Opinion

THE BIBI-BARACK SQUARE-OFF

The words at the White House were warm and friendly, as they usually are when a president hosts an Israeli prime minister. But in between the expressions of fidelity and respect, there were definite signs of fundamental disagreement yesterday between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Clearly, the US-Israeli relationship is entering uncharted waters — a far cry from the days when George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon saw eye-to-eye on virtually everything.

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The president stressed what he termed the need for a separate Palestinian state; Netanyahu refused to endorse one, saying only that Israel does not “want to govern the Palestinians. We want the Palestinians to govern themselves” — though not with full statehood.

Obama bluntly demanded that West Bank “settlements have to be stopped.”

Netanyahu said he reminded the president that “in Gaza, we dismantled settlements and got a huge [Palestinian] terror infrastructure in return.”

And on Iran, it was Obama’s turn to rebuff Netanyahu, saying he did not want to set “an artificial deadline” for Tehran to abandon its WMD ambitions, and insisting that he can make a “persuasive argument” to dissuade Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs from their dreams of a nuclear arsenal.

Not surprisingly, Netanyahu appeared skeptical — and rightly so.

He also was unwilling to accept any linkage between Israeli negotiations with the Palestinians and progress on the Iranian front, saying correctly that they are two separate tracks.

Moreover, he stressed, despite Tehran’s repeated vow to annihilate Israel, the issue is not Jerusalem’s concern alone. “There’s never been a time,” he noted, “when Arabs and Israelis see a common threat the way we see it today.”

Indeed, Arab states have been quite vocal in their dismay over the West’s inability to curb Iran, which they believe is seeking control over the entire Muslim world. Yet Washington seems convinced that Iran’s nuclear ambition is rooted solely in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu went to great lengths to state that he sees Obama as a “genuine friend” to Israel in the long tradition of US-Israeli amity.

It will be clear soon enough whether he is right.