So, Netanyahu won't be making peace. OK?

It is worth recognizing that -- regardless of what's happening on the Palestinian side -- there's basically no chance of any real Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as long as Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel's Prime Minister. Those afraid he'll give away too much can rest assured. The rest of us should just get used to the idea, and let Obama bluff the mirage of a peace plan in order to keep the Europeans from "throwing Israel under the bus" as Republicans like to say.

Everyone who would be engaged in the negotiations (were they ever to resume) understands Israel will never agree to an absolute Palestinian right of return to Israel proper, beyond perhaps a small onetime influx of refugees under the humanitarian banner of family reunification. They also understand that Palestinians will not accept any agreement without some concessions on Jerusalem.

In his address last week to the U.S. Congress, Netanyahu promised that if Mahmoud Abbas were merely to say "I will accept a Jewish state," then: "With those six words, the Israeli people will be prepared to make a far-reaching compromise." This allocution was definitely not part of prior understandings, including the 1993 Oslo Accords, where the Government of Israel already committed itself to significant territorial withdrawals. These Israeli concessions were based primarily on security performance on the ground. 

Even during his own previous term as Prime Minister, in the mid-1990s, Netanyahu never placed such an ideological condition. In the successive interim agreements over the years, the Palestinian side has always recognized Israel's rights as a sovereign state. But now, despite Netanyahu's vocal disdain for any preconditions to resuming the talks that were fairly frequent meetings under the previous two Prime Ministers -- he has added one more pre-condition of his own: The Palestinians must accept that Israel is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and centuries of Jewish hope, and the culmination of millennia of persecution. (Funny, Mahmoud, you don't look Jewish...)

If Netanyahu were really interested in negotiations, he would have blocked all settlement expansion months ago and called the Palestinians' bluff. The catch is, Netanyahu has a bluff of his own. 

Netanyahu's goal is to find new reasons not to negotiate, rather than thinking up new ways to incentivize his own citizens as well as the other side to come together. My guess is, a significant minority of American Jews and close to half of the Israeli public will be OK with that. Some will deny or challenge my analysis, but others will be relieved and empowered by it.

Obama as Netanyahu's straw man

If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Shimon Peres were not the Presidents of Iran and Israel, respectively, I daresay Iran might have a nuclear device by now. Ahmadinejad is so offensive in his grandstanding and baiting that there's no way the Europeans could turn a blind eye to the nuclear program that progressed so quietly under Presidents Rafsanjani and Khatami. And given Netanyahu's skill for shifting blame and avoiding actual talks with the Palestinians (yes, the Palestinians have also made troubles), the Europeans would have lost patience with Israel months ago -- if not for the visionary, statesman persona of Shimon Peres.

The AIPAC banquet is one of the Jewish community's premier annual events. They do a great job. Tonight, no news was made, but that's not AIPAC's fault.

After the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House gave generally bland speeches, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a speech full of pride and platitudes, and crowned by a defiant pledge that Israel will "never" return to the 1967 borders. President Obama never suggested Israel return to the 1967 (really, PRE-67) borders, but it was clear Netanyahu meant to tar the President as having done so. BIG applause on that. Great stuff.

If in 2000, the two sides were at a point where Bill Clinton could paint a vision of what Israeli-Palestinian peace could look like, we've reached the point now where the best Obama can do is share his vision of what Israeli-Palestinian NEGOTIATIONS could look like -- and he still got pounded by Netanyahu.

Netanyahu flinched. Now what?

President Obama has now delivered his second Mideast speech in four days, and the most awkward outcome is the intervening public response by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
In his AIPAC speech this morning, the President added a line that could have avoided much of the outrage from his first speech: Regarding his loaded statement that "the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps," today he said, "By definition, it means that the parties themselves -– Israelis and Palestinians -– will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967." Thanks for that second shoe...

And in between the President's two speeches, Netanyahu essentially picked a fight with Obama, had a frank and candid White House chat, and helped fuel a firestorm of umbrage against the President of the United States among Israelis and a vocal segment of American Jewry. But to what end?

If Netanyahu is right, and Obama was making unrealistic and unfair demands of Israel, why confront him through the media just hours before sitting down face to face? And if -- as Netanyahu and his supporters insist -- no daylight between should appear between the U.S. and Israeli positions, why have they overplayed a few semantic details as though Obama "has thrown Israel under the bus" and other choice labels ("indefensible" borders was one of Netanyahu's critiques).

