House writes its own Iran letter, but to Obama
A bipartisan letter on Iran signed by 360 members of Congress will be sent to President Obama on Thursday, one of its House signers said.
The letter, like one 47 Senate Republicans sent to Tehran's leaders, reminds the administration that permanent sanctions relief on Iran as part of a deal to rollback its nuclear program would require new legislation from Congress.
It comes as international negotiators approach a March 24 deadline to reach a framework agreement.
"Should an agreement with Iran be reached, permanent sanctions relief from congressionally-mandated sanctions would require new legislation," the letter says.
"In reviewing such an agreement, Congress must be convinced that its terms foreclose any pathway to a bomb, and only then will Congress be able to consider permanent sanctions relief," it adds.
The letter stops short of supporting legislation pursued by the Senate that would allow Congress 60 days to weigh in on any final deal before its implementation.
However, it adds, "We are prepared to evaluate any agreement to determine its long-term impact on the United States and our allies."
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said earlier this week that he would move forward next week on the Senate bill, co-authored with Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), ranking member of the committee.
The letter, signed by a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the House, comes after Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and 46 other Republicans sent a letter to Iran warning it that any deal might not last after Obama leaves office.
The White House has threatened to veto any legislation that is passed before the talks with Iran are scheduled to conclude on June 30.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who announced the new letter, said he personally could wait until a deal was agreed to before backing congressional action on Iran, but warned the administration not to bypass Congress.
"There really cannot be any marginalization of Congress. Congress really needs to play a very active and vital role in this whole process, and any attempts to sidestep Congress will be resisted," Engel said Thursday morning at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
"We would hope that we could get a prompt response from the White House. It's truly a very bipartisan letter expressing Congress' strong feelings about things that need to be in the agreement," he said.
[h=1]Obama FINALLY calls Netanyahu two days after sweeping re-election victory as Israeli leader extends olive branch over Iran and says he wants 'sustainable, peaceful two-state solution' with Palestinians[/h]
- White House offered tepid 'readout' of call between the two world leaders, late in the day with the news cycle largely over
- Netanyahu had earlier told Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly that he never ruled out a Palestinian state in the run-up to Tuesday's elections
- Also told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell he wants 'a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that circumstances have to change'
- 'We need a demilitarized state that recognizes a Jewish state'
- 'If Israel had a seat on the table' during Iran nuke talks, 'I would say "zero centrifuges",' he told Fox, chafing at '6,000' in the White House blueprint
- But urged parties to 'get a symbolic number' that 'we could live with'
President Barack Obama spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by telephone on Thursday afternoon, two days after his party won a sweeping victory in national elections.
The White House had said he would wait until Israel's president asked Netanyahu to form a coalition government, in keeping with past practice.
On Wednesday morning as Likud party partisans cheered in Tel Aviv, Obama's political strategy director David Simas stopped short of congratulating Netanyahu in a TV interview, only patting Israelis on the back 'for the democratic process – for the election that they just engaged in.'
Netanyahu spent part of Thursday moving politically in the White House's direction, though, clearing the way for a face-saving call from Obama.
The White House shortly after 5:00 p.m. distributed a 'readout' of the phone call, givign reporters a sanitized and muted version of what was said.
'President Obama spoke today by telephone with Prime Minister Netanyahu to congratulate the Prime Minister on his party’s success in winning a plurality of Knesset seats,' the readout said.
'The President emphasized the importance the United States places on our close military, intelligence, and security cooperation with Israel, which reflects the deep and abiding partnership between both countries. The President and the Prime Minister agreed to continue consultations on a range of regional issues, including the difficult path forward to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.'
The statement continued: 'The President reaffirmed the United States’ long-standing commitment to a two-state solution that results in a secure Israel alongside a sovereign and viable Palestine.'
'On Iran, the President reiterated that the United States is focused on reaching a comprehensive deal with Iran that prevents Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and verifiably assures the international community of the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program.'
Netanyahu had said in a pair of Thursday television appearances that the Obama administration's insistence on letting Iran keep some of the centrifuges it uses to purify nuclear materials might ultimately produce a deal 'that we could live with.'
The White House had said he would wait until Israel's president asked Netanyahu to form a coalition government, in keeping with past practice.
On Wednesday morning as Likud party partisans cheered in Tel Aviv, Obama's political strategy director David Simas stopped short of congratulating Netanyahu in a TV interview, only patting Israelis on the back 'for the democratic process – for the election that they just engaged in.'
Netanyahu spent part of Thursday moving politically in the White House's direction, though, clearing the way for a face-saving call from Obama.
The White House shortly after 5:00 p.m. distributed a 'readout' of the phone call, givign reporters a sanitized and muted version of what was said.
'President Obama spoke today by telephone with Prime Minister Netanyahu to congratulate the Prime Minister on his party’s success in winning a plurality of Knesset seats,' the readout said.
'The President emphasized the importance the United States places on our close military, intelligence, and security cooperation with Israel, which reflects the deep and abiding partnership between both countries. The President and the Prime Minister agreed to continue consultations on a range of regional issues, including the difficult path forward to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.'
The statement continued: 'The President reaffirmed the United States’ long-standing commitment to a two-state solution that results in a secure Israel alongside a sovereign and viable Palestine.'
'On Iran, the President reiterated that the United States is focused on reaching a comprehensive deal with Iran that prevents Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and verifiably assures the international community of the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program.'
Netanyahu had said in a pair of Thursday television appearances that the Obama administration's insistence on letting Iran keep some of the centrifuges it uses to purify nuclear materials might ultimately produce a deal 'that we could live with.'
That unexpected statement came in a Fox News Channel interview conducted by anchor Megyn Kelly. A blueprint drawn up in Switzerland this week would allow Tehran to keep 6,000 centrifuges spinning uranium.
'This deal would leave Iran with sufficient capability, 6,000 centrifuges, enable them to break out to a bomb very quickly,' Netanyahu said. 'If I had my druthers, if Israel had a seat on the table, I would say "zero centrifuges." But I don't have a seat on the table.'
'And if I can impress on the negotiating parties, I would say what our Arab neighbors say. "Get a symbolic number – and 6,000 is certainly not symbolic – that's an agreement we wouldn't like but we could live with," I said, literally.'
Asked separately by NBC News host Andrea Mitchell if he was would 'accept some nuclear centrifuges' in Iran, he answered, 'I would.'
'A smaller number would be something that Israel and its Arab neighbors wouldn’t love but they could live with,' he told Mitchell, echoing his comments to Kelly.
Mitchell's interview aired on MSNBC and will be rebroadcast in part on NBC Nightly News.
'The most important thing,' Netanyahu cautioned, 'is that the lifting of restrictions on Iran's nuclear program would depend on Iran's change of behavior, that it would stop supporting terrorism, stop its aggression against just about every country in the region, and stop calling and threatening the annihilation of Israel.'
Netanyahu also said on 'The Kelly File' that he never ruled out Palestinian statehood before his Likud party's sweeping victory in Tuesday's elections.
And he pushed back against the White House's complaint that his rhetoric this week was anti-Arab and 'divisive.'
He had warned his countrymen that Likud's dominance in Israel's Knesset – it's parliament – was in danger because 'the Arabs are voting in droves.'
Netanyahu insisted that the idea that he worsened Arab-Israeli rifts is 'just not true.'
'I warned of foreign money coming in to selectively put out – just try to bring out supporters of a list that includes Islamists and other factions that oppose the State of Israel. Supported actually, this list was supported by Hamas.'
'I wasn't trying to suppress a vote; I was trying to get out my vote against those who were targeting – foreign money that was coming in to target a specific group to bring down my voters.'
Left unspoken was Bibi's growing resentment against the Obama administration over what Republicans in Congress saw as international meddling in the election.
