(JNi.media) According to Reuters, citing Congressional officials, Israel, which currently receives $3.1 billion annually from the US, is looking to increase this aid package significantly, to $50 billion over 10 years. But Administration officials say no new aid agreement is going to be signed during Netanyahu’s visit this week. Some Obama aides believe Netanyahu will be happy to wait out the next 14 months with Obama at the helm, satisfied that there won’t be any new surprises from the Administration, such as a last-ditch peace effort, or failure to block anti-Israel UN Security Council resolutions. The PM is hoping for a new start with whomever becomes the next president.
David Makovsky, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Project on the Middle East Peace Process, summed up the Administration’s 2-state efforts for the Oberlin Review Friday saying that “it’s hard to see in the seventh year of an eight-year administration that you’re going to have this magical reset. … These two have had their differences. … I think Obama, coming in, in 2009, thought he would focus much more on settlements. And then Obama, as it went on, thought, ‘Oh no, let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on getting [Israel and the Palestinians] to the table.’”
And so, Makovsky continued, “Secretary of State Kerry really believed that each side said they wanted a two-state solution, so let’s help them get there. Ultimately, I think that part of the issue was that Netanyahu had no problem with the US holding Israel to a high standard, but he felt the United States held the Palestinians to no standard, and yet, these two have to be accountable for peace. … Netanyahu felt that the United States did not optimize its leverage in those talks and might have been able to get a better deal. … You could ask, ‘Is this … perfect being the enemy of the good?’ You couldn’t get the perfect deal, but you got the best deal you can? I think [Obama and Netanyahu] differed over those two things. Those are the two major differences.”
The fact is, Obama is just too busy elsewhere in the Middle East to be able to pay much attention to Israel and the Palestinians. Having scored his victory with the Iran nuclear deal, against a formidable campaign galvanized to a large extent by Netanyahu, the President is content with a status quo between the two men in which they do not trust each other and do not expect much from one another either.
Israel argues that awarding Iran sanctions relief will allow Tehran to invest heavily in its missile program, and to increase funding to two enemies on Israel’s borders, Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel believes it is entitled to an increased support to be able to deal with these collateral effects of the nuclear deal. According to Reuters, US officials concede only that Netanyahu and Obama might agree to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiations, under which Israel would seek to expand its order of 50 F-35 fighter jets, and to eventually buy the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor military aircraft with vertical takeoff and landing, which combines the functionality of a helicopter a turboprop aircraft.
