Israeli poll likely bad news for Obama

Israel goes to the polls on Tuesday, but the result is already seen as a foregone conclusion – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be returned with his party leading a centre-right coalition – and this is bad news for United States President Barack Obama as well as Palestinians hoping for Israeli agreement on a separate state based on the now occupied West Bank.

While the alliance between the US and Israel has been a foreign policy fundamental  for both since the State of Israel came into being in 1948, never have the leaders been so far apart in their philosophies and beliefs. Quite bluntly they don’t like each other and unlike other personal tiffs between past US presidents and Israeli prime ministers, they make very little effort to hide it.

Only recently, the White House leaked a damning assessment of Netanyahu by Obama as a “political coward whose policies pose a greater threat to Israel’s existence than Iran’s nuclear program”.

“Netanyahu,” Obama is reported as saying “is incapable of making concessions to the Palestinians because he has become a captive of the Jewish settler lobby”.

Netanyahu came perilously close to directly interfering in US domestic politics with an ill-concealed preference for Mitt Romney, Obama’s opponent in the November presidential election. He has also defied the president by giving the go-ahead to settler housing in highly-sensitive areas of the West Bank which, if continued, will have the effect of cutting Palestinians off from East Jerusalem, which they consider should be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

“Everyone understands that only Israelis will determine who faithfully represents Israel’s vital interests,” Netanyahu said in a recent speech to an army audience.

Added to this is a divide between the two countries on how Iran’s nuclear program should be handled. Netanyahu believes that Iran has “crossed the line”; is undoubtedly on a course to produce nuclear weapons and should be prevented from doing so by strikes against its nuclear facilities. While not necessarily disagreeing on Iran’s intentions, Obama wants more time for non-military solutions to work.

Some insiders believe that Netanyahu would prefer to back away from a direct confrontation from Washington which is, after all, one of its few international friends and major financial supporter. Outwardly a big win on Tuesday should strengthen his hand to take this course, but due to the perverse nature of Israeli politics the effect could be just the opposite.

The likely crushing defeat of the moderate Kadima Party, which polls predict will lose 26 of its 28 seats, and the failure of the once mighty, now moribund Labor Party to make any headway, means that the new composition of the Knesset will be more conservative.  Major winners are likely to be the right wing Habayit Hayehudi and Ihud ha-Leumi parties who steadfastly oppose relinquishing any of the territories Israel won in the 1967 war.

As a result Netanyahu will have less room to manoeuvre to pursue more liberal policies, and his hard-line stance towards negotiations with the Palestinians and the two-state solution, is likely to continue and may even strengthen.