'This deal would leave Iran with sufficient capability, 6,000 centrifuges, enable them to break out to a bomb very quickly,' Netanyahu said. 'If I had my druthers, if Israel had a seat on the table, I would say "zero centrifuges." But I don't have a seat on the table.'
'And if I can impress on the negotiating parties, I would say what our Arab neighbors say. "Get a symbolic number – and 6,000 is certainly not symbolic – that's an agreement we wouldn't like but we could live with," I said, literally.'
Asked separately by NBC News host Andrea Mitchell if he was would 'accept some nuclear centrifuges' in Iran, he answered, 'I would.'
'A smaller number would be something that Israel and its Arab neighbors wouldn’t love but they could live with,' he told Mitchell, echoing his comments to Kelly.
Mitchell's interview aired on MSNBC and will be rebroadcast in part on NBC Nightly News.
'The most important thing,' Netanyahu cautioned, 'is that the lifting of restrictions on Iran's nuclear program would depend on Iran's change of behavior, that it would stop supporting terrorism, stop its aggression against just about every country in the region, and stop calling and threatening the annihilation of Israel.'
Netanyahu also said on 'The Kelly File' that he never ruled out Palestinian statehood before his Likud party's sweeping victory in Tuesday's elections.
And he pushed back against the White House's complaint that his rhetoric this week was anti-Arab and 'divisive.'
He had warned his countrymen that Likud's dominance in Israel's Knesset – it's parliament – was in danger because 'the Arabs are voting in droves.'
Netanyahu insisted that the idea that he worsened Arab-Israeli rifts is 'just not true.'
'I warned of foreign money coming in to selectively put out – just try to bring out supporters of a list that includes Islamists and other factions that oppose the State of Israel. Supported actually, this list was supported by Hamas.'
'I wasn't trying to suppress a vote; I was trying to get out my vote against those who were targeting – foreign money that was coming in to target a specific group to bring down my voters.'
Left unspoken was Bibi's growing resentment against the Obama administration over what Republicans in Congress saw as international meddling in the election.
Jeremy Bird, a former chief campaign organizer for Obama, spent the last month in Israel working in tandem with left-wing political operatives on behalf of an organization that received $350,000 last year from the U.S. State Department.
A congressional committee is investigating.
The Obama administration began hinting as Netanyahu's re-election became a certainty that it might change a decades-old policy of blocking United Nations Security Council votes that demand a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
'Now the administration is saying that they will not stop the U.N. from conferring statehood' on the Palestinian Authority,' Mitchell told him on NBC.
'They will not block – or at least they’re strongly considering not blocking – a vote for statehood for Palestinians.'
Netanyahu fired back.
'That state would become a terrorist state,' he insisted.
'Iran says that they will arm the West Bank the way they arm Gaza. We withdrew from Gaza. We got just a few months ago – not ancient history but a few months ago – thousands of rockets, Andrea, on our heads.'
'You don't want the foremost sponsor of global terrorism armed with atomic weapons.'
Netanyahu made an impassioned plea during a March 3 joint meeting of the U.S. Congress for America to back away from a deal with Iran that would allow the Islamic republic an easy and quick future route to assembling a nuclear bomb.
On Thursday, he said the Obama administration should not 'take the foot off the brake' regarding rippling economic sanctions that have slowed the Iranian economy to a crawl. 'Just pass – keep on pressing.'
'There's a lot of leverage that the United States can use on Iran and I hope it uses it,' he said, 'because right now, for coming to this deal, would get Iran an easy path to the bomb. And that would happen. Not by violating by the deal but by keeping the deal, in a few years.'
Netanyahu also pushed back against charges that he snatched electoral victory from the jaws of defeat with an eleventh hour flip-flop on the question of Palestinian statehood.
Western news outlets reported that he had pledged it would never happen on his watch. That would contradict his 2009 statements about supporting a peace deal that would recognize a Palestinian state
'I didn't retract any of the things I said in my speech six years ago,' he insisted, 'calling for a solution in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes a Jewish state.'
'I said that the conditions for that, today, are not achievable for a simple reason: Abu Mazen, the leader of the Palestinians, rejects consistently the acceptance of a Jewish state.'
Mazen, Netanyahu said, has 'made a pact with the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas, that calls for our destruction. And the conditions in the Middle East have changed to the point where any territory we withdraw from is immediately taken up by Iranian-backed terrorists or by ISIS.'
'It's only a dozen miles away from us, ISIS,' he said. 'It's thousands of miles away from you.'
Netanyahu left open the possibility of a two-state solution, but only if 'we change the terms.'
At present, he argued, 'the conditions are that we would vacate territory, and instead of getting the two-state solution, we could end up with a no state solution. That is, a solution that would threaten the very survival of the State of Israel.'
'Right now,' he insisted, 'we have to get the Palestinians to go back to the negotiating table, break their pact with Hamas, and accept the idea of a Jewish state. And I think that's what the international community should be focused on.'
The White House on Thursday indicated that it was no longer clear where Netanyahu stood on the issue.
'Words matter and that is certainly true in this instance,' press secretary Josh Earnest said. 'The president and the administration take him at his word.'
But because his election eve statements suggested he was prepared to withdraw from a long-held commitment to a two-state solution that has been supported by Congress along with both Democratic and Republican presidents, the U.S. must now 're-evaluate our approach to this matter,' he said.
Earnest brushed off at his daily briefing a criticism from House Speaker John Boehner earlier in the day. Boehner had said the White House's response to Netanyahu's re-election was lukewarm.'
Earnest declined to describe the president's reaction to the news.
He spoke out forcefully, for the second day in a row, however, against Netanyahu's claim that Arab voters might have tilted the election.
'That cynical election day tactic was a pretty transparent effort to marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens and their right to participate in their democracy,' Earnest claimed.
'You’ve often heard me point out that one of the things that binds our countries together so closely is our shared values and a commitment to a set of values that are deeply integrated into our country, our government and our citizens.'
'These kinds of cynical, divisive, election day tactics stand in direct conflict to those values. That does erode at the values that are critical to the bond between our two countries,' he told reporters.
A congressional committee is investigating.
The Obama administration began hinting as Netanyahu's re-election became a certainty that it might change a decades-old policy of blocking United Nations Security Council votes that demand a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
'Now the administration is saying that they will not stop the U.N. from conferring statehood' on the Palestinian Authority,' Mitchell told him on NBC.
'They will not block – or at least they’re strongly considering not blocking – a vote for statehood for Palestinians.'
Netanyahu fired back.
'That state would become a terrorist state,' he insisted.
'Iran says that they will arm the West Bank the way they arm Gaza. We withdrew from Gaza. We got just a few months ago – not ancient history but a few months ago – thousands of rockets, Andrea, on our heads.'
'You don't want the foremost sponsor of global terrorism armed with atomic weapons.'
Netanyahu made an impassioned plea during a March 3 joint meeting of the U.S. Congress for America to back away from a deal with Iran that would allow the Islamic republic an easy and quick future route to assembling a nuclear bomb.
On Thursday, he said the Obama administration should not 'take the foot off the brake' regarding rippling economic sanctions that have slowed the Iranian economy to a crawl. 'Just pass – keep on pressing.'
'There's a lot of leverage that the United States can use on Iran and I hope it uses it,' he said, 'because right now, for coming to this deal, would get Iran an easy path to the bomb. And that would happen. Not by violating by the deal but by keeping the deal, in a few years.'
Netanyahu also pushed back against charges that he snatched electoral victory from the jaws of defeat with an eleventh hour flip-flop on the question of Palestinian statehood.
