Benjamin Netanyahu’s allies acknowledged yesterday that his election-eve disavowal of a Palestinian state had caused a rift with the White House, but blamed US President Barack Obama’s unprecedented criticism on a misunderstanding.
In the United States, where relations with Netanyahu have become a partisan issue after generations in which support for Israel was a point of bipartisan unity, Republican Senator John McCain said Obama should get over his “temper tantrum”.
The Israeli Prime Minister pledged on the eve of his re-election victory last week that there would never be a Palestinian state while he is Prime Minister.
The remarks were widely interpreted as a rejection of the “two-state solution” that has been the basis of decades of talks to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, brokered by successive US Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
Since winning re-election, Netanyahu has tried to row back, arguing that he was not rejecting Palestinian statehood in principle, but responding to a reality in which the Palestinian Authority has a political pact with the Islamist group Hamas, under which statehood would be unacceptable.
Obama says Washington would have to reassess its policies in the Middle East
But Obama said on Friday Netanyahu’s comments had made it “hard to find a path” back to serious peace negotiations. He told Netanyahu on Thursday that Washington would have to “reassess” its policies in the Middle East.
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz, a close Netanyahu ally, acknowledged the problem but pointed the finger at Washington for failing to understand the Prime Minister’s position.
“If the Americans are finding it difficult to understand or accept our clarifications on Palestinian statehood, this is certainly worrying and requires tending to,” he told Israel Radio. “He [Netanyahu] didn’t say this statehood is ‘unacceptable’. He said reality has changed.”
Israel’s close alliance with the US has been a fundamental pillar of its security throughout its 67- year history, and Netanyahu’s political foes have accused him of jeopardising it. Netanyahu has long had a difficult relationship with Obama and made it worse two weeks before the election by addressing the US Congress at the invitation of opposition Republicans to condemn the administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Asked if US-Israel relations were at a dangerous point, McCain, a leading voice on foreign affairs in the Republican-controlled Congress, said: “I think that’s up to the President of the US”.
“Get over your temper tantrum, Mr President,” McCain said on CNN.
“The least of your problems is what Bibi Netanyahu said during an election campaign.
“If every politician were held to everything they say in a political campaign, obviously that would be a topic of long discussion.”