‘Nobody has a monopoly on making mistakes.” When I was Israel’s
ambassador to the United States from 2009 to the end of 2013, that was
my standard response to reporters asking who bore the greatest
responsibility—President Barack
Obama or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—for the crisis in U.S.-Israel relations.
I
never felt like I was lying when I said it. But, in truth, while
neither leader monopolized mistakes, only one leader made them
deliberately.
Israel blundered in how it announced the expansion
of Jewish neighborhoods and communities in Jerusalem over the border
lines that existed before the Six Day War in 1967. On two occasions, the
news came out during Mr. Netanyahu’s meetings with Vice President
Joe Biden.
A solid friend of Israel, Mr. Biden understandably took offense. Even
when the White House stood by Israel, blocking hostile resolutions in
the United Nations, settlement expansion often continued.
In a
May 2011 Oval Office meeting, Mr. Netanyahu purportedly “lectured” Obama
about the peace process. Later that year, he was reported to be backing
Republican contender Mitt Romney in the presidential elections. This
spring, the prime minister criticized Mr. Obama’s Iran policy before a
joint meeting of Congress that was arranged without even informing the
president.
Yet many of Israel’s bungles were not committed by
Mr. Netanyahu personally. In both episodes with Mr. Biden, for example,
the announcements were issued by midlevel officials who also caught the
prime minister off-guard. Nevertheless, he personally apologized to the
vice president.
Mr. Netanyahu’s only premeditated misstep was his
speech to Congress, which I recommended against. Even that decision,
though, came in reaction to a calculated mistake by President Obama.
From the moment he entered office, Mr. Obama promoted an agenda of
championing the Palestinian cause and achieving a nuclear accord with
Iran. Such policies would have put him at odds with any Israeli leader.
But Mr. Obama posed an even more fundamental challenge by abandoning the
two core principles of Israel’s alliance with America.
The first
principle was “no daylight.” The U.S. and Israel always could disagree
but never openly. Doing so would encourage common enemies and render
Israel vulnerable. Contrary to many of his detractors, Mr. Obama was
never anti-Israel and, to his credit, he significantly strengthened
security cooperation with the Jewish state. He rushed to help Israel in
2011 when the Carmel forest was devastated by fire. And yet, immediately
after his first inauguration, Mr. Obama put daylight between Israel and
America.
“When there is no daylight,” the president told
American Jewish leaders in 2009, “Israel just sits on the sidelines and
that erodes our credibility with the Arabs.” The explanation ignored
Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and its two previous offers of
Palestinian statehood in Gaza, almost the entire West Bank and half of
Jerusalem—both offers rejected by the Palestinians.
Mr. Obama also voided President
George W. Bush’s
commitment to include the major settlement blocs and Jewish Jerusalem
within Israel’s borders in any peace agreement. Instead, he insisted on a
total freeze of Israeli construction in those areas—“not a single
brick,” I later heard he ordered Mr. Netanyahu—while making no
substantive demands of the Palestinians.
Consequently, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas boycotted
negotiations, reconciled with Hamas and sought statehood in the U.N.—all
in violation of his commitments to the U.S.—but he never paid a
price. By contrast, the White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu
for building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would
remain part of Israel.
The other core principle was “no
surprises.” President Obama discarded it in his first meeting with Mr.
Netanyahu, in May 2009, by abruptly demanding a settlement freeze and
Israeli acceptance of the two-state solution. The following month the
president traveled to the Middle East, pointedly skipping Israel and
addressing the Muslim world from Cairo.[...]