Western news outlets reported that he had pledged it would never happen on his watch. That would contradict his 2009 statements about supporting a peace deal that would recognize a Palestinian state
'I didn't retract any of the things I said in my speech six years ago,' he insisted, 'calling for a solution in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes a Jewish state.'
'I said that the conditions for that, today, are not achievable for a simple reason: Abu Mazen, the leader of the Palestinians, rejects consistently the acceptance of a Jewish state.'
Mazen, Netanyahu said, has 'made a pact with the Palestinian terrorist organization, Hamas, that calls for our destruction. And the conditions in the Middle East have changed to the point where any territory we withdraw from is immediately taken up by Iranian-backed terrorists or by ISIS.'
'It's only a dozen miles away from us, ISIS,' he said. 'It's thousands of miles away from you.'
Netanyahu left open the possibility of a two-state solution, but only if 'we change the terms.'
At present, he argued, 'the conditions are that we would vacate territory, and instead of getting the two-state solution, we could end up with a no state solution. That is, a solution that would threaten the very survival of the State of Israel.'
'Right now,' he insisted, 'we have to get the Palestinians to go back to the negotiating table, break their pact with Hamas, and accept the idea of a Jewish state. And I think that's what the international community should be focused on.'
The White House on Thursday indicated that it was no longer clear where Netanyahu stood on the issue.
'Words matter and that is certainly true in this instance,' press secretary Josh Earnest said. 'The president and the administration take him at his word.'
But because his election eve statements suggested he was prepared to withdraw from a long-held commitment to a two-state solution that has been supported by Congress along with both Democratic and Republican presidents, the U.S. must now 're-evaluate our approach to this matter,' he said.
Earnest brushed off at his daily briefing a criticism from House Speaker John Boehner earlier in the day. Boehner had said the White House's response to Netanyahu's re-election was lukewarm.'
Earnest declined to describe the president's reaction to the news.
He spoke out forcefully, for the second day in a row, however, against Netanyahu's claim that Arab voters might have tilted the election.
'That cynical election day tactic was a pretty transparent effort to marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens and their right to participate in their democracy,' Earnest claimed.
'You’ve often heard me point out that one of the things that binds our countries together so closely is our shared values and a commitment to a set of values that are deeply integrated into our country, our government and our citizens.'
'These kinds of cynical, divisive, election day tactics stand in direct conflict to those values. That does erode at the values that are critical to the bond between our two countries,' he told reporters.
Netanyahu sank into the moral gutter – and there will be consequences
Jonathan Freedland Israel’s prime minister won re-election with a combination of belligerence and bigotry. His opposition to a Palestinian state is a stance the world should not accept
Netanyahu waves to supporters on the eve of the election: ‘What made his emphatic win so dispiriting were the depths he plumbed to secure victory.’ Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA
Friday 20 March 2015 15.44 EDT Last modified on Saturday 21 March 2015 05.30 EDT
The result was not the worst of it. Indeed, buried in the detailed numbers of this week’s Israeli election were odd crumbs of consolation. No, what made Binyamin Netanyahu’s emphatic win so dispiriting were the depths he plumbed to secure victory.
He made two moves in his desperate, and ultimately successful, effort to woo back those Israeli rightists who had drifted from Likud into the hands of more minor nationalist parties. Netanyahu reassured them that they could forget the lip service of the past few years, the diplomatic niceties he had served up since returning as prime minister in 2009: there would be no Palestinian state on his watch.
On election day itself, he sank lower still. In a Facebook video, he posed in front of a map of the Middle East, as if in a war room, and used the idiom of military conflict to warn that “Arab voters are advancing in large numbers towards voting places” and that this was “a call-up order” for Likud supporters to head to the polling stations.
It’s worth pausing to digest the full meaning of that move. The enemy against whom Netanyahu was seeking to rally his people was not Islamic State or massed foreign armies, or even the Palestinians of the West Bank or Gaza. He was speaking of the 20% of the Israeli electorate that is Palestinian: Arabs who were born in, live in and are citizens of Israel. A prime minister was describing the democratic participation of one-fifth of the country he governs in the language of a military assault to be beaten back.
It worked. Not because it won fresh recruits to the right camp, but because it summoned disenchanted hawks back home. That’s the small consolation. The numbers suggest Israel did not lurch rightwards on Tuesday. Indeed, the nationalist and religious right bloc merely held steady, gaining just one seat. Netanyahu’s success came by recutting that pie to give himself a bigger slice.
But it is a cold comfort. For the Likud leader was able to siphon off votes from the far right by absorbing its message of belligerence and bigotry. Some will say that’s hardly new. Only the naive could look at Netanyahu’s nine years in office (spread over three decades) and conclude he was ever serious about either equality or the pursuit of a two-state solution. But now we have his explicit word, confirming that everything his harshest critics said of him was true.
The result is despair – in liberal Tel Aviv, where Bibi’s Labor challenger, Isaac Herzog, topped the poll; in foreign capitals, who will note that Netanyahu has now officially disavowed the near-universally preferred solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict; and in the Jewish diaspora, which has long clung to the hope that Israel at least wants to end the post-1967 occupation, even if it has still not managed to do it.
Mindful of the damage his win-at-all-costs moves had wrought, Netanyahu lost no time trying to unsay what he had said. In his victory speech, he promised to be prime minister of all Israelis, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. And in a US TV interview on Thursday, he insisted that he does want a “sustainable, peaceful two-state solution” after all, so long as “circumstances” change.
How then should those outside Israel react? Some will seize on the disavowal of two states to push instead for their favoured option: a so-called one-state solution. It sounds both simple and enlightened, everyone living together under one roof, with one person, one vote. But as the Palestinian-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua argued powerfully this week, any conceivable path to such a destination would be “grounded in the trampling of the Palestinians”.
The more obvious objection is the one summarised by the Israeli novelist and veteran anti-occupation activist Amos Oz: “After one hundred years of blood, tears and disasters, it is impossible to expect Israelis and Palestinians to jump suddenly into a double bed and begin a honeymoon.”
And yet we cannot go back to mouthing the same old platitudes about two states, not when we’ve heard Israel’s leader admit he has no intention of allowing any such thing.
The right response is surely to match Netanyahu’s honesty with our own. In this regard, the Obama administration has already performed better than Europe. While EU diplomats greeted Netanyahu’s victory with the same tired formulas, invoking a nonexistent peace process, Washington voiced its displeasure at Netanyahu’s “divisive rhetoric” and let it be known that it was ready to make things uncomfortable.
Until now, Washington has always acted as Israel’s diplomatic protector, blocking hostile resolutions at the UN and the like. Now the White House, still smarting over Netanyahu’s Republican address to a Republican Congress, wants to remind Netanyahu that such support is not unconditional. The core message, and it should not be delivered by the US alone, would be simple. It would say, of course the world has to respect the decision of the Israeli electorate. But if this is the path Israel is taking, there will be consequences. If Israel is effectively ruling out a Palestinian state – and given that it rejects a one-state solution whereby Israel absorbs millions of Palestinians and gives them the vote – then it has committed itself to maintaining the status quo, permanently ruling over another people and denying them basic democratic rights. And that is a position the world cannot accept.
Such a stance might entail US withdrawal of diplomatic cover. It might mean tougher European sanctions of the kind proposed in Friday’s EU report on settlement activity in East Jerusalem. It could mean a growing shift towards divestment and sanctions, targeted at the occupation, without the polarising tactic of boycott that tends to alienate as many potential supporters as it recruits.
Whatever form they take, there will be consequences for Netanyahu’s actions. He was ready to sink to a new low to save his skin, but it will be Israelis – and their Palestinian neighbours – who pay the price.
