T. Belman. Min Erdan is so wrong to say: “It’s inconceivable that President Obama has any such intention (of imposing a solution) given that he and his administration emphasize that the solution to the conflict requires direct negotiations and compromise between the two sides themselves.” Obama has been trying to impose a solution from day one even though he called for “direct negotiations”. Obama now backs facts on the ground instead of direct negotiations.
Netanyahu’s actions show how much they are determined by international pressure.
Top minister dismisses Army Radio report, which comes hours after similar claims by Channel 2 were denied by the State Department
TOI
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is worried that the Obama administration will use its final weeks in office to back UN Security Council decisions and other measures detrimental to Israel, Army Radio reported on Sunday.
Netanyahu has therefore been trying to persuade his ministerial colleagues to approve a series of measures to boost the West Bank economy and show Israel’s commitment to improving the Palestinians’ lives, but has been stymied by opposition in the security cabinet by ministers including Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked and Ze’ev Elkin, the report said.
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan of the prime minister’s Likud party told the radio station Sunday morning, however, that he did not believe the Obama administration would back or fail to veto UN resolutions supporting Palestinian statehood or similar measures to impose terms. “It’s inconceivable that President Obama has any such intention,” said Erdan, “given that he and his administration emphasize that the solution to the conflict requires direct negotiations and compromise between the two sides themselves.”
Erdan also said he would personally back measures to improve the quality of life for the Palestinians in the territories, and that he believed Netanyahu would be able to secure majority support in the security cabinet, of which he is a member, for such measures if and when needed.
The Army Radio report, which gave no named sources, said Netanyahu’s concern about possible Obama administration decisions was focused on the period between November 2016, when a new president is chosen, and January 2017, when that president takes office. Given the history of difficult relations between the two countries’ leaderships, this period would constitute a brief window when the Obama administration could advance its agenda without domestic repercussions, the report said.
The Army Radio report followed hard on the heels of a similar claim on Saturday night, broadcast on Channel 2, to the effect that US Secretary of State John Kerry would visit Israel within weeks, that he would seek to restart peace talks, and that if he failed, the Obama administration might try to impose some kind of accord in the final months of the Obama presidency — after a new US president has been elected, and before Obama steps down.
The US State Department later Saturday evening flatly dismissed most of the TV claims. Responding on Twitter to the Times of Israel’s coverage of the Channel 2 report, State Department spokesman John Kirby said the secretary had “no plans… to travel soon to Israel. Also no plan by him to restart talks.”
“Need both sides to reduce violence,” Kirby added in the tweet.
Kirby did not address the claims about unilateral moves Obama might make or back in the final weeks of his presidency.
The Channel 2 report appeared to be based, at least in part, on its interview earlier Saturday with opposition leader Isaac Herzog.
Herzog said the Obama administration “hasn’t given up on the [Israeli-Palestinian] process,” and that he believed Kerry “may come here soon” to try again to move things forward. Herzog, leader of the Zionist Union party, met with Kerry in Rome on Tuesday.
US State Department spokesman John Kirby delivering the department’s daily press briefing, January 19, 2016. (screen capture/US State Department website)
US State Department spokesman John Kirby. (screen capture/US State Department website)
Herzog said many world leaders were discussing the deadlocked process and considering ideas, of which some “could be to Israel’s detriment.” Israel could face “decisions from all directions,” he said, noting that last week’s threat by France to recognize a Palestinian state if it fails in its planned new attempt to restart peace talks and reach an accord “didn’t come out of nowhere.”
If Israel didn’t take the initiative, Herzog said, “we’ll have an accord imposed upon us.” He noted that, in the final year of the Obama presidency, the president “can do what he wants.”
Herzog said he wasn’t sure the Americans had yet decided what they want to attempt. But “when you hear that world leaders want to take unilateral decisions,” he said, it underlined the imperative for Israel to “initiate moves that will boost its own security.”
Vinnie Said:
Yes, me too.
