Obama prepares to punish Israeli voters for
rejecting him
By Noah Rothman
HotAir.com
HotAir.com
Following the upset in Israel that saw Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party and its allies
win a decisive victory in Tuesday’s parliamentary
elections, a few postmortems have observed that
Israeli voters did not merely fail to reject Bibi
but they also delivered
a resounding rebuke to the Obama administration.
As any nigh-omnipotent being would, President Barack
Obama and his administration have begun to suggest
that retribution is imminent for the state of
Israel, its profane government, and its idolatrous
voters.
The retributive justice meted out to Israel by a
wounded Obama administration began well before any
votes were cast this week. According to reports, the
United States has
failed to renew a longstanding bilateral agreement
in which the United States was compelled to provide
Israel with emergency supplies of oil in the event
of war. The agreement, which was first signed in
1975 in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, expired in
November of last year and has not yet been restored.
But that is tame compared to the other measures the
administration is contemplating in order to send a
message to a democratically elected administration
the White House finds distasteful. When Netanyahu
insisted that he would not back the creation of a
Palestinian state given the prevailing condition in
the West Bank and Gaza, Israel’s opponents in the
West excitedly leapt at the opportunity to brand
those remarks
a rejection of the peace process and a two-state
solution. This allows them to label the Israeli
government an irresponsible international actor, and
has provided a logical basis to end America’s policy
of shielding Israel from the wrath of the
international community.
A report in
Politico elaborated on the
options before Obama as he prepares to retaliate
against the willful Israelis.
Obama officials must now decide whether more
international pressure on Israel can help bring a
conservative Netanyahu-led government back to the
negotiating table with the Palestinians — or whether
such pressure would simply provoke a defiant
reaction, as some fear.
Obama has other diplomatic options. He could expend
less political capital to oppose growing momentum
within the European Union to impose sanctions on
Israel for its settlement activity.
More provocative to Israel would be any softening of
Obama’s opposition to Palestinian efforts to join
the International Criminal Court, which the
Palestinian Authority will formally join on April 1.
Under a law passed by Congress, any Palestinian bid
to bring war crimes charges against Israel at the
court will automatically sever America’s $400
million in annual aid to the Palestinian Authority,
although some experts suggested Obama could find
indirect ways to continue some funding — even if
only to prevent a dangerous collapse of the
Palestinian governing body.
That’s right. War crimes. If this is an option that
is on the table, the administration can expect a
schism between Israel and the United States that
might never be fully repaired. Moreover, the
decoupling of America’s security concerns from
Israel’s might only make Jerusalem revise its
approach to diplomatic and national security
challenges that could prompt Israel to seek out
other great powers to act as the guarantor of its
defense.
According to one former Obama advisor responsible
for Mideast policy
who spoke to
Foreign Policy reporters,
exposing Israel to the wrath of the United Nations
is actually a mercy. Given Israel’s sins, it is the
best they can do. What’s more, this might still
shield Israel’s leaders from even more dramatic
consequences.
Ilan Goldenberg, a former member of the Obama
administration’s Mideast peace team, told FP that
Washington might be inclined to support a Security
Council resolution backing a two-state solution as
an alternative to the Palestinian effort to hold
Israel accountable at the ICC.
“If it was done, it could protect Israel from a
worse outcome,” he said.
Under this scenario, the United States would seek
guarantees from the international community to hold
off on ICC activity in exchange for a Security
Council resolution outlining international standards
for a final peace agreement between the Israelis and
Palestinians.
“The Israelis will probably resist and say this is a
bad idea, but they could also be convinced that this
is better than the alternative,” said Goldenberg.
You see, failing to prevent the United Nations
Security Council from compelling a reset of the
peace process on terms unfavorable to Israel is a
kindness of a sort. In the minds of the West’s
betrayed liberals, Israel’s voters have sealed their
own fates. They deserve what is coming to them, and
more.
Don’t expect the emboldened and freshly legitimized
Israeli government to sit around and wait for their
punishment to be delivered. It’s wise to anticipate
that Netanyahu’s government will plan for its own
future security, alone if need be, as that nation
has done for decades.