This week, Alpher discusses Netanyahu's meetings this week with Hollande, Putin, and Kerry to discuss the prospective Iran nuclear agreement, a possible revival of the French-Israeli alliance of the 1950s and 60s, how Netanyahu could allow tenders for planning 24,000 additional settlement units to be published last week, considering how sensitive the current juncture is for Israel's international relations, and whether there was something unique or particularly worrisome about the latest "price tag" attack launched against Palestinians by extremist settlers in the West Bank.
Q. Netanyahu meets this week with Hollande, Putin, and Kerry to discuss the prospective Iran nuclear
agreement. Can we expect a breakthrough?
A. Talks between the P5 + 1 and Iran resume later this week. Kerry's visit to Israel on Friday reflects his
decision to be within a few hours flying distance of Geneva in the event an interim agreement regarding Iran's
nuclear program is reached. So a breakthrough is certainly possible.
What is most intriguing about this week's events from the standpoint of Israel's international relations are the
meetings with Hollande and Putin. Netanyahu is clearly seeking to influence the position on Iran of additional
permanent United Nations Security Council members besides the US.
Q. Let's start with Hollande. Is it far-fetched to speculate that we are witnessing a revival of the
French-Israeli alliance of the 1950s and 60s?
A. Such speculation is almost certainly far-fetched.
French President Francois Hollande arrived in Israel on Sunday as the knight in shining armor whose tough stand
regarding Iran a week ago in Geneva prevented conclusion of a deal Netanyahu had furiously opposed. In view of
Netanyahu's sharp disagreements over the Iran and Palestinian issues with US Secretary of State John Kerry and
President Barack Obama, it was inevitable that some Israelis would wax nostalgic on the occasion of Hollande's
visit and hanker back to the era of the Dimona reactor and Mirage aircraft--two symbols of France's major support
for Israel prior to 1967.
But France is not offering Israel that sort of relationship again, and in any case, regardless of Netanyahu's
current disagreements with Washington, no one is seriously suggesting it. Rather, France is looking to the Middle
East for economic reasons--high-tech deals with Israel and arms sales to the Gulf--and because its traditional
concern for the Levant and particularly the region's Christian population happens to compensate nicely for the
perceived decision by Washington to withdraw militarily from involvement in the region. Hollande also has voters in
Israel--French Jews who have immigrated but retain French citizenship and who overwhelmingly voted against him in
France's last election. And he is strong on combating terrorism, for example in Mali and in volunteering to join
the US attack on Syria's chemical weapons bases that never took place. Paris also has a particularly thorny
relationship with Tehran in view of threats and acts of terrorism in the past.
None of this points to any dramatic expansion of the French-Israeli relationship. Hollande, like the rest of Europe
(and the world) is critical of Netanyahu's settlement policies and sympathetic to the cause of a Palestinian state.
While France and Israel have maintained a close strategic dialogue for years, ultimately Hollande can be expected
to compromise with Kerry in ways that may reflect a tougher attitude toward Iran but that nevertheless remain far
from Netanyahu's aspirations.
One of the interesting unintended aspects of the timing of Hollande's visit (which was determined well before the
Geneva meetings with Iran) is that it seemingly parallels a hastily organized high-level Russian visit to Egypt
that produced an upgrade in relations and an arms deal. Russia, lest we forget, was Egypt's great power patron at
the time when France was Israel's. Undoubtedly, both the Egyptian military regime and the Netanyahu government were
sending signals to Washington that each, for its own reasons and in its own style, was dissatisfied with American
Middle East policies.
Q. How about the other powers negotiating with Iran?
A. As noted, Netanyahu is flying to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. In view of Russia's
close relationship with Iran, Netanyahu stands little chance of moving Moscow into the French camp, though from his
standpoint it makes sense to try.
China, too, is likely to toe the Russian line on Iran. Nevertheless, the Netanyahu government pulled out of a court
case against the Bank of China that is scheduled to open in the US this week. The move was extraordinary because
Israel had initiated the case, which involves claims by the relatives of victims of acts of terrorism that were
committed by Hamas using funds funneled through the Chinese bank. It was also paradoxical. Netanyahu's early
political career evolved from his international campaign to punish facilitators of terrorism, yet here he was
backing off from a confrontation with the Peoples Republic in consideration of alternative interests.
Q. Considering how sensitive the current juncture is for Israel's international relations, how could
Netanyahu allow tenders for planning 24,000 additional settlement units to be published last week?
A. PM Netanyahu apparently only got wind of the planning tenders at the last minute, and acted quickly to freeze
the entire project, which was launched by Minister of Housing Uri Ariel. Netanyahu understood that his delicate
relationship with the Obama administration was liable to be hopelessly exacerbated by the launching of such a
settlement-construction move at this point in time.
But this only means that the question has to be rephrased to ask, "How could we expect anything else from a
coalition in which the housing minister is a settler activist politician from the Jewish Home pro-settler party?"
The answer to this revised question is, "We couldn't. It was inevitable."
Accordingly, it is almost academic to discuss which is more damaging to Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic
state: planning the construction of homes for around 125,000 more settlers, or including in the package a tender
for the planning of settlement construction in the most controversial spot in the West Bank, E1, where it would
almost completely cut off Jerusalem from the West Bank and put paid to any hope for a two-state solution.
This is the coalition Netanyahu wanted. He can perhaps temporarily squelch this or that settlement construction
plan. But he cannot alter the fact that he deliberately established a pro-settler government that is incapable of
accepting the kind of genuine two-state solution that he purports to be negotiating under Washington's auspices.
Indeed, this is a government whose very raison d'etre is planning and building more settlements, whether now or a
month from now--settlements that willy nilly erode away at Israel's Jewish and Zionist nature.
Q. Apropos the settlements, was there something unique or particularly worrisome about the latest "price
tag" attack launched against Palestinians by extremist settlers in the West Bank?
A. The attack was allegedly a "response" to the murder last week of an Israeli soldier in a bus in Afula by a
Palestinian teenager who had entered Israel illegally from the West Bank. What was unique was this latest price
tag's target: a Palestinian home in Sinjil village in the heart of the West Bank that, at 2 a.m. last Wednesday
night, was occupied by a sleeping family of seven. Until now, price tag arson attacks by settler hotheads focused
on unoccupied buildings, including (to date) no fewer than 17 mosques.
Luckily, the Sinjil family escaped their burning house with minimal injuries. But the attack seemingly reflects a
readiness on the part of extremist settlers to escalate and focus on live targets rather than buildings. This only
underlines two broader phenomena that characterize the security situation in the West Bank with regard to
settlers.
First, while the price tag perpetrators are a small minority of settlers, the majority settler leadership almost
certainly knows who they are and thus apparently tolerates them. Second, the Israeli internal security service
(Shin Bet) has failed to apprehend these Jewish terrorists and bring them to justice.
Now it may be only a matter of time before extremist settlers begin systematically murdering Palestinian civilians.
That is a surefire recipe for a major new round of violence in the West Bank.