Bibi and my computer

Electronic devices are sometimes a guide for life. When a series of contradictory instructions to my computer or electronic appointment calendar threatens to erase all their content, the following message appears on the screen: “Reset and start again.” At such moments, one is overcome by a mix of fear and hope: Fear, because of the damage that may have been caused, and hope, because of the opportunity for a second chance.

Benjamin Netanyahu is finding himself in a similar situation in respect to his relationship with the Obama Administration. The policy he formulated in his first two months in office led him to the brink of a confrontation he doesn’t want. He is concerned. The slaps on the back from some of his government ministers do not calm him. If anything, they make him more concerned.

The good news is that he still has time to reset and start again. Those who think that the current Administration conspires to topple Netanyahu and crown Tzipi Livni or someone else in his place underestimate our friends abroad.

The Obama Administration faces plenty of trouble. The last thing the president is seeking at this time is to intervene in the State of Israel’s domestic politics.

Next Sunday, Netanyahu is expected to deliver a diplomatic speech at Bar-Ilan University. It could be a constitutive speech. He can use it to utter some words he had not said to this day, and it’s a shame he hadn’t expressed them yet.

‘We are responsible people’

In the draft I would have placed on the prime minister’s desk, I would suggest that he include the following sentences: “I’m turning to President Obama from here and telling him that in Israel, as a civilized state, a new government adopts both continuity and change when it replaces a previous government. Based on adherence to this legacy, I pledge to assume all the obligations made by previous governments to American Administrations. Yes, including the two-state solution. Similarly, I expect that you, as the president of a civilized state, will assume all the obligations made by President Bush, including the acceptance of minor construction in the settlements.

“I know you won’t do this happily. Believe me, I too am not too happy about having to pay my predecessors debts, and my party and coalition colleagues are even less pleased than I am. Yet we are responsible people, and on the table we see much more fateful issues than those we disagree on. My government will adhere to everything required of it by the Road Map, based on two obvious conditions. Firstly, the other side will adhere to what is required of it. Secondly, everything will be open to changes in line with the circumstances.”

Confidence crisis

Plenty of foolish and provincial words have been uttered and written in Israel in respect to President Obama and his Administration in the wake of the Cairo speech. He is not a self-righteous Jimmy Carter-style preacher, and he is certainly not a Muslim agent who took over the White House, or an egomaniac who made the world’s fate his personal obsession.

Obama received from Bush a hated, sinking empire entangled in bloody wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He believes that in order to extricate the US from these wars he must turn a new leaf vis-à-vis the Muslim world. This attempt may succeed, or fail, yet we are seeing a clear American interest here, and possibly an Israeli one as well. In any case, it is an interest that a responsible Israeli government cannot object to.

Obama and his people know that his immense popularity in America and worldwide may be ephemeral. It is doubtful that in 2010 he would be able to achieve what he can achieve in 2009. Therefore, they are in a rush.

The success of the move, at least on the Israeli-Arab front, is conditioned upon the president not losing the confidence of Israel’s public opinion. On this sensitive front, the Obama administration has made some tactical errors. The bad news is that we have a confidence crisis. The good news is that the crisis can be resolved. Nothing terrible will happen if someone over there also presses the reset button.