Israeli thinktank explores possibe scenario for an attack on Iran

[Sheilbh]

On Bibi's bad bets:

Israel's prime minister
Bad bets
Nov 9th 2012, 16:11 by D.L. | JERUSALEM


ISRAEL'S prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, suffered not one but two vicarious electoral defeats on Tuesday. Twice this week he has had to swallow hard and congratulate candidates he hoped would lose. The winners were equally cordial to him on the phone. If they enjoyed his discomfiture, they concealed it well. Politics is about interests, not likes and dislikes, and Mr Netanyahu is firmly on course to victory in Israel's upcoming election, on January 22.

Bibi's more famous wrong horse, of course, was Barack Obama. The Israeli leader is taking flak at home and abroad for his unconcealed preference for Mitt Romney, an old friend and political kindred spirit.

Less resonant around the world, but no less stinging in Israel, was the bad bet Mr Netanyahu placed in the leadership election of a small but important Israeli party, Habayit Hayehudi [The Jewish Home]. The challenger, Naftali Bennett, served as bureau chief to Mr Netanyahu when he led the opposition from 2006-2008. Mr Bennett managed to fall foul both of his boss and his powerful wife, Sara. The Netanyahus pulled every string they could to foil Mr Bennett's bid to enter politics, but to no avail. He won by a margin of 2-1 among Habayit Hayehudi's 54,000 members. "It reminded me of my own victory in the Likud primaries in 1993," Mr Netanyahu cooed down the line to Mr Bennett on Wednesday. It was the first time they had talked in more than three years.

Both presume they will be talking a great deal across the cabinet table after the January election. Habayit, with its three Knesset seats, is a junior partner in Mr Netanyahu's coalition. Mr Bennett intends to transform it into a major one, becoming a senior minister himself along the way. "You'll be prime minister again," he told Mr Netanyahu. "No doubt about that now that you've teamed up with [Avigdor] Lieberman."

Mr Netanyahu and Mr Lieberman, the foreign minister, recently surprised Israeli pundits and public alike by announcing that their two parties, Likud and Yisrael Beitenu, would merge and run in the election as a single block. Their purpose is to ensure that Mr Netanyahu emerges as the head of the largest faction, giving the president, Shimon Peres, no pretext to call on a more moderate contender to try and form a government. (So far the 89-year-old Mr Peres has resisted pressure to stand down as president and run in the election at the head of a list of centre-left parties which might beat Mr Netanyahu's block.)

Mr Bennett has told his supporters that while in government he intends to make sure that Mr Netanyahu makes no mistakes: "the Land of Israel is not up for trading or concession." A one-time head of the Judea and Samaria Settlers Council, he is an unabashed annexationist. Under his leadership, Habayit Hayehudi (formerly called the National Religious Party) will unequivocally oppose the two-state solution.

Mr Netanyahu, who professes to support the establishment of a Palestinian state, will be able to argue that he is hemmed in by his hardline coalition partners and so unable to offer any concessions to the Palestinians, or even negotiate with them. He has hewed to much the same line over the past four years. Mr Obama, after some early attempts to budge him, gave up trying. Now, free of political and electoral pressures, he will have to decide whether to try again.

Abbas recently made two interesting comments in an interview on Israeli TV.  One was that he would like to return to the village in Israel that he's from but that he'd only do so as a tourist, he seemed to apply the Palestinians may give in on the right of return (probably along the lines of the almost Abbas-Olmert deal which included symbolic return).  Second was his firm declaration, with some adjustments (again Abbas-Olmert), that 'Palestine for me is the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital. This is Palestine.'  He repeated the line on Egyptian TV a couple of days later firmly stating that Palestine aspires to 1967 borders and accepts Israel's existence.  For both remarks he's being vilified by Hamas.

Meanwhile Lieberman, who's called for Abbas's resignation, has apparently told EU and US officials that if the PA applies for UN recognition again then he will do everything in his power to dismantle the Palestinian Authority.  Given that he's Foreign Minister and presumed heir to Bibi - if the merger works - that's a fair bit of power.

