Rivlin: Israel's foreign policy - US ties, US ties, US ties
In bid to limit fallout from damning report on Obama adminstration view of Netanyahu, President and envoy to UN emphasise importance of relationship with US.
President Reuven Rivlin weighed in on the escalating crisis in relations between the US and Israel on Wednesday, saying that ties with the United States were paramount in Israel's foreign policy.
"Israel's foreign policy is based on three principles – the first is relations with the US; the second – relations with the US; and the third, and no less important – relations with the US." he told Army Radio from Warsaw.
Rivlin made the comments a day after The Atlantic reported that US officials called Netanyahu a "coward" on Iran and someone who is only interested in self-preservation. The report was the latest in a series of items indicating that tensions between Washington and Jerusalem are at boiling point. The tensions were exacerbated by a decision this week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to advance the construction of over a thousand new settlement units, a move that prompted unprecedented condemnation from Washington.
Nonetheless, Rivlin, a rightist from Netayahu's Likud party, said "construction is not a provocation," but added that such construction should not be announced as retribution for a terror attacks or riots.
Tensions have been running especially high in the capital in recent weeks, with a terror attack on the city's Light Rail killing a 3-month-old baby and a conversion student, and subsequent clashes killing at least two Palestinian teens, one with US citizenship.
"If it was done as a provocation or as an attempt to exact a price in response to terror then it is wrong," Rivlin told the radio. "Even the US understands that we built Jerusalem and Jerusalem will stay built as it is in its entirety."
Rivlin is in Poland on his first foreign trip as president, joined an open-air ceremony at a monument honoring the fighters of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and attended the inauguration of a new Jewish museum.
In a further attempt to limit the fall-out from the damning article in The Atlantic, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, said Wednesday that personal attacks on Netanyahu by US officials do not show an accurate reflection of relations between Israel and the United States.
Prosor said that the ongoing strong relationship between the two countries could be seen in the way that the US stood firmly by Israel's side in any battles at the UN. The United States, Prosor told the radio, is a strategic ally of Israel.
The ambassador also lashed out Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who he said was inciting against Israel and inflaming tensions in Jerusalem. Israel, Prosor said, would continue to build in its capital and safeguard the freedom of worship in its holy places.
