Quiet diplomacy or public confrontation?

By EVELYN GORDON 12/23/2013

http://tinyurl.com/q8htm77  

Surprisingly, the latter may serve Israel better in both its key foreign policy challenges.

Over the coming months, two foreign-policy issues will predominate: the ongoing negotiations between Iran and the six powers over its nuclear program; and American efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian deal. In both cases, Israel has vital interests at stake, yet in both cases, these interests don’t necessarily coincide with those of its American and European allies. This raises the question of how Israel can best protect its interests: through quiet diplomacy or public confrontation?

Among both Israel’s chattering classes and American Jewry, the dominant view seems to be that quiet diplomacy would be best. And at first glance, this makes intuitive sense. Israel’s alliance with the US is one of its greatest assets, so a public rupture with Washington could seriously undermine its diplomatic and military deterrence. And while Europe provides neither diplomatic nor military backing, it remains Israel’s largest trading partner; hence an open rupture could undermine Israel’s economic well-being.

Yet Israel’s own recent history demonstrates that public confrontation is sometimes vital to secure diplomatic achievements. To understand why, it’s worth studying two examples.

One is Israel’s acceptance earlier this month into the Western European and Others Group at the UN in Geneva. Previously, Israel was the only country excluded from any regional grouping in Geneva, which meant it was automatically barred from various UN posts that rotate among the different regional groups. Israel was also the only country to which the UN Human Rights Council had dedicated a permanent agenda item – meaning Israel’s alleged human rights violations were criticized at every council session, whereas other countries’ records were scrutinized only every few years. In short, Israel was discriminated against twice over compared to every other UN member.

For years, Israel tried to rectify this situation through quiet diplomacy, but in vain. Though Western allies agreed the situation was unfair, it didn’t negatively affect their own interests, whereas solving the problem would have antagonized Arab and Islamic states that some Western countries had invested heavily in cultivating. Israel’s interests thus diverged fundamentally from those of some of its natural allies – and in that situation, quiet diplomacy is of limited value.

Yet the West’s calculus changed dramatically once Israel switched to open confrontation. Infuriated over the HRC’s decision to launch yet another investigation of Israel even as it ignored massive abuses like the Syrian regime’s slaughter of its own citizens, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman persuaded the government to sever all ties with the council and refuse to participate in its Universal Periodic Review process.

Israel’s Western allies feared this boycott could lead other states to follow suit, thereby emptying the UPR of all content. And since they are deeply committed to this process, they suddenly had a real interest of their own in accommodating Israel’s longstanding concerns. Feverish negotiations thus ensued, and eventually, a compromise emerged. First, Israel would finally be admitted to the WEOG. Second, for the next two years, members of this group would refuse to participate in any debate held under the auspices of the permanent agenda item on Israel (which they don’t command enough votes to repeal). In short, confrontation had achieved what years of quiet diplomacy failed to do.

The second example is sanctions on Iran. Two previous prime ministers, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, adopted a low-profile approach to Iran’s nuclear program. They considered it crucial for Iran to be seen as the world’s problem rather than Israel’s, and therefore believed Israel’s interests were best served by working behind the scenes and letting the West lead the public battle. Yet this approach produced meager results. It took four years after Iran’s secret nuclear program was discovered for the UN Security Council to impose its first sanctions, and even then, they were largely toothless – as were additional rounds approved in the following years.

But when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu took office in 2009, he scrapped the quiet-diplomacy approach and adopted a much more confrontational posture, including vocal threats of Israeli military action against Iran. This ultimately produced the first truly biting sanctions ever imposed on Tehran: America and Europe effectively disconnected Iran from the global banking system, and the European Union also imposed an oil embargo.

Here, too, quiet diplomacy had failed because Israel’s interests diverged fundamentally from those of its allies. First, Israel viewed a nuclear Iran as a much greater threat than they did. As chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey admitted in a rare moment of candor, Israelis “are living with an existential concern that we are not living with.” Second, Europe had a major economic interest in continuing to do business with Iran. Hence to much of the West, the costs of stiff sanctions simply outweighed their benefits.

These calculations changed only when the West concluded that Netanyahu’s threats to attack Iran were serious. Since they believed an Israeli attack would be destabilizing to Western interests, they had a strong interest in trying to forestall it by offering an alternative form of pressure on Iran – stiff sanctions. A senior French official acknowledged this openly last year when he explained why his country now supported an oil embargo it had previously opposed: “We must do everything possible to avoid an Israeli attack on Iran, even if it means a rise in the price of oil and gasoline,” he said.

This history is important for understanding how Israel should deal with its current challenges, since in both the Iranian nuclear talks and negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel’s interests once again appear to diverge fundamentally from those of its allies. The West now seems more interested in reaching a deal with Iran – any deal – than in actually halting Tehran’s nuclear program. And it appears far more interested in creating a Palestinian state than in ensuring that this state doesn’t threaten Israel’s existence.

In short, on both issues, quiet diplomacy is liable to prove ineffective. Hence Israel must be prepared to stand up for its own interests via confrontation. For only if the West has something to lose by not accommodating Israel’s interests will it consider such an accommodation to be in its own interests as well.

