Netanyahu set to visit U.S. after Trump’s switch
WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive Tuesday in Washington to meet President Donald Trump, who had been expected to serve as an ally after eight years of friction with President Barack Obama.
The two have known each other since Netanyahu served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York in the 1980s and was friendly with Trump’s father, Fred.
As a candidate, Trump signaled that he would show staunch support for Netanyahu and his allies in Israel in crucial ways, including backing Israel’s growing settlements in the West Bank, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and tearing up the nuclear deal with Iran.
But, after three weeks in office, Trump has backed down on a raft of foreign policy issues — reaffirming the one-China policy with Beijing and vowing “strong support” for the NATO military alliance in Europe — and he now appears to be re-evaluating his Israel policy as well.
Trump has backed away from his support for expanding Jewish settlements on disputed land in the Palestinian West Bank, for example.
On Friday, Trump told an Israeli newspaper that “going forward with settlements” is not a “good thing for peace,” a position that puts him far closer to traditional U.S. policy
than before.
Settlements “don’t help the [peace] process. I can say that,” Trump told Israel Today, which supports Netanyahu and is owned by American casino magnate and political activist Sheldon Adelson. “There is [only] so much land left. And every time you take land for settlements, there is less land left.”
That puts him at odds with Netanyahu, whose government since Trump’s inauguration has approved 6,000 new homes in existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
It also puts Trump in conflict with his proposed choice for U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a strong advocate and financial backer of the settlements.
The first signs of change at the White House came last week, after a three-day visit to Washington by King Abdullah II of Jordan, a strategic ally that neighbors Israel and that works closely with Washington against groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida.
Abdullah was the first Arab leader to meet with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and others in the new administration. He argued that moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem — the disputed city that both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capital — would be so provocative as to threaten his own government.
Another shift came after Rex Tillerson was sworn in as secretary of state Feb. 1 and met with senior diplomats about policies in the Middle East.
The next day, after Tillerson telephoned Netanyahu, the White House issued a statement saying it would not support further expansion of settlements.
While the Trump administration did not consider settlements to be an obstacle to peace, it said, “The construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”
MAKING UP
As the day of Trump and Netanyahu’s meeting approaches, Israeli officials say the prime minister will seek to strengthen his already warm rapport with Trump after years of feuding and policy clashes with the Obama administration.
His education minister and coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, has pressed him to abandon his tentative commitment to the two-state solution, which he first announced in a speech at Bar Ilan University in 2009.
Calling the upcoming visit to the White House “the test of Netanyahu’s life,” Bennett warned the 67-year-old prime minister that there were two words he could not utter at the meeting: “Palestinian state.”
“They must not be said. This is our test,” Bennett cautioned, voicing an ultimatum from the increasingly powerful settlers’ wing, a group that numbers more than 600,000 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. If either side utters those words after the meeting, Bennett said, “the earth will shake.”
On Sunday at his Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said, “I hear and understand that there is great excitement ahead of this meeting” with Trump, “with all different kinds of motivation behind it.” But he stressed that his goals were “to strengthen the steadfast alliance with the U.S.” and other national interests dependent on that tie.
In response to the calls to abandon the two-state solution, Netanyahu said his White House visit “requires a responsible and considered policy — and thus I intend to act.
There is also broad agreement in Netanyahu’s coalition Cabinet that the prime minister should seek common ground with Trump on Iran, which is seen not only by Israel but by its moderate Sunni Arab neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, as the looming challenge to regional security.
“I have navigated Israeli-U.S. relations in a prudent manner,” he said, “and I will
continue to do so now.”
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the Trump meeting should have one overarching goal. “The greatest threat to Israel is Iran, Iran and Iran,” he said.
Many in Israel’s security establishment have acknowledged that the internationally brokered 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Netanyahu opposed, has blocked Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb.
But Israel wants Washington to do more to punish Iran for supporting Shiite Muslim militants in Lebanon and elsewhere, testing ballistic missiles and other activities that have kept the region on edge.
“Netanyahu is going with ideas” on Iran, said Michael Oren, Israel’s deputy minister for diplomacy and a former ambassador to the United States. “The thrust would be to connect the nuclear deal with Iran’s other bad behavior.”
As negotiated by Iran and six world powers, the arms-control deal deliberately focused only on easing the threat of nuclear war, not on lesser dangers. It lifted international sanctions in exchange for Iran freezing its nuclear development program and destroying most of its nuclear infrastructure.
After the agreement was signed, the Obama administration stiffened sanctions on Iran for its support of terrorist groups and its continued development of ballistic missiles. It also signed a 10-year defense deal that provides Israel with $38 billion in security aid.
The Trump administration added new sanctions this month after an Iranian missile test, but publicly acknowledged that it was not trying to undermine the nuclear deal.