Vol. 73/No. 20      May 25, 2009

Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud Party leader, became Israel’s prime minister in March, after pulling together a coalition that included the Labor Party, led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Ysrael Beiteinu, a rightist party led by Avigdor Lieberman.

Unlike Ehud Olmert, the previous prime minister, who said he was for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, Netanyahu has been more vague saying, “Palestinians should have the ability to govern their lives.” He also says he is willing to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, which runs parts of the West Bank.

Both U.S. vice president Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have openly criticized aspects of Tel Aviv’s policies in recent weeks.

“Israel has to work toward a two-state solution,” Biden told 6,000 delegates to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference May 5. “You’re not going to like my saying this but [do] not build more settlements, dismantle existing outposts and allow Palestinians freedom of movement.”

Biden was referring to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Under the 1993 Oslo accords, Tel Aviv agreed to allow the Palestinian Authority to administer parts of the West Bank, home to 2.2 million Palestinians. The number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank grew from 230,000 in 2005 to at least 270,000 at the end of 2007.  
 
Netanyahu for expanding settlements
Netanyahu says he is opposed to new Jewish settlements on the West Bank, but that he is for expansion of existing ones. While Tel Aviv has abandoned hopes for a Greater Israel that would include the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Israeli government is building a winding wall through the West Bank to separate Palestinians from both Israel and the settlers.

Begun in mid-2002, some 310 miles of the planned 500-mile concrete wall have been finished. But only seven-and-a-half miles were completed last year and the 2010 completion date is looking less likely, another sign of Tel Aviv’s inability to impose a solution on the Palestinians.

In early March, during a joint news conference with Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, Clinton criticized Israeli plans to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. Clinton said that the home demolitions undermined the “road map,” a U.S.-backed proposal to resolve the conflict.

The Haaretz article said that Israeli officials complain that Washington is consulting with Tel Aviv “much less” than the Bush administration used to, especially in relation to Syria and Iran.

Netanyahu made opposition to Iran’s nuclear program a central part of his election campaign, charging that Tehran was planning to manufacture nuclear weapons that could threaten Israel. He has floated the idea of an air attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Washington has opposed that course for now; instead it seeks Tehran’s cooperation for the U.S. war in Afghanistan at the same time that it pressures the Iranian government to halt its nuclear program.

Divergence between the foreign policy interests of the U.S. and Israeli ruling classes is not new, nor does Washington base it on sympathy for the struggle of the Palestinian people.

In the course of the first war against Iraq, from 1990-91, U.S. imperialism strengthened its ties with the Egyptian and Saudi regimes, and to some extent with the Syrian government, all of which had joined the alliance against Baghdad. Washington no longer had to rely exclusively on Tel Aviv to advance U.S. interests in the region.

Differences between the U.S. and Israeli governments receded however, under William Clinton, who was the most pro-Israeli president in decades, and under George W. Bush. The divergences are once again coming to the fore as Washington seeks to gain advantage from its progress in putting together a somewhat reliable regime in Iraq.  
 
U.S. aid to Tel Aviv
Israel receives about $3 billion in military and economic aid from Washington every year, an amount that has hardly changed over the last 25 years. It makes up just 1.5 percent of Israel’s gross domestic product and just over 4 percent of the Israeli government budget.

The results of Tel Aviv’s victory in its war in the Gaza Strip in December and January was reflected in a five-hour interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal printed in the New York Times May 5. Meshal said that Hamas would no longer fire rockets at Israel and would prevent other groups from doing so as well.  
 
 
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