Here's the Economist again:

For him, the wrong American
Binyamin Netanyahu looks a bit less impregnable since America's election
Nov 10th 2012 | JERUSALEM | from the print edition

WITH polls in Israel ten weeks away, Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud party fears the influence on Israeli voters of a resurgent Barack Obama back in the White House. "Say Obama appointed Bill Clinton his Middle East peace envoy before the Israeli election," mused a seasoned observer. A fresh effort by Mr Obama to revive the moribund peace process might well stir even worse blood between Washington and Jerusalem if in January Mr Netanyahu were also returned to office.

Messrs Obama and Netanyahu were at odds virtually throughout the president's first term. Their relations were often sour. Mr Netanyahu uninhibitedly hoped his old friend Mitt Romney would win the American presidency. Both men have been lavishly backed by Sheldon Adelson, a Jewish-American casino magnate who promotes Israel's hawks and settlers.

Mr Obama's victory also presents a moment of truth for Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, respectively prime minister and foreign minister in the previous Israeli government (2006-09). They have been pondering separately and together whether to lead the challenge against Mr Netanyahu in the coming election or sit it out on the sidelines. Mr Olmert, though acquitted recently of most charges in a corruption trial, is still facing an appeal by the state prosecutor and is still embroiled in a separate bribery case. Ms Livni was defeated earlier this year as leader of the Kadima party, which won the last election but failed to form a ruling coalition.

If one or both of them take the plunge, the campaign will focus to a much greater degree than at present on the frozen peace process. Mr Netanyahu has steered clear of it, preferring to dwell on Iran's perceived nuclear threat and his determination to thwart it, by military means if need be. The Labour party, second in the opinion polls behind the Likud, has preferred to campaign on the economy rather than peace with the Palestinians.

This lacuna at the heart of Israeli politics was starkly highlighted on November 1st, when Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said on Israeli television that he considered he had a right to visit his hometown, Safed, in northern Israel, but not to live there. He was immediately accused by fellow Palestinians of forgoing their hallowed "right of return"—to live in any part of the former Palestine mandate in what is now Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, ruled by the fundamentalist Hamas movement, Mr Abbas's image was burned on the streets in angry demonstrations. He nevertheless repeated the substance of his remarks on Egyptian television, spelling out again that a Palestinian state would arise on the West Bank and Gaza, but not in Israel as internationally defined before the war of 1967.

Mr Netanyahu dismissed the Palestinian leader's remarks as disingenuous. But Mr Olmert and Ms Livni, as well as Israel's president and former prime minister, Shimon Peres, issued statements praising them. "Whoever is interested in preserving a secure Jewish and democratic state, should embrace this interview," Ms Livni urged. "But peace has been turned into a dirty word...We must work together to bring down Netanyahu."

If only I had lasted longer...

Mr Olmert accused the prime minister of "trying to prove to the Israeli public that there is no partner on the Palestinian side," which, he said, was demonstrably untrue. Messrs Olmert and Abbas have both said they might well have won a comprehensive peace agreement, had Mr Olmert been able to stay in office two or three months longer; he was forced to quit amid corruption allegations. Their discussions were based on accepting the 1967 borders with adjustments and minor land swaps to accommodate the biggest Jewish settlement blocks on the West Bank. The ancient heart of Jerusalem and its holy places were to be administered by an international regime. Mr Netanyahu has always refused to reopen negotiations with Mr Abbas on such a basis.

If Mr Netanyahu, like Mr Obama, retains his post, as is widely predicted, some foresee the revival of an old idea to link a deal with the Palestinians to one with Iran: the Americans would increase their pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear plans while insisting more forcefully, as a quid pro quo, that Israel stops stalling on its talks with the Palestinians. Mr Netanyahu might not like that either. But he might have to go along with it.

[Razgovory]

How much authority does Abbas still have these days?

[Sheilbh]

How much authority does Abbas still have these days?

He's still the head of the PA (with the PM a former IMF technocrat who's been widely praised for reforming the Palestinian authority).  They're in control of the bits of the West Bank Israel allows them to be in charge of - or I think they're in charge of the civilian aspects of government in all of the non-settlement areas of the West Bank, but that certain areas Israel retains security control of outside of the settlements, then there's areas where the PA are in charge of both the civilian and security.  As I've said for the last few years the PA's security services (supported by the EU, Russia and the US) have emerged as a reasonably useful and credible support for Israel.