Jonathan Freedland Israel’s prime minister won re-election with a combination of belligerence and bigotry. His opposition to a Palestinian state is a stance the world should not accept
Netanyahu waves to supporters on the eve of the election: ‘What made his emphatic win so dispiriting were the depths he plumbed to secure victory.’ Photograph: Abir Sultan/EPA
Friday 20 March 2015 15.44 EDT Last modified on Saturday 21 March 2015 05.30 EDT
The result was not the worst of it. Indeed, buried in the detailed numbers of this week’s Israeli election were odd crumbs of consolation. No, what made Binyamin Netanyahu’s emphatic win so dispiriting were the depths he plumbed to secure victory.
He made two moves in his desperate, and ultimately successful, effort to woo back those Israeli rightists who had drifted from Likud into the hands of more minor nationalist parties. Netanyahu reassured them that they could forget the lip service of the past few years, the diplomatic niceties he had served up since returning as prime minister in 2009: there would be no Palestinian state on his watch.
On election day itself, he sank lower still. In a Facebook video, he posed in front of a map of the Middle East, as if in a war room, and used the idiom of military conflict to warn that “Arab voters are advancing in large numbers towards voting places” and that this was “a call-up order” for Likud supporters to head to the polling stations.
It’s worth pausing to digest the full meaning of that move. The enemy against whom Netanyahu was seeking to rally his people was not Islamic State or massed foreign armies, or even the Palestinians of the West Bank or Gaza. He was speaking of the 20% of the Israeli electorate that is Palestinian: Arabs who were born in, live in and are citizens of Israel. A prime minister was describing the democratic participation of one-fifth of the country he governs in the language of a military assault to be beaten back.
Imagine if a US president warned the white electorate that black voters were heading to the polls in 'large numbers'
Imagine if a US president broadcast such a message, warning the white electorate that black voters were heading to the polls in “large numbers”. Or if a European prime minister said: “Quick, the Jews are voting!” This is the moral gutter into which Netanyahu plunged just to get elected.
It worked. Not because it won fresh recruits to the right camp, but because it summoned disenchanted hawks back home. That’s the small consolation. The numbers suggest Israel did not lurch rightwards on Tuesday. Indeed, the nationalist and religious right bloc merely held steady, gaining just one seat. Netanyahu’s success came by recutting that pie to give himself a bigger slice.
But it is a cold comfort. For the Likud leader was able to siphon off votes from the far right by absorbing its message of belligerence and bigotry. Some will say that’s hardly new. Only the naive could look at Netanyahu’s nine years in office (spread over three decades) and conclude he was ever serious about either equality or the pursuit of a two-state solution. But now we have his explicit word, confirming that everything his harshest critics said of him was true.
The result is despair – in liberal Tel Aviv, where Bibi’s Labor challenger, Isaac Herzog, topped the poll; in foreign capitals, who will note that Netanyahu has now officially disavowed the near-universally preferred solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict; and in the Jewish diaspora, which has long clung to the hope that Israel at least wants to end the post-1967 occupation, even if it has still not managed to do it.
Mindful of the damage his win-at-all-costs moves had wrought, Netanyahu lost no time trying to unsay what he had said. In his victory speech, he promised to be prime minister of all Israelis, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. And in a US TV interview on Thursday, he insisted that he does want a “sustainable, peaceful two-state solution” after all, so long as “circumstances” change.
I know of at least one European leader who now says privately that Netanyahu’s credibility is shot
But it’s too late. I know of at least one European leader who now says privately that Netanyahu’s “credibility is shot” and that “no one will want to work with him”. And in the fellowship of world leaders, that will not be a minority view.
How then should those outside Israel react? Some will seize on the disavowal of two states to push instead for their favoured option: a so-called one-state solution. It sounds both simple and enlightened, everyone living together under one roof, with one person, one vote. But as the Palestinian-Israeli writer Sayed Kashua argued powerfully this week, any conceivable path to such a destination would be “grounded in the trampling of the Palestinians”.
The more obvious objection is the one summarised by the Israeli novelist and veteran anti-occupation activist Amos Oz: “After one hundred years of blood, tears and disasters, it is impossible to expect Israelis and Palestinians to jump suddenly into a double bed and begin a honeymoon.”
And yet we cannot go back to mouthing the same old platitudes about two states, not when we’ve heard Israel’s leader admit he has no intention of allowing any such thing.
The right response is surely to match Netanyahu’s honesty with our own. In this regard, the Obama administration has already performed better than Europe. While EU diplomats greeted Netanyahu’s victory with the same tired formulas, invoking a nonexistent peace process, Washington voiced its displeasure at Netanyahu’s “divisive rhetoric” and let it be known that it was ready to make things uncomfortable.
Until now, Washington has always acted as Israel’s diplomatic protector, blocking hostile resolutions at the UN and the like. Now the White House, still smarting over Netanyahu’s Republican address to a Republican Congress, wants to remind Netanyahu that such support is not unconditional. The core message, and it should not be delivered by the US alone, would be simple. It would say, of course the world has to respect the decision of the Israeli electorate. But if this is the path Israel is taking, there will be consequences. If Israel is effectively ruling out a Palestinian state – and given that it rejects a one-state solution whereby Israel absorbs millions of Palestinians and gives them the vote – then it has committed itself to maintaining the status quo, permanently ruling over another people and denying them basic democratic rights. And that is a position the world cannot accept.
Such a stance might entail US withdrawal of diplomatic cover. It might mean tougher European sanctions of the kind proposed in Friday’s EU report on settlement activity in East Jerusalem. It could mean a growing shift towards divestment and sanctions, targeted at the occupation, without the polarising tactic of boycott that tends to alienate as many potential supporters as it recruits.
Whatever form they take, there will be consequences for Netanyahu’s actions. He was ready to sink to a new low to save his skin, but it will be Israelis – and their Palestinian neighbours – who pay the price.
"Whatever form they take, there will be consequences for Netanyahu’s actions. He was ready to sink to a new low to save his skin, but it will be Israelis – and their Palestinian neighbours – who pay the price."
PURE AL-GUARDIAN FILTH. The al-Guardian never hesitates to sink to new lows. Leftist-Nazi-Trash!
The al-Guardian Jew haters will be wrong again, as always. The article is as full of Bullshit as the piece of shit that wrote it.
There will be a Palestinian State when Palestinians accept that there is a Jewish State. Everything else is just meaningless words. The Palestinians were always, and still are the obstacle to peace.
PURE AL-GUARDIAN FILTH. The al-Guardian never hesitates to sink to new lows. Leftist-Nazi-Trash!
The al-Guardian Jew haters will be wrong again, as always. The article is as full of Bullshit as the piece of shit that wrote it.
There will be a Palestinian State when Palestinians accept that there is a Jewish State. Everything else is just meaningless words. The Palestinians were always, and still are the obstacle to peace.
Bibi on his own Apology Tour. Some might call it his Blatant Hypocrisy to get re-elected tour:
Netanyahu apologizes to Israeli Arabs for comment widely criticized as racist
By Ruth Eglash March 23 at 5:16 PM
JERUSALEM — Newly reelected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized Monday to Israel’s Arab citizens for an inflammatory comment he made on election day last week.
Netanyahu won a decisive victory in last Tuesday’s parliamentary election, despite pollsters suggesting that his Likud party might face defeat after two terms in power.
In a last-minute election push, Netanyahu warned that unless his supporters went out to vote, his right-wing party could lose because Arabs were heading to polling stations in large numbers.
“The right-wing government is in danger,” the Israeli prime minister said in a 30-second video clip he posted on Facebook. “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out.”
[On Israeli election day, Netanyahu warns of Arabs voting ‘in droves’]
He later backtracked, saying he had no problem with Israel’s Arab minority exercising its right to vote. His criticism, Netanyahu said, was with outside interference from foreign governments, which he accused of funding leftist nongovernmental organizations and the Arabs.
