He won’t admit it publicly, but President Obama wants Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lose his re-election bid Tuesday.
As Israelis head to the polls, Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival. The Israeli leader is slightly behind in the polls, and Obama would certainly welcome a prime minister he believes could be more amenable to an agenda that has been a nonstarter with Netanyahu’s Likud Party government.
For Obama, the attractions of a Netanyahu alternative are clear. The most vocal critic of Obama’s nuclear talks with Iran would be out of office. A new prime minister could be more receptive to limiting construction of new settlements in the West Bank. And a change in Israeli leadership might breathe new life into the idea of restarting Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The notoriously strained relationship between the American and Israeli leaders hit an all-time low when Netanyahu addressed Congress earlier this month. Obama objected to the invitation from Republican House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, and he declined to roll out the welcome mat for Netanyahu during his visit. Some of his former aides have actively worked to push Netanyahu out of office, helping the center-left Zionist Union party led by Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog.
On the eve of the Israeli election, White House aides refused to go on the record about the president’s feelings regarding a potential Netanyahu loss.
But Obama allies no longer bound by diplomatic norms had no such hesitancy.
“I think his reaction would be somewhere along the lines of, ‘Hallelujah,’ a former senior White House official told the Washington Examiner.
“I’d equate it to a long overdue breakup,” a former Obama State Department official quipped of a possible Netanyahu exit from office. “Right now, they’re just staying together because it’s what they’re supposed to do, not because they want to.”
Personal feelings aside, it’s not entirely clear that replacing Netanyahu with a more centrist leader would dramatically help Obama’s cause in his final two years.
Although progressives argue that Netanyahu’s drop in the polls is tied to his address to Congress and his hardline stance against nuclear negotiations with Iran, the main drivers of discontent with Netanyahu among Israeli voters appear to be dissatisfaction with the state of the economy and fatigue from his nine years as prime minister.
Netanyahu’s stance on keeping Iran from building a bomb is hardly out of the mainstream in Israel. Although Herzog has accused Netanyahu of playing politics with the Iran deal, he expressed concern in a February New York Times op-ed about “the possibility that American diplomats could be tempted to accept an insufficient guarantee of our safety,” adding, “No Israeli head of state will ever tolerate a nuclear Iran.”
Netanyahu also saw it as politically advantageous to rail against a two-state solution, a reflection of the skepticism surrounding such talks.
“I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands, is giving attack grounds to radical Islam against the state of Israel,” Netanyahu told the Israeli website NRG on Monday. “Anyone who ignores this is sticking his head in the sand. The left does this time and time again. We are realistic and understand.”
And rather than back down on his criticisms of the Obama administration, Netanyahu has escalated them, insisting that his opponents would back down to pressure from Washington.
“I believe we should do whatever we can to maintain our relations with the U.S., but we should also know to draw the line when things that could endanger us are on the table — like the nuclear deal with Iran, like the insistence that we return to pre-1967 lines and build another ‘Hamastan,’ like the demand we divide Jerusalem,” he told the Jerusalem Post in recent days. “We have to stand up against these things; that’s what the prime minister of Israel is elected for.”
The White House is quick to point out that Netanyahu did everything but officially endorse Republican Mitt Romney for president in 2012.
Republicans now say Obama has gone beyond having campaign hands support policy groups in Israel aligned with Netanyahu’s opponents, and they point to recent reports suggesting the administration is using taxpayer dollars to get rid of the Israeli prime minister.
GOP leaders say OneVoice Movement, a Washington-based group, used $350,000 in State Department grants for efforts to push out Netanyahu.
“As members of Congress, we are greatly concerned to hear allegations of our own State Department spending American tax dollars that were then used to influence foreign elections,” a collection of House Republican lawmakers said on Monday. “Israeli elections should be left to the citizens of Israel and not the influence of U.S. taxpayer-funded grants which may be considered illegal.”
Even if Netanyahu’s Likud Party finishes behind the Zionist Union, he could still retain his post were the opposition unable to put together a governing coalition.
And Obama’s defenders aren’t popping the champagne yet.
“If anything, Bibi is resilient,” said the former White House official. “He’s a tough S.O.B. You count him out and he’ll just find a way to win.”
