Last month, Secretary of State John Kerry visited European and Middle Eastern capitals for what he labeled “a listening tour.” Now it’s President Obama’s turn to play “listener-in-chief” in a visit to Israel.
In an interview Wednesday with Israel’s Channel 2, the president said he’s coming to “listen to both sides” of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In plain language, this means that, on his first visit to Israel as president, Obama has no ideas on the issue. By contrast, soon after entering the White House in 2009, he claimed that there would be a Palestinian state before the end of the year.
Strange. In 2009, as a new president with no experience in foreign affairs, he should have started by listening, rather than going around making speeches.
But in 2013, after four years in which to listen and learn, he’s expected to have something to say. People expect America to provide leadership. The leader of the only “superpower” doesn’t simply drop in for tea and sympathy.
In fact, the way Obama has designed his visit relays several messages.
The first is a downgrading of the US relationship with Israel. Previous presidents always presented visits to Israel as an opportunity for close discussions with a special ally on all issues. The subtext was that the United States would take Israel into confidence even on issues closed to many friends and allies.
This time, there’s no such affirmation. The message is that Obama is there to listen to what both Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas have to say. “Five minutes for Bibi, five minutes for Abu Mazen,” one might say. Then, too, Obama described relations with Netanyahu as “business-like,” the same as relations with Abbas or anyone else for that matter.
Obama’s schedule is designed to circumvent Israel’s claims to specialness.
The president won’t go to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament — thus ignoring Israel’s traditional claim of being the only working democracy in the Middle East. Nor will he visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a relic that many Israelis cite as a powerful symbol of their claim to the “holy city.” In that way, Israel’s second claim, that of its Jewishness, is symbolically ignored.
In Jerusalem, Obama will visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre but stay clear of the Muslim Al-Aqsa Mosque. That choice, too, is interesting. It would provide Obama with another opportunity to demonstrate his Christian-ness, rejecting claims that he is a closet Muslim.
More importantly, by not going to Al- Aqsa under Israeli supervision, he sends a signal to Jordan’s King Abdullah II — who claims “right of protection” of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
Obama’s trips to the West Bank and Jordan will send a stark message: This is a disputed land with three claimants — Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. And the US is agnostic about the validity of each claim.
Israel’s third claim is that it has special defense and security links with the United States. Obama has more symbols here: He has refused to visit the site of a Patriot missile launcher controlled by the Israeli military and set up to protect Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah rocket attacks. Instead, he’ll visit a Patriot site controlled by US personnel.
That option will provide TV footage showing Obama in a military decor. But it will also tell Arabs that the president doesn’t wish to be associated with Israel’s defense buildup.
Obama has also tried to preempt Netanyahu’s attempts to focus attention on the Iranian nuclear issue. He told Channel 2 that it would take Iran “over a year or so” to develop nuclear weapons. In other words, Netanyahu is wrong in injecting urgency into the issue.
Obama’s statement is interesting in other ways: “Our goal here is to make sure that Iran does not possess a nuclear weapon that could threaten Israel or trigger an arms race in the region,” he said.
This is a shift from the US policy developed under Obama’s three immediate predecessors. That policy was to prevent Iran from “building capabilities to produce nuclear weapons.”
The way Obama puts it now, Iran could obtain those capabilities provided it doesn’t actualize them. Even then, as he puts it, one would have to show that an Iranian bomb actually does threaten Israel and is certain to trigger a regional arms race before treating the matter with urgency.
Obama throws in the platitude that a diplomatic resolution could provide a “more lasting solution” to the confrontation with Iran. But what if open-ended negotiations lead nowhere, as has been the case for a quarter of a century?
Well, in that case, Obama says, he would “keep all options on the table” — right where they’ve been for 25 years.