Netanyahu’s original comment, however, sparked great upset among Israel’s 1.7 million Arab citizens, who despite making up roughly 20 percent of the population often feel discriminated against in the Jewish state.
The inciting statement also drew condemnation from President Obama, who in an interview Friday with the Huffington Post said that “that kind of rhetoric was contrary to what is the best of Israel’s traditions.”
“Although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly,” Obama said. “And I think that that is what’s best about Israeli democracy. If that is lost, then I think that not only does it give ammunition to folks who don’t believe in a Jewish state, but it also, I think, starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country.”
On Monday, the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, continued the criticism, taking aim at the Israeli prime minister’s campaign pledge that he would not allow a Palestinian state to be established while he was in office, and his subsequent post-election reversal in which he backtracked from that stance.
“We cannot simply pretend that those comments were never made, or that they don’t raise questions about the prime minister’s commitment to achieving peace through direct negotiations,” McDonough said.
During his meeting Monday with more than a dozen mayors, local council heads and religious leaders from the Arab community, Netanyahu said he had never intended to offend.
[White House keeps tweaking Israeli prime minister]
“I know that my comments last week offended some Israeli citizens and offended members of the Israeli-Arab community. This was never my intent. I apologize for this,” said Netanyahu. “I view myself as the prime minister of each and every citizen of Israel, without any prejudice based on religion, ethnicity or gender. I view every citizen as my partner in building a more secure, more prosperous state of Israel and a nation that benefits the needs and interests of all our citizenry.”
However, Netanyahu continued to make reference to “foreign entities,” which he said “should not be interfering with Israel’s democratic process.”
Some believe that it was Netanyahu’s election day comment that helped increase voter turnout in the Arab sector, boosting the standing of the Joint List, a union of four Arab parties that ran on a united ticket for the first time. Tuesday’s election saw the party win 14 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, making it the third-largest political faction.
[Israel’s Arab political parties have united for the first time]
In a statement released Monday night, the Joint List said it refused to accept Netanyahu’s apology, seeing it as a “meaningless act aiming to legitimize his racist reign.”
“Netanyahu's racism did not begin with this inciting statement, and surely will not end there,” said the Joint List, declaring it would continue the struggle for equality for the Arab population. “Inciting and marginalizing legislation is Netanyahu’s political platform for the near future.”
The White House, however, released a statement commending Netanyahu for the apology, calling it “appropriate.”
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League, also welcomed Netanyahu’s apology, saying: “While I do not believe the prime minister’s election day remarks were intended to be anti-Arab or racist, his words left questions in people’s minds about how the Arab community is viewed by Israel’s leadership and their place in Israeli society.”
Netanyahu apologizes to Israeli Arabs for comment widely criticized as racist
By Ruth Eglash March 23 at 5:16 PM
JERUSALEM — Newly reelected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized Monday to Israel’s Arab citizens for an inflammatory comment he made on election day last week.
Netanyahu won a decisive victory in last Tuesday’s parliamentary election, despite pollsters suggesting that his Likud party might face defeat after two terms in power.
In a last-minute election push, Netanyahu warned that unless his supporters went out to vote, his right-wing party could lose because Arabs were heading to polling stations in large numbers.
“The right-wing government is in danger,” the Israeli prime minister said in a 30-second video clip he posted on Facebook. “Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls. Left-wing organizations are busing them out.”
[On Israeli election day, Netanyahu warns of Arabs voting ‘in droves’]
He later backtracked, saying he had no problem with Israel’s Arab minority exercising its right to vote. His criticism, Netanyahu said, was with outside interference from foreign governments, which he accused of funding leftist nongovernmental organizations and the Arabs.
Netanyahu’s original comment, however, sparked great upset among Israel’s 1.7 million Arab citizens, who despite making up roughly 20 percent of the population often feel discriminated against in the Jewish state.
The inciting statement also drew condemnation from President Obama, who in an interview Friday with the Huffington Post said that “that kind of rhetoric was contrary to what is the best of Israel’s traditions.”
“Although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly,” Obama said. “And I think that that is what’s best about Israeli democracy. If that is lost, then I think that not only does it give ammunition to folks who don’t believe in a Jewish state, but it also, I think, starts to erode the meaning of democracy in the country.”
On Monday, the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, continued the criticism, taking aim at the Israeli prime minister’s campaign pledge that he would not allow a Palestinian state to be established while he was in office, and his subsequent post-election reversal in which he backtracked from that stance.
“We cannot simply pretend that those comments were never made, or that they don’t raise questions about the prime minister’s commitment to achieving peace through direct negotiations,” McDonough said.
During his meeting Monday with more than a dozen mayors, local council heads and religious leaders from the Arab community, Netanyahu said he had never intended to offend.
[White House keeps tweaking Israeli prime minister]
“I know that my comments last week offended some Israeli citizens and offended members of the Israeli-Arab community. This was never my intent. I apologize for this,” said Netanyahu. “I view myself as the prime minister of each and every citizen of Israel, without any prejudice based on religion, ethnicity or gender. I view every citizen as my partner in building a more secure, more prosperous state of Israel and a nation that benefits the needs and interests of all our citizenry.”
However, Netanyahu continued to make reference to “foreign entities,” which he said “should not be interfering with Israel’s democratic process.”
Some believe that it was Netanyahu’s election day comment that helped increase voter turnout in the Arab sector, boosting the standing of the Joint List, a union of four Arab parties that ran on a united ticket for the first time. Tuesday’s election saw the party win 14 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, making it the third-largest political faction.
[Israel’s Arab political parties have united for the first time]
In a statement released Monday night, the Joint List said it refused to accept Netanyahu’s apology, seeing it as a “meaningless act aiming to legitimize his racist reign.”
“Netanyahu's racism did not begin with this inciting statement, and surely will not end there,” said the Joint List, declaring it would continue the struggle for equality for the Arab population. “Inciting and marginalizing legislation is Netanyahu’s political platform for the near future.”
The White House, however, released a statement commending Netanyahu for the apology, calling it “appropriate.”
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League, also welcomed Netanyahu’s apology, saying: “While I do not believe the prime minister’s election day remarks were intended to be anti-Arab or racist, his words left questions in people’s minds about how the Arab community is viewed by Israel’s leadership and their place in Israeli society.”
k:[h=1]James Baker slams Netanyahu's 'diplomatic missteps'[/h] [h=2]Former U.S. secretary of state decries 'toxic' U.S.-Israel relations, warning that issues are now harder to alleviate due to their personal nature.[/h] By Haaretz | Mar. 24, 2015 | 6:28 AM |
7
Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker harshly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the J Street conference in Washington on Monday, echoing White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough's comments earlier in the day.
Baker acknowledged his disappointment with "the lack of progress regarding a lasting peace," saying that the chances for a two-state solution diminished since Netanyahu's reelection last week.
Baker further slammed Netanyahu's "diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship," saying that the prime minister's "actions have not matched his rhetoric," according to Politico.
Earlier in the day, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough offered a similar rebuke of Netanyahu – specifically the prime minister's claims that no Palestinian state would be established on his watch.
“We cannot simply pretend that those comments were never made,” McDonough told the conference.
Baker continued by claiming that hardliners on both sides are the biggest impediment to peace.
“Although Netanyahu and his right-and-center coalition may oppose a two-state solution, a land-for-peace approach has long been supported by a substantial portion of the Israeli body politic, by every American [administration] since 1967 — Republican and Democratic alike — and a vast majority of nations around the world,” Baker said.
"As long as Israel occupies Arab lands it risks losing either its democratic or its Jewish character," Baker added.
McDonough similarly warned Israel’s next government not to consider unilateral annexation of any West Bank territory, saying it would “be both wrong and illegal,” and that America would strenuously object.