@lsatenstein: you are incorrect: FDR had three terms in office. Died during the last one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt
satmars, NK’s, leftist lunatics….. all responsible for the murder of Jews by inciting against Jews. I cant understand why they are allowed in Israel when they seek to destroy it and support the enemies. These satmars have the poorest village in the US..kiryat Joel… they are on welfare or own slum housing…. they are in a war in NY with all their non Jewish neighbors… bringing disrepute and venom on all Jews….. and yet they have the chutzpah to talk about Israel and her neighbors and cover their dirty habits with the Torah. hypocrites, Kapos, beggars, fake Jews…… but still allowed in Israel
bernard ross Said:
the advantage to obama’s puppet masters is that an obama non veto in the UN cannot be reversed. it can be reversed in the USA but would remain as a resolution in the UN. therefore, it is foolish to rely on hope or helping pals. The only thing to rely on is to demonstrate prior that such a resolution will create a situation for ALL involved that will be much worse. Israelis should pressure BB to develop an aggressive plan that would be put into effect at such a resolution by the UN which would finally be the nail in the coffin of Oslo.
There are many available options which would even be legally justifiable oon the basis that the end of Oslo necessitates unilateral action to preserve Interests:
Immediate annexation of C in order to protect interest which the death of Oslo removed.
No entry exit from PA except for humanitarian reasons.
All international visitors excluded from PA.
Deportation to gaza or elsewhere of all PLO families admitted from Tunisia under Oslo.
etc
Israel must also plan for sanctions and setting up alternate resources for military supplies or manufacture. Expect russia and China to agree and join sanctions after a resolution passes.
A plan B should have been ready for a NON veto and sanctions for quite a while now. One cannot plan on things always working out to ones advantage.
Bear Klein Said:
How many German Jews said, ” Hitler didn’t mean what he was saying”.. Denial !!!!!
Vinnie Said:
“Isa-bide-my-time” is a fifth columnist propagandist.
He has the canaries in the coal mine. if he says it’s going to be OK then you know your canary has died.
..
I’ve been expecting a killing move by Obummer near end of term -said so for some years now.
Who’s next? Europe is gone – leaves only Canada and USA. –
@ Bear Klein:
Tell me about it. Back in ’08, I typed my fingers raw sending e-mails far and wide to anyone who would listen, warning them about how awful Obama was going to be in general, and especially to Israel. And most didn’t listen anyway. Some of the fights I got in with relatives over Obama back then, even now we’re barely on speaking terms.
I’m the same age as Obama, born within two months of him, went to schools of comparable prestige during comparable time frames. I know his type very, very well. I went to U Chicago for grad school in the late 80s, where his “good buddy”, Rashid Khalidi, was guest lecturer for one of my classes (he was world-class asshole). As soon as I heard about what good friends Obama was with him, that was all I needed to know. I knew his whole line of shit back then about being supportive of Israel was nothing but a huge lie.
That would be a shame. I will personally send him ten cartons of unfiltered Camels daily if he will smoke them all.
Thank you for the reassuring words.
I feel much better now.
@ Vinnie:When no one new about more than the lies he was telling Jews about being pro Israeli I said that was a lie.
Why because the babysitter of his children was this radical Palestinian professor (Khalidi I think his name is). However the leftists in the Jewish community such as Alan Dershowitz assured the Jews Obama cared deeply about Israel. What is amazing is that 55% still like him.
Woolymammoth and Isatenstein, I hope, I really hope, you’re right. Don’t know that you are, but I at least hope. I would submit that you underestimate how crazy and obsessive Obama is about Israel, and not in a nice way.
Bear Klein, you are spot on. He really sees the situation of the Palis as being the BIGGEST INJUSTICE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. He has been brainwashed in this direction for the whole of his adult live, maybe even before. He is not much more than a wind-up toy anti-Israel political cruise missile. That is the axis around which his entire presidency revolves.
@ Eric R.:
The commander in chief has no desire or power to do what you daydream. No president in all of American history as ever wanted a thankless third term. Being president is not fun. You never get credit for good laws or guidance, and are always criticised.
When he leaves the presidency, I heard he will try to quit smoking.
Point some believe and (not just a few people)that Obama is pro Palestinian and wants a Palestinian state not for peace but because he identifies with the Palestinians.
He thinks of them like the 1950s “Negroes” in the USA and the Israelis as the bad white guys in the Jim Crow South”. So right or wrong he is viewed with great suspicion and the sooner Mr. Hope and Change is gone the better.
Obama wants to have a life after the presidency, he will not do anything crazy. Don’t worry, Israel will be fine. We will all be dead, one day and Israel will be okay without us. Even Obama realizes a terrorist state in Israel’s pericardial sac can not work and would result in Israeli annexation. Obama is just toying with us as usual, he will be out soon, no doubt.
