To Obama, Israel Doesn’t Matter

Jerusalem is not exactly happy with the Obama administration. Israeli officials believe that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton do not feel the close ties to the Jewish nation-state other presidents felt.

Senior White House officials told their Israeli counterparts that Obama will demand Netanyahu completely suspend construction in the settlements, the officials said.

“Obama’s people brief their Israeli counterparts in advance much less about security and Middle East policy activities than the Bush administration used to,” the officials said.

In addition, when they do brief Israeli officials, they don’t consult with them or coordinate their statements in advance.

This has caused several coordination “malfunctions” between the two states in the past two months, they said.

The last incident was the statement of Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, calling on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The statement had not been coordinated with Israeli officials in charge of the nuclear issue and they heard it first from the media.

That is not all. The U.S. also failed to inform Israel about its intention to open direct talks with Syria. ‘Another incident concerned U.S. envoy for Iranian affairs Dennis Ross’ trip to the Gulf states a few days ago for talks on Iran. Israel was briefed on the trip in general details, but no consultations or message-coordination took place before the trip. In addition, Ross did not pass through Israel on his way to the Gulf or back to brief Israel on the talks’ outcome.’

To summarize:

The American policy toward Iran has remained generally ambiguous as far as Israel is concerned and the administration has not outlined to Israel its plan for a dialogue with Iran in an orderly way. Many of the details Israel learned about this plan were obtained via European channels.

Shorter: Israel believes Obama considers it to be “just one of the countries in the Middle East.” Nothing “special” about it.

It is difficult to describe Obama’s approach as surprising. Going way back, we knew that he probably sympathized with others in the region. Those who care deeply about the fate of Israel yet voted for Obama nonetheless, chose to shut their eyes, and ignore the rather obvious truth about the man’s views on the Middle East problem.

We will see what the impact of Obama’s approach towards the Middle East will be. Let’s hope not the worst.