On the subject of Netanyahu's opposition to the unfolding nuclear agreement with Iran, Baker warned against the pursuit of a perfect deal.
“If the only agreement is one in which there is no enrichment, then there will be no agreement,” he said, noting that there is no military solution.
Baker, who served as secretary of state under George H.W. Bush, recounted his own clashes with a right-wing Israeli government, then headed by Yitzhak Shamir.
Baker decried how U.S.-Israel relations have become "toxic" over the past few months, warning that issues are now harder to alleviate due to their personal nature. “This is of course a delicate moment in the Middle East, and will require clear thinking from leaders,” Baker said. “That clear thinking should not be muddled by partisan politics.”
Former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker harshly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the J Street conference in Washington on Monday, echoing White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough's comments earlier in the day.
Baker acknowledged his disappointment with "the lack of progress regarding a lasting peace," saying that the chances for a two-state solution diminished since Netanyahu's reelection last week.
Baker further slammed Netanyahu's "diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship," saying that the prime minister's "actions have not matched his rhetoric," according to Politico.
Earlier in the day, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough offered a similar rebuke of Netanyahu – specifically the prime minister's claims that no Palestinian state would be established on his watch.
“We cannot simply pretend that those comments were never made,” McDonough told the conference.
Baker continued by claiming that hardliners on both sides are the biggest impediment to peace.
“Although Netanyahu and his right-and-center coalition may oppose a two-state solution, a land-for-peace approach has long been supported by a substantial portion of the Israeli body politic, by every American [administration] since 1967 — Republican and Democratic alike — and a vast majority of nations around the world,” Baker said.
"As long as Israel occupies Arab lands it risks losing either its democratic or its Jewish character," Baker added.
McDonough similarly warned Israel’s next government not to consider unilateral annexation of any West Bank territory, saying it would “be both wrong and illegal,” and that America would strenuously object.
On the subject of Netanyahu's opposition to the unfolding nuclear agreement with Iran, Baker warned against the pursuit of a perfect deal.
“If the only agreement is one in which there is no enrichment, then there will be no agreement,” he said, noting that there is no military solution.
Baker, who served as secretary of state under George H.W. Bush, recounted his own clashes with a right-wing Israeli government, then headed by Yitzhak Shamir.
Baker decried how U.S.-Israel relations have become "toxic" over the past few months, warning that issues are now harder to alleviate due to their personal nature. “This is of course a delicate moment in the Middle East, and will require clear thinking from leaders,” Baker said. “That clear thinking should not be muddled by partisan politics.”
Israel Spied on Iran Nuclear Talks With U.S.
[h=2]Ally’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a deal[/h] Adam Entous
March 23, 2015 10:30 p.m. ET
Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.
The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.
The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.
“It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter.
The U.S. and Israel, longtime allies who routinely swap information on security threats, sometimes operate behind the scenes like spy-versus-spy rivals. The White House has largely tolerated Israeli snooping on U.S. policy makers—a posture Israel takes when the tables are turned.
The White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said.
Israeli officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they received their information through other means, including close surveillance of Iranian leaders receiving the latest U.S. and European offers. European officials, particularly the French, also have been more transparent with Israel about the closed-door discussions than the Americans, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer early this year saw a rapidly closing window to increase pressure on Mr. Obama before a key deadline at the end of March, Israeli officials said.
Using levers of political influence unique to Israel, Messrs. Netanyahu and Dermer calculated that a lobbying campaign in Congress before an announcement was made would improve the chances of killing or reshaping any deal. They knew the intervention would damage relations with the White House, Israeli officials said, but decided that was an acceptable cost.
The campaign may not have worked as well as hoped, Israeli officials now say, because it ended up alienating many congressional Democrats whose support Israel was counting on to block a deal.
Obama administration officials, departing from their usual description of the unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel, have voiced sharp criticism of Messrs. Netanyahu and Dermer to describe how the relationship has changed.
“People feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said. “That’s where the Israelis really better be careful because a lot of these people will not only be around for this administration but possibly the next one as well.”
This account of the Israeli campaign is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. and Israeli diplomats, intelligence officials, policy makers and lawmakers.
Distrust between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama had been growing for years but worsened when Mr. Obama launched secret talks with Iran in 2012. The president didn’t tell Mr. Netanyahu because of concerns about leaks, helping set the stage for the current standoff, according to current and former U.S. and Israeli officials.
U.S. officials said Israel has long topped the list of countries that aggressively spy on the U.S., along with China, Russia and France. The U.S. expends more counterintelligence resources fending off Israeli spy operations than any other close ally, U.S. officials said.
A senior official in the prime minister’s office said Monday: “These allegations are utterly false. The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel’s other allies. The false allegations are clearly intended to undermine the strong ties between the United States and Israel and the security and intelligence relationship we share.”
Current and former Israeli officials said their intelligence agencies scaled back their targeting of U.S. officials after the jailing nearly 30 years ago of American Jonathan Pollard for passing secrets to Israel.
While U.S. officials may not be direct targets, current and former officials said, Israeli intelligence agencies sweep up communications between U.S. officials and parties targeted by the Israelis, including Iran.
Americans shouldn’t be surprised, said a person familiar with the Israeli practice, since U.S. intelligence agencies helped the Israelis build a system to listen in on high-level Iranian communications.
As secret talks with Iran progressed into 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies monitored Israel’s communications to see if the country knew of the negotiations. Mr. Obama didn’t tell Mr. Netanyahu until September 2013.
Israeli officials, who said they had already learned about the talks through their own channels, told their U.S. counterparts they were upset about being excluded. “ ‘Did the administration really believe we wouldn’t find out?’ ” Israeli officials said, according to a former U.S. official.
Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer met with U.S. lawmakers and shared details on the Iran negotiations to warn about the terms of the deal. Photo: CNP/Zuma Press
The episode cemented Mr. Netanyahu’s concern that Mr. Obama was bent on clinching a deal with Iran whether or not it served Israel’s best interests, Israeli officials said. Obama administration officials said the president was committed to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Mr. Dermer started lobbying U.S. lawmakers just before the U.S. and other powers signed an interim agreement with Iran in November 2013. Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Dermer went to Congress after seeing they had little influence on the White House.
Before the interim deal was made public, Mr. Dermer gave lawmakers Israel’s analysis: The U.S. offer would dramatically undermine economic sanctions on Iran, according to congressional officials who took part.
After learning about the briefings, the White House dispatched senior officials to counter Mr. Dermer. The officials told lawmakers that Israel’s analysis exaggerated the sanctions relief by as much as 10 times, meeting participants said.
When the next round of negotiations with Iran started in Switzerland last year, U.S. counterintelligence agents told members of the U.S. negotiating team that Israel would likely try to penetrate their communications, a senior Obama administration official said.
The U.S. routinely shares information with its European counterparts and others to coordinate negotiating positions. While U.S. intelligence officials believe secured U.S. communications are relatively safe from the Israelis, they say European communications are vulnerable.
Mr. Netanyahu and his top advisers received confidential updates on the Geneva talks from Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and other U.S. officials, who knew at the time that Israeli intelligence was working to fill in any gaps.
The White House eventually curtailed the briefings, U.S. officials said, withholding sensitive information for fear of leaks.
Current and former Israeli officials said their intelligence agencies can get much of the information they seek by targeting Iranians and others in the region who are communicating with countries in the talks.
In November, the Israelis learned the contents of a proposed deal offered by the U.S. but ultimately rejected by Iran, U.S. and Israeli officials said. Israeli officials told their U.S. counterparts the terms offered insufficient protections.