Hush, “zionists” at work planning their future building of homes for Jews in the Jewish homeland.
I would add that Obama would not expect Israel to accept a UN-imposed solution. His intention would be to transform, through such legitimization, an “Intifada” into a “war of liberation” for the PA, which Israel would have no choice but to crush…and which would serve as the pretext for imposing Rhodesia-style sanctions/embargoes on Israel, or even expelling Israel from the UN. In this latter case, Israel would wind up being sort of like Taiwan: a de facto sovereign national political entity, but with no officially recognized standing as such in the international community. This would suit Obama the Moslem perfectly (who also wouldn’t confer legitimacy on sovereign Israel by speaking before her elected legislative body in March of ’13); denying the legitimacy of a sovereign Jewish state on land that had been under Moslem control, per UN fiat, would be the fulfillment of his maximum goals against Israel.
I don’t think sanctions or embargoes would work very well; we here all know that many major economies would trade with Israel anyway. Obama probably also knows this, which is why I think he would rather see expulsion from the UN; maybe that is his intended end-game. If this comes to pass, it would be very hard to undo by a new U.S. administration. Getting Israel back into the UN, or repealing some draconian UNSCR, would be extremely difficult. About the only thing a U.S. president could do to coerce this latter outcome would be to withdraw all U.S. funding from the UN, and from there, threaten to withdraw the U.S. from the UN and evict the latter from U.S. soil if they didn’t reverse this. I can’t imagine any plausible future U.S. president going that far. Even under a pro-Israel U.S. administration, we’d wind up with a U.S.-Israeli relationship similar to the one with Taiwan: we still sell weapons, provide some defense relationship, but the diplomatic status does not change from what was wrought by the UN under Obama.
But if the UN expels Israel, whom would they have left to beat up on?
Have no doubt that Obama will back some draconian UNSCR in the final weeks of his presidency to impose a Saudi-style plan on Israel, negating UNSCR 242. Forcing such a deal down Israel’s throat, one way or another, was his intention all along, he has made no secret of this, and these sham “negotiations” were merely a fig leaf designed to obscure the diktat nature of his approach. This is why the Palis were so completely intransigent; they have known all along that Obama backed their maximum negotiating demands and would pressure only Israel no matter what.
What is so maddening to this observer is watching Netanyahu attempt to come up with measures aimed at “alleviating” this pressure. As Bernard Ross rightly points out, nothing Netanyahu can do will prevent Obama from carrying out this plan. So why does he do it? Mr. HaLevy 2 thinks Netanyahu is a traitor….but if this were so, why didn’t he capitulate to a Saudi-style plan long ago? Would have made things so much easier on himself.
My own take is that Netanyahu fears, above all else, a decisive break between Israel and the U.S. One can argue the degree to which the U.S is truly “indispensable” to Israel, that is a subject for another debate. But as far as Netanyahu is concerned, there is no debate about this. HE considers this relationship indispensable, he knows Obama is going to try to destroy this relationship before he leaves office (assuming he really is going to leave), and he is trying to prevent this from happening through what one might call “pre-emptive appeasement” (maybe he thinks Hillary is going to get in, and will be almost as bad; I say she will be JUST as bad).
Agree with Eric R. above about the possibility of a possible maneuver by Obama to stay in power indefinitely, with a couple of qualifications:
First, if his successor is Hillary, or a GOP candidate squarely in the pocket of the Islamist Petrodollar Pimp Empire (this would be Christie, in my view), who will protect his policies towards Israel (what is most important to Obama), then he will leave on schedule. I only see him doing something along the lines of what Eric R. describes if on the eve of the election, most reputable polling shows a win for a GOP candidate other than Christie (all the rest would probably largely if not completely reverse his anti-Israel agenda), or if this in fact happens, along with the GOP keeping both houses of Congress. In this case, I do envision what Eric R. does: mass riots in major cities all at once, touched off by some manufactured event, used as the excuse to declare the election invalid after the fact, or impossible to conduct before the fact, to be held at some future point in time of Obama’s choosing. However, ultimately, I don’t think Obama would succeed in this. The military hates him, and if it came down to it, I would expect that they would proceed to remove him from power, per their sworn oath to defend the Constitution against ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. But, I’m not 100% sure of this, that in such an unprecedented crisis, they’d have the balls to really do this.
