The meeting in the White House Monday between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted significant differences as well as deep convergences in the two countries' approaches to two major sources of tension and conflict in the Middle East - the Iranian nuclear program and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The convergences are well known, but the new gaps are an important element to watch in the coming months.
The gaps reveal much about changing conditions in the Middle East, especially American threat perceptions and policy options that see Washington moving toward the center in the Arab-Israeli conflict and toward negotiations with Iran and Syria. The major substantive differences between the United States and Israel include, most importantly, the outcome of any peace talks in the region. The US favors Israeli and Palestinian sovereign states living side by side, while Israel wants the Palestinians to enjoy self-governance that is less than sovereignty and statehood. Israel and the US also have different views over the Iranian nuclear issue and how to deal with it.
The Middle East is in a very different configuration today than it was just six months ago, due to simultaneous changes in Israel, the US, the Arab world and Iran. The Arab world's internal ideological balance-sheet has changed due to the wars that Israel has fought with Hizbullah and Hamas, respectively in Lebanon and Gaza in the past three years, and the gains of Islamists in areas where conflict and tensions persist. Centrist and pro-American Arab forces have lost credibility and power in tandem with the rise of the militants.
Iran for its part exploits and fans the gains by Arab groups that define themselves primarily by their "resistance" role, while Tehran markets itself as the mother of all resisters by defying the US and the West on uranium enrichment. Israel views both these Arab and Iranian trends as worrying and existentially threatening, but cannot muster any response other than a continued popular shift to the right and militarism, which result in ever more hard-line governments such as Netanyahu's.
The net result has been a worsening cycle of extremism and confrontation that touches most parts of the Middle East. Centrist and pro-American Arab governments have responded by re-launching the 2002 Arab peace plan that offers Israel comprehensive peace and coexistence, believing that resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict would cool down other tensions in the region and reduce Iran's ability to penetrate Arab societies.
Obama assumed power with a better understanding of these realities than his predecessor, and quickly launched a policy review that put US interests in the Middle East at the center of things - rather than Israeli fears or American neoconservative ideological experiments. The Monday meeting in the White House clarified the new American insistence on addressing Iran and Arab-Israeli peacemaking on the basis of four important principles: emphasizing negotiations rather than militarism; paying simultaneous attention to Iran and Arab-Israeli peacemaking; committing to deep, sustained American diplomacy; and, addressing the legitimate grievances and rights of all parties, rather than making American or Israeli needs the beginning and end points for all encounters.
The opening negotiating positions of all parties are now on the table, and the hard bargaining will now begin, with some pushing and shoving and the occasional walking out of the room. Revived American diplomatic engagement is the most significant new factor, and it is easy to understand why the Obama team has slowly shifted US policy toward a more centrist, engaged, equitable and diplomatically activist approach.
The most telling example I personally encountered of why the US is changing course in this region happened at the World Economic Forum Middle East gathering in Jordan last weekend. When Iraqi Vice-President Adel Abdel-Mahdi was asked what he would say to Obama, he mentioned four things: the US should withdraw fully from Iraq by the 2011 deadline; it should pressure Israel to accept the Arab peace plan; it should engage Iran diplomatically to resolve outstanding issues; and it should deal more decently and fairly with Muslims in the US and around the world.
It is hard to find a better reason than this for the US to review and revise its failed policies in the region: A senior Iraqi official who is in office thanks largely to the American-led invasion and regime change in his country suggests four policy moves that, in one way or another, criticize or require changes in Washington's policies.
The fact that Obama's team seems to be making these adjustments is an important sign that real change may be on the way, and the Israeli government for now seems to be the odd man out in a region that seems to be groping toward new relationships and realities.
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