U.S. officials urged the Israelis to give the negotiations a chance. But Mr. Netanyahu’s top advisers concluded the emerging deal was unacceptable. The White House was making too many concessions, Israeli officials said, while the Iranians were holding firm.
Obama administration officials reject that view, saying Israel was making impossible demands that Iran would never accept. “The president has made clear time and again that no deal is better than a bad deal,” a senior administration official said.
In January, Mr. Netanyahu told the White House his government intended to oppose the Iran deal but didn’t explain how, U.S. and Israeli officials said.
On Jan. 21, House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) announced Mr. Netanyahu would address a joint meeting of Congress. That same day, Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials visited Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers and aides, seeking a bipartisan coalition large enough to block or amend any deal.
Most Republicans were already prepared to challenge the White House on the negotiations, so Mr. Dermer focused on Democrats. “This deal is bad,” he said in one briefing, according to participants.
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington, Aaron Sagui, said Mr. Dermer didn’t launch a special campaign on Jan 21. Mr. Dermer, the spokesperson said, has “consistently briefed both Republican and Democrats, senators and congressmen, on Israel’s concerns regarding the Iran negotiations for over a year.”
Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials over the following weeks gave lawmakers and their aides information the White House was trying to keep secret, including how the emerging deal could allow Iran to operate around 6,500 centrifuges, devices used to process nuclear material, said congressional officials who attended the briefings.
The Israeli officials told lawmakers that Iran would also be permitted to deploy advanced IR-4 centrifuges that could process fuel on a larger scale, meeting participants and administration officials said. Israeli officials said such fuel, which under the emerging deal would be intended for energy plants, could be used to one day build nuclear bombs.
The information in the briefings, Israeli officials said, was widely known among the countries participating in the negotiations.
When asked in February during one briefing where Israel got its inside information, the Israeli officials said their sources included the French and British governments, as well as their own intelligence, according to people there.
“Ambassador Dermer never shared confidential intelligence information with members of Congress,” Mr. Sagui said. “His briefings did not include specific details from the negotiations, including the length of the agreement or the number of centrifuges Iran would be able to keep.”
Current and former U.S. officials confirmed that the number and type of centrifuges cited in the briefings were part of the discussions. But they said the briefings were misleading because Israeli officials didn’t disclose concessions asked of Iran. Those included giving up stockpiles of nuclear material, as well as modifying the advanced centrifuges to slow output, these officials said.
The administration didn’t brief lawmakers on the centrifuge numbers and other details at the time because the information was classified and the details were still in flux, current and former U.S. officials said.
The congressional briefings and Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to address a joint meeting of Congress on the emerging deal sparked a backlash among many Democratic lawmakers, congressional aides said.
On Feb. 3, Mr. Dermer huddled with Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, who said he told Mr. Dermer it was a breach of protocol for Mr. Netanyahu to accept an invitation from Mr. Boehner without going through the White House.
Mr. Manchin said he told Mr. Dermer he would attend the prime minister’s speech to Congress, but he was noncommittal about supporting any move by Congress to block a deal.
Mr. Dermer spent the following day doing damage control with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, congressional aides said.
Two days later, Mr. Dermer met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the SenateIntelligence Committee, at her Washington, D.C., home. He pressed for her support because he knew that she, too, was angry about Mr. Netanyahu’s planned appearance.
Ms. Feinstein said afterward she would oppose legislation allowing Congress to vote down an agreement.
Congressional aides and Israeli officials now say Israel’s coalition in Congress is short the votes needed to pass legislation that could overcome a presidential veto, although that could change. In response, Israeli officials said, Mr. Netanyahu was pursuing other ways to pressure the White House.
This week, Mr. Netanyahu sent a delegation to France, which has been more closely aligned with Israel on the nuclear talks and which could throw obstacles in Mr. Obama’s way before a deal is signed. The Obama administration, meanwhile, is stepping up its outreach to Paris to blunt the Israeli push.
“If you’re wondering whether something serious has shifted here, the answer is yes,” a senior U.S. official said. “These things leave scars.”
[h=2]Ally’s snooping upset White House because information was used to lobby Congress to try to sink a deal[/h] Adam Entous
March 23, 2015 10:30 p.m. ET
Soon after the U.S. and other major powers entered negotiations last year to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, senior White House officials learned Israel was spying on the closed-door talks.
The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said.
The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program, current and former officials said.
“It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter.
The U.S. and Israel, longtime allies who routinely swap information on security threats, sometimes operate behind the scenes like spy-versus-spy rivals. The White House has largely tolerated Israeli snooping on U.S. policy makers—a posture Israel takes when the tables are turned.
The White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said.
Israeli officials denied spying directly on U.S. negotiators and said they received their information through other means, including close surveillance of Iranian leaders receiving the latest U.S. and European offers. European officials, particularly the French, also have been more transparent with Israel about the closed-door discussions than the Americans, Israeli and U.S. officials said.
Mr. Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer early this year saw a rapidly closing window to increase pressure on Mr. Obama before a key deadline at the end of March, Israeli officials said.
Using levers of political influence unique to Israel, Messrs. Netanyahu and Dermer calculated that a lobbying campaign in Congress before an announcement was made would improve the chances of killing or reshaping any deal. They knew the intervention would damage relations with the White House, Israeli officials said, but decided that was an acceptable cost.
The campaign may not have worked as well as hoped, Israeli officials now say, because it ended up alienating many congressional Democrats whose support Israel was counting on to block a deal.
Obama administration officials, departing from their usual description of the unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel, have voiced sharp criticism of Messrs. Netanyahu and Dermer to describe how the relationship has changed.
“People feel personally sold out,” a senior administration official said. “That’s where the Israelis really better be careful because a lot of these people will not only be around for this administration but possibly the next one as well.”
This account of the Israeli campaign is based on interviews with more than a dozen current and former U.S. and Israeli diplomats, intelligence officials, policy makers and lawmakers.
Distrust between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama had been growing for years but worsened when Mr. Obama launched secret talks with Iran in 2012. The president didn’t tell Mr. Netanyahu because of concerns about leaks, helping set the stage for the current standoff, according to current and former U.S. and Israeli officials.
U.S. officials said Israel has long topped the list of countries that aggressively spy on the U.S., along with China, Russia and France. The U.S. expends more counterintelligence resources fending off Israeli spy operations than any other close ally, U.S. officials said.
A senior official in the prime minister’s office said Monday: “These allegations are utterly false. The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel’s other allies. The false allegations are clearly intended to undermine the strong ties between the United States and Israel and the security and intelligence relationship we share.”
Current and former Israeli officials said their intelligence agencies scaled back their targeting of U.S. officials after the jailing nearly 30 years ago of American Jonathan Pollard for passing secrets to Israel.
While U.S. officials may not be direct targets, current and former officials said, Israeli intelligence agencies sweep up communications between U.S. officials and parties targeted by the Israelis, including Iran.
Americans shouldn’t be surprised, said a person familiar with the Israeli practice, since U.S. intelligence agencies helped the Israelis build a system to listen in on high-level Iranian communications.
As secret talks with Iran progressed into 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies monitored Israel’s communications to see if the country knew of the negotiations. Mr. Obama didn’t tell Mr. Netanyahu until September 2013.
Israeli officials, who said they had already learned about the talks through their own channels, told their U.S. counterparts they were upset about being excluded. “ ‘Did the administration really believe we wouldn’t find out?’ ” Israeli officials said, according to a former U.S. official.
Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer met with U.S. lawmakers and shared details on the Iran negotiations to warn about the terms of the deal. Photo: CNP/Zuma Press
The episode cemented Mr. Netanyahu’s concern that Mr. Obama was bent on clinching a deal with Iran whether or not it served Israel’s best interests, Israeli officials said. Obama administration officials said the president was committed to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Mr. Dermer started lobbying U.S. lawmakers just before the U.S. and other powers signed an interim agreement with Iran in November 2013. Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Dermer went to Congress after seeing they had little influence on the White House.
