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“But as much as Oslo has been completely discredited by the Palestinians’ refusal to make peace, Netanyahu cannot afford to act as if the desire of the United States to pursue another round of peace talks is irrelevant. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton may be among the last people on Planet Earth to fail to understand that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has neither the will nor the interest in signing a peace accord, no matter where Israel’s borders are drawn. Their decision — to hound Netanyahu to renew the freeze for 90 days even after a 10-month freeze was ignored by the Palestinians — is an absurd policy that mires the administration in a dead-end process that can win them no laurels and few thanks from a Muslim world that Obama is still clearly interested in appeasing. […] [Nevertheless,] Netanyahu must live with a situation where his only ally-state is led by a man who is still uncomfortable with Israel and unwilling to abandon his hubristic belief that he can succeed in making peace where all who have gone before him have failed. Obama has another two years left in his current term and 12 months or so before the requirements of his quest for re-election may serve to deter him from further putting the screws to Israel. During this period, Netanyahu may face a decision about whether Israel will strike at Iran’s nuclear project. Another war with Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza may also be forced upon the Jewish state during this time frame. There are no guarantees that this concession, like all those made by Israel before this, will strengthen Israel’s hand in gaining support for its right of self-defense, but doing so will surely make it easier for Israel to make its case before the American people, especially at a time when the White House must be considered essentially unfriendly to Jerusalem. Under the circumstances, Netanyahu cannot be blamed for deciding that giving in on the freeze — when it is obvious that the Palestinians will not take advantage of the opening — is the lesser of two evils.”
— JONATHAN S. TOBIN, 11.15.2010 (commentarymagazine.com)
I concur with Jonathan Tobin's "least cost analysis". Lesser (or least) of two (or more) evils; rock and a hard place; freeze (settlement-building) or chill (already-cold relations with Obama); it's the mother of all chess-games for Netanyahu's Israel.
- The three things Israel can never forget are:
- The Holocaust;
- Israel can not lose a war against any of its murderous enemies, for that would lead to its annihilation;
- if Israel is annihilated, every Jew in the diaspora will be at the mercy of Jew-haters the world over.
I am confident that Netanyahu, the Israeli-born son of Polish-Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated to Israel before the Holocaust, never forgets the stakes of his least-cost analysis. I am also confident that he understands and factors into his calculations the fact that, relative to Israel's stakes, Obama (et al.) and the Arabs (et al.) are playing for trivial stakes — Obama for his ego and the Arabs for a chance, however slim, to drive the Jews into the sea.
As anyone who has been exposed to elementary economics knows, people respond to incentives. Who do you think has the greatest incentive to survive this 3-way chess game? I am quite confident that it's Benjamin Netanyahu.
Post 1,484 Least-Cost Analysis
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