“Tighten
your safety belts, Israel! We’re in for another four years of Obama.”
Americans apparently overlooked four years of economic waste,
and a failed foreign policy of sucking up to the Muslim world, by re-electing
their president. What now?
Israeli people in the know predict that Obama will shortly
reveal an agreement with Iran that will position Tehran stopping their uranium enrichment
program in return for easing of sanctions. Incredibly, Obama will launch it as a success
story while Israel will present it as a fair story. Obama will want to put Iran
out of reach for the world so as to enable him to take a harder line on his
Socialist plan for America and to progress his global vision of leveling the
playing field for a better world, which implies weakening America further,
economically and militarily. As almost immediate proof of this, expect to see
swinging defense cuts, including sizeable unemployment, in the early part of
2013. In fact, we will be hearing of
unemployment soaring over the 8% mark again as early as February 2013 in
America. Their national debt will grow accordingly.
All this will embolden a growing Islamic world that will be stupefied
to see America give their leader another mandate to continue his apology policy
towards them. A new Obama Administration, pleading with the Muslim world “to
be nice, please, because we don’t hate you,” is not going to cut it in this
violent and crazy neck of the woods. They consider him weak and will view
America in decline.
There is no way that Obama is going to change his personal
animosity towards Israel’s Prime Minister. Benjamin Netanyahu is fully expected
to win the January Israeli elections with a bloc linked to Israeli Beitenu. He is
expected to cobble together a center-right government together with Shas, the
Sephardi religious party, the new Yair Lapid party of Yesh Atid (There is a
Future), another national religious party and, perhaps, the remnants of what
will be left of the centrist Kadema party. If Obama continues to express views
on the Israel-Palestinian conflict that did nothing to ease the parties into
talks, as he repeatedly did during his first four years, this issue will be
log-jammed for the foreseeable future. It was Obama blurting out pre-conditions
to Israel on completely stopping “settlement activity” and withdrawing
to 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, instead of encouraging the parties
back into the negotiating room, that encouraged Palestinian leader, Mahmoud
Abbas, to climb further up the tree of rejectionism, a tree that he has been
unable to climb out of. “Why should I be less Palestinian than the man in
the White House,” he has repeatedly said. In fact, the previous Obama
Administration did nothing to pressure or cajole the Palestinian leadership to
stop their intransigence and incitement against Israel and get back to the
table. As a result, they now see an adamant Abbas turning again defying America
and going to the United Nations for non-member statehood stat (whatever that
means), and a divided Palestinian society with the Hamas wing maintaining their
violent hardline not only against Israel but also against the Fatah-led
Palestinian Authority. Obama can blame Bibi if he wishes, but he is guilty of a
lion share of the blame for failing to progress the peace process. At least
under Bush the two sides were talking to each other.
It is clear that Obama 2 will be too busy tackling the US
economy, trying to progress Obamacare, and leading from behind internationally,
to give too much attention to Israel and the Palestinians. He is in enough difficulties
in the rest of the Middle East to burn his fingers sorting out this problem.
This leaves Israel more isolated than before. True, are being backed militarily
but look closely at what we are getting. The budget will be primarily for
defensive anti-rocket hardware. Expect future restrictions on our attack
capabilities. In other words, it will be a policy of providing us with the
umbrella to protect ourselves from incoming missiles while leaving us limited
in our long distance strike options. Israel will not put their faith in the
Ayatollahs no matter what agreement Obama signs with Iran. Ahmadinajad will be
replaced by another puppet of the religious leaders in 2013. The West may
project him as a moderate, compared with the outgoing president. The new guy
may talk less publicly about wiping Israel off the map, but the ones pulling
the strings will still be there, behind the scenes, plotting the fate of the
Zionist entity. Israel will be further encircled
with an alien enemy. Assad’s Syria will fall. It will not be replaced by a
pragmatic secular government. Can anyone predict who will be ruling Jordan by
the end of 2013? In fact, what will be the fate of unpopular and aging Mahmoud
Abbas in 2013? Will Fatah fall and be replaced by Hamas in the West Bank? Will the Palestinian Authority fracture?
What are
these implications for Israel? With Obama in power, free to pursue his ideas
until 2016, it must point to going it alone. Obama was caught with an open
microphone while chatting with Russian President Medvedev in March 2012. “Let me get reelected
first,” he said, “then I’ll have a better chance of making something happen. This
is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” “Flexibility” as far as Israel is
concerned will be a harder line than before, and "before" left a mess.Thanks to the result of the American election, and the return of Obama to the White House, Israel is more isolated now than it was before.
Barry Shaw is the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the
Narrative.”
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