Its greatest fear in its relationship with the West is marginalisation
By Adrian Hamilton
The Independent
"One benefit of President Obama cancelling his trip to Indonesia for the Health Reform vote, said a Senator in Washington this week, was that it enabled him to see Benjamin Netanyahu on his visit to the US capital. Well, if that was the bonus, it didn't seem to achieve much. Agreement to disagree is the polite phrase for a meeting that ended in a frozen silence....
Washington, far more than Jerusalem, is desperate for peace talks be conducted, for the sake of appearances as much as anything else. But in pursuing them, it is only adding to the humiliation of its Arab allies and the hatred in which it is held in the Arab street.
In the end the US will let Israel go its own way. It won't, and probably can't, stop it. And peace talks, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has warned (not without a hint of satisfaction), will be played into the long grass. But maybe in this week of spats in Washington and London, we are seeing the first glimmering of understanding that Israel has its interests and we have ours and that the two are not necessarily the same."
By Adrian Hamilton
The Independent
"One benefit of President Obama cancelling his trip to Indonesia for the Health Reform vote, said a Senator in Washington this week, was that it enabled him to see Benjamin Netanyahu on his visit to the US capital. Well, if that was the bonus, it didn't seem to achieve much. Agreement to disagree is the polite phrase for a meeting that ended in a frozen silence....
Washington, far more than Jerusalem, is desperate for peace talks be conducted, for the sake of appearances as much as anything else. But in pursuing them, it is only adding to the humiliation of its Arab allies and the hatred in which it is held in the Arab street.
In the end the US will let Israel go its own way. It won't, and probably can't, stop it. And peace talks, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has warned (not without a hint of satisfaction), will be played into the long grass. But maybe in this week of spats in Washington and London, we are seeing the first glimmering of understanding that Israel has its interests and we have ours and that the two are not necessarily the same."
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