While US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu put on a show of friendship recently, it is not clear that the relationship will bear fruit, writes George Hishmeh* in Washington The love-fest celebrated here for all to see when Barack Obama escorted Binyamin Netanyahu on the front lawn of the White House and at a joint press conference was a marked difference from their contentious, behind-closed-doors meeting here last April. But judging from the early assessments it is not certain that their relationship will bear fruit in the near future. For one thing, the American and Israeli leaders are hoping that their get-together will serve their political ambitions at home. Obama, whose ratings have lately dropped markedly, will be facing crucial mid-term elections in the next four months, when Americans elect a new House of Representatives and a third of the Senate, now controlled by his Democratic Party. He apparently fears that his stance on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict may affect the voting, and it is certainly giving the Republican Party and its Jewish supporters ammunition to try to cripple Obama. Netanyahu is also hopeful that his revived ties with the American leadership will improve his standing at home following the international condemnation of Israel's bloody attack on the recent Gaza-bound international flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to the besieged Gazans. More importantly, many Israelis fear that the Israeli prime minister's up-to-now poor relationship with Washington may affect upcoming Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. The Obama-Netanyahu meeting occurred as two Arab-American journalists of American, if not international, renown received a shameless and vicious whip-lashing from some of their colleagues and the discredited pro-Israel lobby. Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, and Octavia Nasr, senior Middle East editor at CNN, were castigated by the Israeli lobby and their supporters in the media for what have been called "inappropriate" comments, critical of Israeli settlers and admiring of a revered Muslim cleric aligned to the Lebanese group Hizbullah. What Thomas said was that the Israelis in the occupied Palestinian territories should go back to where they came from, and in a follow- up question she suggested they go back to Europe -- Germany and Poland -- as well as America and elsewhere. Nasr, a Lebanese Christian, wrote in a Twitter posting that she admired the late Ayatollah Fadlallah for his stance in defence of Arab women's rights. Later, the 89-year-old Thomas quit her writing career and Nasr was fired by CNN. (Nasr might feel vindicated to learn that the British ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, had equally praised the Ayatollah on her blog as "a decent man", but she was not disciplined by her government for her remarks. They were only removed from her site). All the antagonists in this tirade failed to recall, to cite but one example and there are many, that Golda Meir, the late Israeli prime minister, once declared that "there is no such thing as the Palestinians." If that was not an "inappropriate" remark, what is? Anyway, she was never taken to task for her slur. Hardly a week had passed since Netanyahu had been praised by Obama for his readiness to take "risks for peace", and then returned home where his government demolished three Arab houses in East Jerusalem. This action is bound to infuriate the Palestinians, including President Mahmoud Abbas, who recently said there was no point in resuming direct talks with the Israelis under current circumstances. Even Haaretz, the Israeli daily, has acknowledged that this Israel action in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem has "effectively end[ed] an unofficial freeze of such internationally-condemned demolitions". Obama may be walking a thin line, but he should not miss the point that Israel is nowadays facing more and more criticism from within the American Jewish community and others over its deplorable position, a situation that should embolden him to take crucial steps in resolving this 62-year-old conflict. For example, the World Zionist Organisation is slowly being dismantled "and nobody seems to care", writes J J Goldberg, editorial director of the American Jewish newspaper The Forward. In a lead story, The New York Times also last week revealed that in violation of US laws "at least 40 American [Evangelical and Jewish] groups... have collected more than $200 million in tax-deductible gifts for Jewish settlements in the [occupied] West Bank and East Jerusalem over the last decade." After a visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, the Times' columnist Nicholas D Kristof wrote that "Israel goes out of its way to display its ugliest side to the world by tearing down Palestinian homes or allowing rapacious settlers to steal Palestinian land." In another column, he stressed that "the [Israeli] occupation is morally repugnant" and went on to quote an Israeli human rights activist who pointed out, in the vicinity of an Israeli settlement "that looks like an American suburb" that has a poultry barn, that "those chickens get more electricity and water than all the Palestinians round here." How can Obama close his eyes while Netanyahu proceeds glaringly in his two-faced policies? Or must we all wait until the election in November -- but then what will be the choices for the Palestinians if he loses? * The writer is a Washington-based columnist.
