Agendas clash as Netanyahu, Obama meet

TEL AVIV | On the eve of the first summit between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is worried about clashing with its top ally over strategy toward Arab-Israeli peace and preventing Iran from building a nuclear bomb.

The first meeting between the two recently elected heads of state may be a defining moment for the Obama administration’s effort to reshape policy in the region. The new administration has indicated that it wants progress on both Iran and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, suggesting that the issues are linked.

Israel is worried that could mean the White House is making progress on peace talks a precondition for stopping Iran, which Israel has warned could go nuclear in the next year. Mr. Netanyahu, unlike his predecessors, has so far declined to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak suggested Friday that Mr. Netanyahu might be ready to endorse a Palestinian state when he meets Mr. Obama on Monday.

“I think and believe that Netanyahu will tell Obama this government is prepared to go for a political process that will result in two peoples living side by side in peace and mutual respect,” the Associated Press quoted Mr. Barak as telling Channel 2 TV on Saturday.

But politicians and advisers close to Mr. Netanyahu were more skeptical of that prospect.

“The Palestinian-Israel issue has been going on for 100 years, and it will come to some conclusion, but it doesn’t have to be presented in the next six months,” said Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and adviser to Mr. Netanyahu.

Israeli officials, however, have sought to make the opposite linkage. Aides to Mr. Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman have argued that until Iran’s spreading power in the region is contained, any new Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians would open up a vacuum to be filled by Iran and its supporters such as Hamas, which already governs the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Netanyahu’s “linkage is, ‘I won’t do anything on Arab-Israeli peace until the Iranian issue is clarified,’ ” said Aaron David Miller, a veteran U.S. adviser on Arab-Israeli negotiations. The U.S. position is ” ‘You’ve got to give us something, otherwise, we’re not going to do anything on Iran.’ This is self-destructive.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said Mr. Netanyahu worries that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, he “can’t afford to make any territorial concessions, because wherever the Arabs agree to, if Iran gets nuclear weapons they will all scurry under Iran’s umbrella, and it will put Iran on all [of Israel’s] borders.”

The White House said Saturday it sees the two issues moving on parallel tracks.

“This isn’t a question of one or the other,” said a senior White House official during a conference call with reporters conducted on the condition that the official and others participating not be named. “These are two very important issues. The peace initiative … and the challenge of Iran; there are connections between them simply because it’s a region in which things aren’t dealt with in isolation from one another.”

Iran has sought to exploit the Arab-Israeli dispute to boost its regional posture and undercut pro-U.S. Arab leaders.

The Netanyahu-Obama meeting follows heightened speculation about potential friction between Mr. Obama and the right-of-center Israeli leader. The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported last week that the U.S. dispatched an envoy to Israel recently to clarify Washington’s opposition to Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear sites.

Despite the differences, diplomats preparing the meeting said both sides would do their utmost to demonstrate a business-as-usual rapport at least in public.

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