What part of 'Iran will get the bomb if you don't stop it' Mr President, don't you understand?


Published in: Melanie's blog Sept.11th.
http://www.melaniephillips.com/what-bit-of-iran-will-get-the-bomb-if-you-dont-stop-it-mr-president-dont-you-understand

So now the crisis in relations between President Obama and the state of Israel has finally blown publicly open. On the very anniversary of 9/11, the day when America learned firsthand a little of what Israel has been living through for more six decades after the enemies of civilisation set out to murder as many people as possible in New York and Washington DC order to destroy the US and the west, Obama has shown his anger at Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu by refusing to meet him when Netanyahu comes to the US at the end of the month to beg for decisive action to prevent a second attempted genocide of the Jews.

The reason for Obama’s ire? Netanyahu made a desperate statement earlier today which sharply -- if obliquely -- called the President to account. The reason for his desperation was that, after Israel had all but said it would refrain from attacking Iran’s nuclear plants if only the President would draw a ‘red line’ in negotiations by threatening force if they failed, Obama had refused on the risible grounds that, according to Hillary Clinton, negotiations were ‘ the best approach.’

In response Netanyahu said:

‘The world tells Israel “wait, there’s still time”. And I say, “Wait for what? Wait until when?” Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel,” Netanyahu told reporters on Tuesday.

“Now if Iran knows that there is no red line. If Iran knows that there is no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it's doing. It’s continuing, without any interference, towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs, “he said’.

The evidence of Israel’s desperation in suggesting that it may go it alone to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites lies in what it fears may result if is forced to do so. Such an attack risks appalling consequences for Israel’s population, surrounded as it is on virtually all sides by Hezbollah’s rockets in the north, Hamas’s rockets in the south, and Syria’s rockets on the other side of the Golan heights – all backed by Iran – not to mention Iran’s own ballistic missiles.

Appalling as these consequences might be, however, a nuclear armed Iran, arguably the most significant terrorist state in the world and which regularly issues threats to annihilate Israel, would be a far worse prospect. If America were to join such an attack, however, the terrible risks to Israel would be lessened and the likelihood of destroying Iran’s nuclear programme significantly higher.

So Netanyahu has resorted to talking over Obama’s head to the American people. Quite right—the American people should be made aware that, faced with arguably its most threatening enemy since Hitler, the Jewish people is being abandoned once again by an American president who, if returned to office for a second term, might deal an utterly fateful blow against the free world.

Se tell us, Mr President -- since you are so angry with Israel’s PM, which bit of what he said, that you are providing Iran with the time it needs to finish building a nuclear weapon in order to carry out its declared aims of annihilating Israel and the west, did you think he got wrong?

US Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said today that that the US did not see public discussion of the Iranian nuclear program and any ‘red lines’ as helpful.

‘“We don't think it’s particularly useful to have those conversations in public. It doesn’t help the process and it doesn’t help the integrity of the diplomacy. To be standing here at the podium parsing the details of the Iranian nuclear program is not helpful to getting where we want to go,” she said, briefing the media.'

But the diplomacy isn’t going anywhere – except towards the creation of an Iranian nuclear bomb. And as for public rows being unhelpful, well the President could hardly deliver a more public snub than refusing to meet Netanyahu. After all, Obama could perfectly well have had a row with him in a private meeting. The point of such a public snub – if it’s any more than a mere temper tantrum – is to signal to Iran that the US really does not ‘have Israel’s back’ at all. Unless this whole kerfuffle is one giant disinformation campaign (possible), it’s hard to think of a more treacherous thing to do.

Of course Netanyahu, who has been playing a desperate game of diplomatic poker with Obama for the past four years in order to protect Israel from this viscerally hostile President, is undoubtedly trying to alert US voters to the danger of electing this man for a further four-year term. In which case Obama has fallen neatly into the trap, by ensuring that this row gives this damaging accusation against himself the highest possible visibility.

Indeed, there is yet worse. For while the US snubs Israel, its sole ally in the Middle East against those who wish to destroy America and the west, America is about to roll out the red carpet for Iran’s President Ahmadinejad -- whose country is in a state of self-declared war with America, kidnaps westerners, is behind numerous acts of terror against American and western interests, arms Hezbollah and Hamas, has been helping blow up American servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq, threatens the annihilation of Israel and is the greatest single threat to the peace of the world.

As Anne Bayefsky writes, next month Ahmadinejad will be welcomed to the United Nations in New York and there provided with a global platform from which to spout his poison – and thus strengthen Iran still further. What a difference from Canada, where the Harper government only last week severed all diplomatic ties with Iran in protest against its genocidal aims.

The moral bankruptcy of the club of terror that is the UN should need no further advertisement. But the American public should realise that their own Commander-in-Chief -- and Democratic candidate for another four years as President -- threatens to make their own great country complicit in another demented attempt to wipe out the Jews and after them, the west.

Sickeningly, faced with a deranged Judeophobic regime bent on genocide, the Jewish people finds itself at its moment of greatest danger, and despite the weasel words of support from the feeble and faithless allies on which it is forced to depend, once again where it really counts entirely alone.