OBAMA MEETS BIBI AT THE UN
Bibi and Obama’s last meeting marked the end of a rocky era in which little progress was made by either leader
THE STATEMENTS at the start of the meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama at the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday were warm and accompanied by smiles and handshakes. But it was hard to ignore a slight weariness emanating from both men, who were going into their 16th and probably last meeting as leaders of their countries.
All the right things were said — President Obama repeated his commitment to Israel’s safety and complimented Prime Minister Netanyahu on his candidness over the year.
Mr Netanyahu thanked the president for the military aid package signed last week and invited him to go to Israel once he leaves office and play golf in Israel’s only 18-hole course near his weekend home in Caesarea. Disagreements were kept to a minimum, with Mr Obama mentioning his concern over settlement building, but that was all.
Of course, no one has forgotten that only 18 months ago, Mr Netanyahu visited the US without meeting the president because he was briefing Congress against Mr Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Or that when Mr Netanyahu won his fourth term in office a few weeks later, the president waited for days to call him and deliver congratulations, angry at statements the prime minister had made on the campaign trail against Israeli Arabs and the establishment of a Palestinian state. But now, it seems, that it is Mr Obama who has given up on seeing such a state coming into existence any time soon.
Six years ago, when Mr Obama was still in the early, confident stages of his presidency, he came to the UN General Assembly and devoted quarter of his speech to his aspiration that “when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the UN — an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel.”
On Tuesday, in his last speech as president to the General Assembly, he devoted only two wistful sentences to Israel and the Palestinians, saying: “Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognise the legitimacy of Israel. But Israel must recognise that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land. We all have to do better.”
The next day, as he sat down with Mr Netanyahu, Mr Obama said: “We need to keep alive the idea of Israel as a secure country alongside a Palestinian state”. How his hopes have sunk since 2010.
The reality is that Mr Obama has four months left in the White House. Mr Netanyahu will remain prime minister and the political powers in Washington, on both sides of the aisle, do not want to put any pressure on him. That is why no less than 88 senators, including left-wing voices of the likes of Elizabeth Warren have signed a letter to the president urging him to veto any anti-Israel resolutions at the UN. Even though some Israeli diplomats still fret that Mr Obama will set out some form of parameters for a future Palestinian state in his last days in office, the chances of that happening are shrinking.
Three months after Mr Obama entered the White House, Mr Netanyahu returned to power in Jerusalem. The last seven and a half years have been one of the most rocky periods in the history of Israel-US relations, but they are coming to an end without anything fundamental having changed in the countries’ strategic ties. Israel will continue to enjoy massive American support and the conflict with the Palestinians is stuck exactly where it was when the two leaders first met, all those years ago.