suez Canal traffic.

This piracy is a de facto extension of the strategy behind the assassination of Anwar Sadat and busloads of foreign tourists. This is an attack on world trade and the civilian government of a sovereign nation by a coordinated front of fanatic extremists. Who benefits?

A. Iran

B. Al Qaeda

C. Palestinians

D. Egyptian fundamentalist revolutionaries

The answer, of course, is E. All the above.

Let’s cut to the chase and the quick with a single stroke. Forces within the Arab world are seriously unhappy with pragmatic Egyptian leaders who are willing to deal with Israel as a sovereign State and live and let live. These same Egyptians are also willing to let their beliefs live side-by-side in harmony with the West. If more of the Middle East adopts the heretical path of peaceful coexistence that Egypt, Turkey, and reluctantly, a few other States have taken, then there exists a state of civil war within the Grand Sultanate. If Egypt and the other more reasonable forces are allowed to persist in their path of heresy then others might see the benefits of peace, prosperity, and co-existence. Guess who that pisses off?

Egypt needs those canal revenues and the benefits of being a regional center for trade. Other primary targets are the more progressive governments of the Middle East, with Western interests as secondary targets. We must avoid fighting the enemies involved here on the terms and ground of their choosing and definition. The governments of the region that are the real targets must step up to the plate instead of using the military forces of the west as their proxies. This puts the real stakeholders in the field, (with our backing), to protect our mutual self interest.

maverick muse on April 25, 2009 at 9:02 AM

Actually they are the sum bloodstock of all the various peoples who passed through or lingered there including Jews and Christians. Your comment is a lame attempt to suggest that Palestinians who lived there for many centuries have an invalid claim to stay but Jews who emigrated during the last twenty years have a valid claim on the land.

lexhamfox on April 24, 2009 at 1:41 PM

You are mistaken, I am not suggesting any such thing. First of all while the majority of Jew’s were dispersed, there has been a significant Jewish population in Israel for over 3000 years. This is not a disputable fact. Before the beginning of the Jewish return in the late 1800′s there were over 300,000 Jew’s living in Israel, and about 600,000 Arabs. When the UN created the nation of Israel in 1948 there were 750,000 Jew’s in Israel and about 800,000 Arabs.

The Arab population mostly lived in what was called Trans-Jordan, or what is today called Jordan. Shortly after the creation of the nation of Israel there was a mass migration of Arabs from Jordan, Syria and Egypt into the nation of Israel. This brought the Arab population of Israel up to around 975,000.

In 1967′s six day war nearly 80 percent of the Arab population fled Israel believing that a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt’s Nasser (Egypt, Syria and Jordan) were going to invade Israel and kill all the Jew’s. It is estimated that some 900,000 Arabs fled.

In my personal opinion those who remained have every right to their homes. Those who fled have only such rights as the Israeli government elects to grant them.

The notion that Israel is filled with Jewish people who arrived in the last 20 years is patently false.

What is not disputable is that the vast majority of Palestinian people harbor a degree of anti-Semitic hatred that nearly anywhere else on earth would be considered criminal. Furthermore the Charters of the PLO and Hamas make it indisputably clear that their existence as a is purely fictional created for the purpose of exterminating the Jewish people.

Any Palestinian/Arab who lives in Israel and desires to do so in peace and harmony with their fellow Jewish citizens should be afforded all the rights of any Israeli citizen. Any Palestinian/Arab who lives in Israel and seeks to destroy Israel or it’s Jewish population deserves no rights what so ever.

doriangrey on April 25, 2009 at 11:14 AM

Never send in a boy to do a mans job.

Bibi knows who is in control (God) of these negotiations and Obama is tripping over his ego and will not win this battle of wits, he is unarmed.

History of “Palistinians” THEY ARE ARABS from the surrounding countries and do not deserve ANY territory in Israel regardless what the lemmings and appeasers think.

dthorny on April 25, 2009 at 12:29 PM

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