Israelis should wish Obama well in Europe

For which audience did President Obama tailor last Thursday's long speech on the Middle East? Of course, Arabs were interested in how Obama might meet the seismic changes rippling across the Middle East, but it's been a long time since they stopped taking speeches seriously. And they're hardly waiting on Washington's green light to take to the streets and fight for their rights. 

Israelis seem not to mind that their Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was doing nothing substantive to promote meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians even before the Fatah-Hamas merger. Netanyahu had been using House Speaker John Boehner to get his own Capitol Hill pep rally and one-up the President, so Obama pulled rank and moved up his own Mideast speech to the day before his own meeting with Netanyahu. But mutual spite still doesn't impact a major Presidential speech. Obama must know the peace process is going nowhere for a while, so what impact could he hope to make with such a speech?

One audience that could be useful to the President is the Europeans, whom he will be visiting this coming week. Nearly all the Western European nations were already signed up to support Palestinian statehood next September at the United Nations. Then, in a belated tribute to the efforts of Hosni Mubarak, Hamas and Fatah agreed to try out a reconciliation. Almost immediately, the Europeans made clear they wouldn't support the declaration of statehood if the new Palestine embraced the rejectionist, terrorist Hamas. So Hamas started intimating its readiness to accept further negotiations with Israel... possibly just enough to keep the Europeans hanging on.

So WHY is Netanyahu coming to Washington?

If anything, President Obama's Middle East speech yesterday was anti-climactic. Support democracy and intervene when it's possible and helpful; help Egypt and Tunisia transition; Iraq; and continue supporting Israeli-Palestinian peace BASED ON the 1967 (really, 1949) borders with land swaps. Nothing particularly new, but then it would be hard to top the past six months of change on the ground, from popular revolution to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may have been disappointed with the President's restatement of what seem to be the parameters for a workable arrangement with the Palestinians. Rather than waiting to tell the President directly, since they are meeting TODAY, the Prime Minister chose to publicly express his concerns about the Obama speech, with little or nothing positive to say about it. He said the 1967 borders are "indefensible", as though the President was talking about returning to the Green Line. He even said what assurances he expects Obama to give him when they do meet face-to-face, which is always so helpful for a President of the United States to know in advance. Why even meet at all...

Pakistan's decline is not India's rise

India must be breathing easier since the United States got Osama bin Laden right in the middle of Pakistan.

India and Pakistan cannot find enough proxies for their decades-old rivalry. Afghanistan is only the latest battleground. As has been obvious for many months, Pakistan was an active player behind the 2008 Mumbai terror spree, even though bilateral reconciliation talks have continued to sputter along. If not for the headline-grabbing nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, the arms race between India and Pakistan would be at the top of the list. And so on...

India looks better when Pakistan looks bad, whether it's for harboring the planet's number-one terrorist (who also happened to be what many Indians would call a "bloodymuslim"). Pakistan will continue to receive U.S. support because Washington needs Pakistan's help in Afghanistan and around the region, and because -- even if the Pakistanis did know for five years that Osama was living a few blocks from their elite military academy -- Pakistan is in a tight spot and probably had little choice. Or they just totally missed it, which is also believable. But like anyone else, the Indians enjoy being more popular than Pakistan, even if the decline of U.S.-Pakistan intelligence cooperation adds nothing to the U.S.-India relationship. 

Will Obama use AIPAC to announce Israel vacation?

It looks like President Obama will address the AIPAC Conference Sunday morning, one day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does the same. The President may use the opportunity to announce the details of his upcoming visit to Israel, as Laura Rozen has just reported. He already said he'll visit this year. Since there continues to be little hope for a genuine peace breakthrough in the short term, there's nothing holding him back -- since if there were any chance, a President would wait until there's something he can throw his weight behind. The fact that George Mitchell is stepping down empty-handed is a further sign that nothing serious will happen this year.

The President has learned the hard way that (1) in addition to believing in Greater Israel in his heart, Netanyahu will also not be taking any risks beyond what it takes to keep his day job; (2) he will therefore have to meet the Arab Spring without the credibility of delivering an Israeli-Palestinian deal; and (3) he can win over Israelis and retain the "Jewish vote" stateside if he just makes a re-election campaign visit to Israel, spends quality time with Israeli President Shimon Peres, and appears to get along with Netanyahu. If he can't secure a lasting peace, at least he can avoid looking hard on Israel.