Before the interim deal was made public, Mr. Dermer gave lawmakers Israel’s analysis: The U.S. offer would dramatically undermine economic sanctions on Iran, according to congressional officials who took part.
After learning about the briefings, the White House dispatched senior officials to counter Mr. Dermer. The officials told lawmakers that Israel’s analysis exaggerated the sanctions relief by as much as 10 times, meeting participants said.
When the next round of negotiations with Iran started in Switzerland last year, U.S. counterintelligence agents told members of the U.S. negotiating team that Israel would likely try to penetrate their communications, a senior Obama administration official said.
The U.S. routinely shares information with its European counterparts and others to coordinate negotiating positions. While U.S. intelligence officials believe secured U.S. communications are relatively safe from the Israelis, they say European communications are vulnerable.
Mr. Netanyahu and his top advisers received confidential updates on the Geneva talks from Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman and other U.S. officials, who knew at the time that Israeli intelligence was working to fill in any gaps.
The White House eventually curtailed the briefings, U.S. officials said, withholding sensitive information for fear of leaks.
Current and former Israeli officials said their intelligence agencies can get much of the information they seek by targeting Iranians and others in the region who are communicating with countries in the talks.
In November, the Israelis learned the contents of a proposed deal offered by the U.S. but ultimately rejected by Iran, U.S. and Israeli officials said. Israeli officials told their U.S. counterparts the terms offered insufficient protections.
U.S. officials urged the Israelis to give the negotiations a chance. But Mr. Netanyahu’s top advisers concluded the emerging deal was unacceptable. The White House was making too many concessions, Israeli officials said, while the Iranians were holding firm.
Obama administration officials reject that view, saying Israel was making impossible demands that Iran would never accept. “The president has made clear time and again that no deal is better than a bad deal,” a senior administration official said.
In January, Mr. Netanyahu told the White House his government intended to oppose the Iran deal but didn’t explain how, U.S. and Israeli officials said.
On Jan. 21, House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) announced Mr. Netanyahu would address a joint meeting of Congress. That same day, Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials visited Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers and aides, seeking a bipartisan coalition large enough to block or amend any deal.
Most Republicans were already prepared to challenge the White House on the negotiations, so Mr. Dermer focused on Democrats. “This deal is bad,” he said in one briefing, according to participants.
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington, Aaron Sagui, said Mr. Dermer didn’t launch a special campaign on Jan 21. Mr. Dermer, the spokesperson said, has “consistently briefed both Republican and Democrats, senators and congressmen, on Israel’s concerns regarding the Iran negotiations for over a year.”
Mr. Dermer and other Israeli officials over the following weeks gave lawmakers and their aides information the White House was trying to keep secret, including how the emerging deal could allow Iran to operate around 6,500 centrifuges, devices used to process nuclear material, said congressional officials who attended the briefings.
The Israeli officials told lawmakers that Iran would also be permitted to deploy advanced IR-4 centrifuges that could process fuel on a larger scale, meeting participants and administration officials said. Israeli officials said such fuel, which under the emerging deal would be intended for energy plants, could be used to one day build nuclear bombs.
The information in the briefings, Israeli officials said, was widely known among the countries participating in the negotiations.
When asked in February during one briefing where Israel got its inside information, the Israeli officials said their sources included the French and British governments, as well as their own intelligence, according to people there.
“Ambassador Dermer never shared confidential intelligence information with members of Congress,” Mr. Sagui said. “His briefings did not include specific details from the negotiations, including the length of the agreement or the number of centrifuges Iran would be able to keep.”
Current and former U.S. officials confirmed that the number and type of centrifuges cited in the briefings were part of the discussions. But they said the briefings were misleading because Israeli officials didn’t disclose concessions asked of Iran. Those included giving up stockpiles of nuclear material, as well as modifying the advanced centrifuges to slow output, these officials said.
The administration didn’t brief lawmakers on the centrifuge numbers and other details at the time because the information was classified and the details were still in flux, current and former U.S. officials said.
The congressional briefings and Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to address a joint meeting of Congress on the emerging deal sparked a backlash among many Democratic lawmakers, congressional aides said.
On Feb. 3, Mr. Dermer huddled with Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, who said he told Mr. Dermer it was a breach of protocol for Mr. Netanyahu to accept an invitation from Mr. Boehner without going through the White House.
Mr. Manchin said he told Mr. Dermer he would attend the prime minister’s speech to Congress, but he was noncommittal about supporting any move by Congress to block a deal.
Mr. Dermer spent the following day doing damage control with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, congressional aides said.
Two days later, Mr. Dermer met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the SenateIntelligence Committee, at her Washington, D.C., home. He pressed for her support because he knew that she, too, was angry about Mr. Netanyahu’s planned appearance.
Ms. Feinstein said afterward she would oppose legislation allowing Congress to vote down an agreement.
Congressional aides and Israeli officials now say Israel’s coalition in Congress is short the votes needed to pass legislation that could overcome a presidential veto, although that could change. In response, Israeli officials said, Mr. Netanyahu was pursuing other ways to pressure the White House.
This week, Mr. Netanyahu sent a delegation to France, which has been more closely aligned with Israel on the nuclear talks and which could throw obstacles in Mr. Obama’s way before a deal is signed. The Obama administration, meanwhile, is stepping up its outreach to Paris to blunt the Israeli push.
“If you’re wondering whether something serious has shifted here, the answer is yes,” a senior U.S. official said. “These things leave scars.”
An article the Guesser wouldn’t dare post.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-s...ica-intended-for-domestic-political-audience/
On Monday, the White House dismissed Ayatollah Khamenei’s “Death to America” rhetoric, telling CNN that it was “intended for a domestic political audience.” That comment came on the heels of White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explaining that such rhetoric provided even more reason for negotiating a deal with the Iranian regime.
At the same time that the White House essentially blew off Ayatollah Khamenei’s “Death to America” routine, the White House deliberately misinterpreted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments the day before and the day of his re-election in Israel.
Apparently the things said during an election do not constitute electioneering; the things said in a country that has not had free elections for three decades constitute electioneering. Welcome to the delusional anti-Semitic world of the Obama administration, where Palestinian diplomats can refuse to disassociate from Hamas, and Iran can openly embrace the destruction of America and Israel, but it’s the Jews who need to be clubbed into line.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-s...ica-intended-for-domestic-political-audience/
On Monday, the White House dismissed Ayatollah Khamenei’s “Death to America” rhetoric, telling CNN that it was “intended for a domestic political audience.” That comment came on the heels of White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explaining that such rhetoric provided even more reason for negotiating a deal with the Iranian regime.
At the same time that the White House essentially blew off Ayatollah Khamenei’s “Death to America” routine, the White House deliberately misinterpreted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments the day before and the day of his re-election in Israel.
Apparently the things said during an election do not constitute electioneering; the things said in a country that has not had free elections for three decades constitute electioneering. Welcome to the delusional anti-Semitic world of the Obama administration, where Palestinian diplomats can refuse to disassociate from Hamas, and Iran can openly embrace the destruction of America and Israel, but it’s the Jews who need to be clubbed into line.
I think these threads would be a lot better with just news articles. For an opinion article maybe a 10-20 line summary of the writer's beliefs, followed by a link. I've literally seen 1,000 articles supporting my positions in the last week that I didn't post. I'd rather state my own views anyway, instead of drowning every thread in paragraphs people only scroll by. The latest bit about what Netanyahu said about a Palestinian State is all a bunch of nonsense anyway. If I really wanted to be informed I'd start here.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/author/jonathan-s-tobin/
