Crunch Time

It's a little odd that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is going to respond to President Barack Obama not in a Knesset speech or an official statement but rather in a major address at a university. Leaders of parliamentary democracies almost always deliver major policy pronouncements in parliament. But this is being billed as an address to the nation, something rare in Israel. Expectations are high.

One can only hope that the content of the speech justifies the atmospherics. If Netanyahu accepts the two-state solution, the settlement freeze, and the demolition of the illegal outposts, his speech will indeed merit the hype. Anything less, and it won't.

Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine that he will accept those terms. As Israelis keep telling us, his right-wing coalition partners will bring down his government if he dares to challenge the settler lobby. Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin's son Benny, a major Likud Party figure, is already threatening to walk if Netanyahu concedes anything.

The irony is that the United States is only asking Netanyahu to live up to commitments of previous governments, a principle Israel holds dear. For instance, successive Israeli administrations stated that they will not deal with a Palestinian unity government (i.e., one that includes Hamas or people close to it) unless that government fully accepts the terms of agreements reached previously with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

The Israelis are steadfast on that point: agreements cannot be repudiated just because a government changes. The Israeli right goes so far as to insist that President Obama accept an understanding on settlements that was supposedly reached by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President George W. Bush even though there was nothing remotely official about it.

So far, the Netanyahu government has not applied that principle to itself. If it did, Netanyahu would have no choice but to accept the American terms. Perhaps that is what he will do, although that would probably require dumping his extreme right-wing coalition partners and replacing them with opposition leader Tzipi Livni's Kadima Party.

I don't rule anything out with Netanyahu. He is intelligent and resourceful. He is not an ideologue. I have no doubt that he wants a good relationship with the United States, which is Israel's lifeline. He knows that he cannot survive a confrontation with the Obama administration and he will go to great lengths to avoid one.

But he may not go far enough.

Netanyahu's right-wing advisors may think that he can finesse Obama through obfuscation. They may think he can suggest support for the "two state" principle while not saying the words "two" and "states" in close proximity to each other. Similarly, they may recommend hinting at a halt in settlement activity while leaving an opening for the "natural growth" excuse which, in the past, was used to justify significant settlement expansion. (Those citing natural growth argue that banning expansion of a settlement to accommodate new births is almost immoral. Of course, newborn babies do not usually require their own rooms, let alone their own houses.) As for the illegal outposts, they may advise Netanyahu to agree to their removal without any commitment to immediate action.

Ariel Sharon played this game while Washington turned a blind eye. But after spending time with Obama, I think Netanyahu understands that the Obama administration does not operate that way. No winks and no nods.

Caveats and conditions cannot be allowed to subvert Netanyahu's acceptance of the two-state solution, the Roadmap, and a settlement freeze. His commitments cannot be laden with new and extraneous demands on the Palestinians like acceptance of Israel "as a Jewish state," a requirement invented to deter any Israeli-Palestinian deal. If the speech amounts to nothing but a series of new Israeli demands to the Palestinians, it will be less than worthless. We've been down that road before; it leads only to a dead end and more violence.

Back in 2002, after President George W. Bush set forth the Roadmap as the means to the two-state solution, Israel accepted it with fourteen reservations that utterly eviscerated it. If Netanyahu accepts the Roadmap, it needs to be the Roadmap that the international community adopted, not Israel's own unique interpretation of it. (The uniqueness of the Israeli interpretation is best demonstrated in its assertion that it need take no action until the Palestinians completely fulfill their commitments first and by ruling out any discussion of such issues as the future of the West Bank, settlements or Jerusalem).

The Sharon government was adept at playing the Alphonse/Gaston routine ("After you, Alphonse." "No, you first, my dear Gaston!") except it always got to go second. It insisted that Palestinians stop violence before they do anything. Today, however, the Palestinian Authority not only renounces violence but in fact combats terrorism with the help of the United States.

Netanyahu's old adage "if they give, they will get" is no longer applicable, if it ever was. The Palestinians have nothing to give. They are the ones under occupation. They are the ones without a state. They are the ones whose lives are made miserable by expanding settlements. They have as much of a right to insist on the unconditional stopping of settlements as Israelis have to demand an unconditional end to violence. And the United States has the obligation to help.

The good news is that Netanyahu can honestly tell his coalition partners that he has no choice but to give the Americans what they want because, in fact, he doesn't. Obama, who has the support of both Congress and the pro-Israel community, is not going to back down. When it comes to settlements, the Israeli right is utterly isolated. Its allies are few, far between, and politically insignificant.

This does not mean that Israel is losing support in America. It is just that Israel's supporters understand that the settlements and the refusal to yield the occupied territories for a Palestinian state undermine both Israel's security and American interests throughout the entire Muslim world. Netanyahu can still count on real support for Israel in America. He just cannot count on mindless, knee-jerk support. Those days are over.

He needs to understand that in Obama he is dealing with a president who knows more about how the Middle East works after five months in office than most of his predecessors knew after eight years. Obfuscation and word games just won't cut it with Obama or, in fact, with Clinton, Jones, Biden, Emanuel, or Axelrod either. He has to deliver the goods.

If he doesn't, the pro-Israel community needs to be honest and call him out. Already there are a few voices urging Obama to ease up already, as if Netanyahu has already been pressured to do too much. He hasn't done anything yet. And all Obama has done is ask Netanyahu to fulfill the commitments of previous Israeli governments. That is not asking too much.