‘Obama deliberately damaged US-Israel relations’

U.S. President Barack Obama intentionally violated “no daylight” and “no surprises” principles of U.S.-Israel ties, former Israeli Ambassador to U.S. Michael Oren says • Oren: Obama changed U.S. policy on Iran and the Palestinians without telling Israel.

By Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff

U.S. President Barack Obama has deliberately damaged U.S.-Israel relations, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Tuesday.

In the op-ed, titled “How Obama abandoned Israel,” Oren, now a Kulanu MK, accused Obama of violating the “two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America,” which, according to Oren, are “no daylight” and “no surprises.”

Referring to disputes between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Oren, whose four-year stint in Washington ended in 2013, wrote, “Neither leader monopolized mistakes, [but] only one leader [Obama] made them deliberately.”

More details of Oren’s time in Washington will be revealed in his new book, “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” set to be published next week.

On Tuesday, Oren told Israel Hayom, “Obama came and changed the U.S. government’s approach to Iran and the Palestinians without informing or consulting Israel.

In the Wall Street Journal op-ed, Oren wrote, “From the moment he entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with Iran. Such policies would have put him at odds with any Israeli leader.”

Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Obama put the entire onus on Israel and “ignored Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and its two previous offers of Palestinian statehood in Gaza, almost the entire West Bank and half of Jerusalem — both offers rejected by the Palestinians,” Oren wrote.

Oren noted Obama “voided President George W. Bush’s commitment to include the major settlement blocs and Jewish Jerusalem within Israel’s borders in any peace agreement. Instead, he insisted on a total freeze of Israeli construction in those areas — ‘not a single brick,’ I later heard he ordered Mr. Netanyahu — while making no substantive demands of the Palestinians.

“Consequently, Palestinian [Authority] President Mahmoud Abbas boycotted negotiations, reconciled with Hamas and sought statehood in the U.N. — all in violation of his commitments to the U.S. — but he never paid a price. By contrast, the White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu for building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would remain part of Israel.”

Later in the op-ed, Oren turned to the Iran nuclear issue, writing, “The abandonment of the ‘no daylight’ and ‘no surprises’ principles climaxed over the Iranian nuclear program. Throughout my years in Washington, I participated in intimate and frank discussions with U.S. officials on the Iranian program. But parallel to the talks came administration statements and leaks — for example, each time Israeli warplanes reportedly struck Hezbollah-bound arms convoys in Syria — intended to deter Israel from striking Iran pre-emptively.

“Finally, in 2014, Israel discovered that its primary ally had for months been secretly negotiating with its deadliest enemy. The talks resulted in an interim agreement that the great majority of Israelis considered a ‘bad deal’ with an irrational, genocidal regime. Mr. Obama, though, insisted that Iran was a rational and potentially ‘very successful regional power.’

“The daylight between Israel and the U.S. could not have been more blinding. And for Israelis who repeatedly heard the president pledge that he ‘had their backs’ and ‘was not bluffing’ about the military option, only to watch him tell an Israeli interviewer that ‘a military solution cannot fix’ the Iranian nuclear threat, the astonishment could not have been greater.”

Oren called for the rebuilding of U.S.-Israel ties to their pre-Obama status. “With the Middle East unraveling and dependable allies a rarity, the U.S. and Israel must restore the ‘no daylight’ and ‘no surprises’ principles,” Oren wrote. “Israel has no alternative to America as a source of security aid, diplomatic backing and overwhelming popular support. The U.S. has no substitute for the state that, though small, remains democratic, militarily and technologically robust, strategically located and unreservedly pro-American.”

Speaking to Army Radio on Wednesday morning, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said, “[Oren] is my friend, but I don’t agree with what he wrote. He is in a different role now. He is a politician and an author who wants to sell books. Sometimes an ambassador has a limited view of private conversations between leaders and his description doesn’t represent the truth. His version is imaginary.”