WASHINGTON — The sharpest signal of what last week’s elections meant for Jews came not from Washington but from New Orleans, Nova Scotia and Australia.
In New Orleans, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech Monday, Nov. 8, calling for moving beyond sanctions to mounting a credible military threat against Iran as a means of avoiding war.
“Containment will not work,” Netanyahu said in his address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.
The prime minister’s remarks echoed the precise terminology used by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in Nova Scotia two days earlier, when he told the Halifax International Security Forum that containment is off the table.
The likely new majority leader in the US House of Representatives, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), referred to a credible military threat in the days before the election.
It was a clear sign that Netanyahu feels empowered by the Republican sweep last week of the House of Representatives to trump the Obama administrations emphasis on peacemaking with the Palestinians with his own priority: confronting Iran.
The emerging gap between the White House on one side and Israel and its Republican friends on the other could presage a repeat of tensions in the late 1990s between Netanyahu, in his first term, and President Clinton tensions that pro-Israel officials found themselves brokering, often to their discomfiture.
Obama administration officials have indicated that they will not be taking cues from anyone in setting foreign policy.
DEFENSE Secretary Robert Gates, speaking Monday in Melbourne, Australia, where he is on an official visit with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, delivered a rejoinder to Netanyahu’s remarks.
”We are prepared to do what is necessary, but at this point we continue to believe that the political-economic approach that we are taking is in fact having an impact in Iran,” Gates said.
Gates response implicitly rejected not only an escalation but Netanyahu’s claim that sanctions are not working.
It also signaled that the Obama administration was going to protect its foreign policy turf — the traditional White House posture when opponents take one of the houses of Congress.
That was clear already last week when Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s top aides, told sympathetic nongovernmental groups in an off-the-record phone call that the White House would be unwavering — even after losing the House majority — in pressing Israel and the Palestinians to return to the peace talks.
The president has made it very clear that he is committed to doing whatever he can to foster talks in the Middle East, said Jarrett, Obamas senior adviser for public engagement.
”That’s not a partisan issue; his commitment to that is unwavering.”
But Netanyahu, speaking at the federations General Assembly, expressed confidence that he had US backing in resisting Palestinian demands.
He listed a number of items the PA is seeking, including a freeze on Jewish West Bank settlement activity and a final-status deal that would remove Israeli forces from the West Bank.
Netanyahu, told the crowd in New Orleans that Israel would stay in the Jordan Valley, the eastern part of the West Bank, for the foreseeable future. The audience applauded.
“The Palestinians may think they can avoid negotiations,” Netanyahu said. ”They may think that the world will dictate Palestinian demands to Israel. I firmly believe that will not happen because I am confident that friends of Israel, led by the US, will not let that happen.”
