Bibi Netanyahu: the Non-Negotiator
Existential issues cut both ways. That is perhaps what is most unnerving—and, for Israel and the United States, potentially dangerous—about Benjamin Netanyahu's seeming unwillingness to countenance any agreement, either with the Iranians or the Palestinians. Netanyahu wants confrontation, not negotiation, with Tehran—yet that approach has brought Tehran from a mere 164 centrifuges at a single pilot plant a decade ago to a network of secret nuclear facilities and 19,000 centrifuges today, and to the brink of nuclear-weapons status. Netanyahu wants to put off talks on a Palestinian state, yet many Israelis (including the erstwhile uber-hawk Ariel Sharon, before he was silenced by a stroke) have come to realize that time is against Israel on that score because there may soon be more Arabs than Jews under Israeli control, including the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and Israel could come to be seen as an apartheid rather than a Jewish state.
What needs to be understood about Netanyahu is that non-negotiation has been an article of faith with him for his entire career.
What needs to be understood about Bibi Netanyahu, who may prove in coming months to be the chief obstacle to a longer-term rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran, is that non-negotiation has been an article of faith with him for his entire political career. It is an attitude that goes back to his first term as prime minister in the late 1990s, when he privately boasted that he had "de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords."
Yes, Netanyahu has ample reason to sound alarms about the current state of negotiations with both the Iranians and the Palestinians. Both sets of talks are fraught with risks. But the argument can be made—and is being made, both by the Obama administration and many Israelis—that the far greater risk to Israel's future and to U.S. strategy in the Middle East lies in continuing a policy of confrontation.
What is most disturbing, even to some Israeli defense and intelligence experts, is Netanyahu's blunt unwillingness to compromise on either issue. Amos Yadlin, the former head of the IDF's Military Intelligence, told Israeli TV that the hard-line criticism of the interim nuclear deal with Iran misses a subtle but crucial point: The terms are good enough for a temporary freeze that will allow the negotiations to continue—which is what this is—even though they would not suffice for a permanent deal, which would require dismantlement. But the Obama administration also understands that; it has been careful to say that the real talks are only now beginning. Yadlin added the Iranians "understand that this is a test," and it would be "illogical for them to breach [the interim deal] in the next six months" by restarting enrichment toward weapons-grade uranium. He noted that President Obama has committed himself to ensuring there is no Iranian bomb, and he said that the unprecedented international consensus on a tough sanctions regime, in which Netanyahu puts so much stock, might well have collapsed had the U.S. held out for a tougher deal that would have been tantamount to Iranian surrender.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/11/bibi-netanyahu-the-non-negotiator/281893/