Bibi Blows Raspberries

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu attended this week's AIPAC conference in DC yesterday, and made it pretty clear that Israel sees itself as the senior partner in its relationship with the US.

In a speech to a pro-Israel lobbying group, Mr. Netanyahu reiterated that Israel had no plans to freeze housing in Jerusalem, the trigger for a recent dispute between Israel and the United States. He rejected the administration’s contention that Israel’s policies were impeding the peace process.

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today,” Mr. Netanyahu said to the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Jerusalem is not a settlement; It’s our capital.”

Earlier Monday, Mr. Netanyahu met for 75 minutes with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in the first of a series of meetings expected to reveal whether the United States sticks to its hard line with Israel on settlements. He later met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and he was scheduled to meet President Obama on Tuesday.

The flurry of meetings is designed to calm the waters after nearly two weeks of tension between the United States and Israel, amid a diplomatic row that both countries have portrayed as the gravest in years. But judging by Mr. Netanyahu’s comments, it is far from clear that he plans to satisfy the demands that Mrs. Clinton made of him in a phone call 10 days ago. 

Nor should anyone be surprised by this.  The proponents of "American exceptionalism" in US foreign policy have one glaring blind spot, and that's letting Israel dictate to us what we can and cannot do.  Hillary Clinton continues to try to talk to the Israelis, but it's clear that when it comes to action, Israel will do what it wants, US be damned.

On the other hand, there is some agreement between our two countries:

On one topic — Iran — Mr. Netanyahu and Mrs. Clinton seemed largely in agreement. “Iran’s brazen bid to develop nuclear weapons is first and foremost a threat to my country, Israel,” the prime minister said, “but it is also a grave threat to the region and to the world.” The Israeli people, he said, “always reserve the right of self-defense.”

In making her own tough statements on Iran, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that the process of building support for sanctions in the United Nations was taking longer than expected. “Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite,” she said. 

The trick of course is that Israel believes everything it is doing falls under the "right of Israeli self-defense", particular the parts that the Obama administration isn't fond of.