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
That was before Men’s Depends.
@ babushka:
In my old French dialect we used to say about items like that one. “unzere groise pi..er”. I doubt there is one pair of pants of his he has somehow managed to keep dry.
If only we grovel harder…
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
Found another Halevi . The Architect Frank Gerihty family was at one time HaLevi. Change to Goldberg and then to Gerihty
Then there is the HaLevi stadium in Santa Clare, Ca..
Yawl HaLevis are thicker then “ticks in a cow’s ear”.
Really, “unseemly behavior”????
I guarantee this will be ruled illegal and struck down by AG and the courts. “Unseemly behavior” is obviously not criminal and appears to be selected so as to make sure that when the smoke clears nothing was done…. but that it appeared that BB was doing something. Is that the best he can do?
Actually NO:
Netanyahus TALK tells us how much his actions are determined by international pressure
notice what actually and factually occurred without this unsupported and anonymous(as usual) explanation that ALWAYS appears to pop up whenever BB is unable to justify his incredibly soft, restrained, kid glove, avoid at all costs actions toward the pals.
every day jews are slaughtered but BB says its individual crimes and not organized… do people buy that?
every day Jews are slaughtered and instead he wants to improve life for the pals
every day Jews are slaughtered and he does nothing
people are upset, so conveniently and as usual we get a report that the foreigners are threatening Israel which is supposed to infer an explanation for BB acting strangely.
Look even more carefully at the facts to see that there is actually nothing from BB stating this “worry”, that the report came from anonymous sources, that it was denied by the official US channels, that it was based also on a previous report of Herzog saying Kerry was coming which is also denied by US.
so once more anonymous voices arrive with an threat that no one owns and no one can substantiate with direct evidence and likely meant to be a fig leaf for BB non action and to bring pressure on other MK’s who seek to pressure him to do something…very convenient
Why assume that the report is true… there have been many lies… how does he explain that he failed to disclose the the Israeli public that he allowed the euros to build illegal homes for muslims in YS while at the same time restricting Jews… for 7 years until exposed by others. Is “foreign pressure” an acceptable excuse to deceive the public for 7 years on this important issue of sovereignty?
but that is exactly what the fake zionists have been begging the foreigners to do… they want tough love for Israel but now they pretend it originates from the outside.
In other words “we must rush to hand over most of the Jewish homeland to the pals and EU to build homes for muslims.
Indeed there is always a possibility of obama taking such action but hiding and doing nothing will not deter him. Doing things for the pals will also not deter him…..
this threat has been around for the whole 7 years of BB reign… what is his plan for dealing with it when it arrives??????
will it be the same as his Iran plan, his euro labeling plan, his plan against claims of illegal jewish settlement, his plan for illegal euro building? It appears that his plan on every issue is to worry, complain, whine to foreigners but do nothing and have no plan.
The core US foreign policy is that solidly in place in the US State Department. Since 1948 and earlier while Roosevelt ruled, the SD and presidents were not aligned with a Jewish State and that policy platform has been growing over the decades. Occasionally a short burst of convenience based actions made it appear otherwise but the core policy has remained unchanged.
The US military from time to time and again for practical reasons served well our mutual defense needs.
Whatever don Hussein will do as a parting activity is what has been in the planning for decades.
Netanyahu was never qualified to stand up for our national interests, that is also unlikely to change.
I doubt that the Hussein fellow will try to take over government.
Barack Obama is as much a Marxist as his father. As such, he considers Israel a colonial imposition on indigenous peoples.
75% of Jewish Americans have twice supported this fundamental hatred of the nation-state. It’ll be dicey as regime change occurs as the Muslim world bubbles and boils with support from the Western Left.
I think the greater danger with Obama is that should the Republicans win the Presidency, that he finds a pretext to refuse to hand over power and name himself “President for Life” by emergency decree – I think he would manufacture a racial crisis (white cop shooting black thug) to generate massive race riots, including black thugs slaughtering whites (which, given the urban environment, would be almost all liberal-left whites) to serve as a pretext for eliminating the constitution, arresting Republican lawmakers, and silencing the small percentage of the media that is not already in thrall to him.