Obama and Netanyahu
Photo: Reuters
Obama believed Netanyahu 'too fearful' to reach two-state solution
The US president tells journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of a charged meeting with the Israeli PM, in which Obama snapped at Netanyahu's attempt to lecture him: 'You think I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but I do.'
US President Barak Obama believed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could have negotiated a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but he is "too fearful and politically paralyzed to do so," journalist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in an article in The Atlantic published on Thursday.
Goldberg's article, titled "The Obama Doctrine," explores the American president's foreign relations policies since coming into office in 2009. The article is based, among other things, on an interview the senior journalist did with Obama.
The president, Goldberg writes, "has not had much patience for Netanyahu and other Middle Eastern leaders who question his understanding of the region."
Obama had no patience for Netayahu's lectures (Photo: EPA)
In a meeting between Obama and Netanyahu at the White House in May 2011, Obama, Goldberg writes, felt Netanyahu was acting condescendingly when the Israeli prime minister launched into a lecture about the dangers of the Middle East. The president also thought Netanyahu was avoiding the topic at hand - peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
"Bibi, you have to understand something," Obama interrupted Netanyahu's lecture. "I’m the African American son of a single mother, and I live here, in this house. I live in the White House. I managed to get elected president of the United States. You think I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but I do."
Goldberg also reminded Obama of an interview in 2012, in which the US president said he would not allow Iran obtain nuclear weapons and declared: "I’m the president of the United States, I don’t bluff."
Shortly after that interview, Goldberg talked to Israel's defense minister at the time, Ehud Barak, who said the very claim by Obama that he doesn't bluff was a bluff in itself.
Obama, on his part, insists he would have attacked Iran's nuclear facilities "If I saw them break out."
"Now, the argument that can’t be resolved, because it’s entirely situational, was what constitutes them getting (the bomb). This was the argument I was having with Bibi Netanyahu," Obama told Goldberg.
"Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this," the president told Goldberg. "I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our profound national-security interests, I have a personal interest in locking this down."
Goldberg also tells of a conversation he had with Leon Panetta, who was Obama's first Secretary of Defense. Panetta told Goldberg that in the beginning of his first term, the new president sought to reexamine why the US should maintain Israel's qualitative military edge. Despite that, the military aid the US has been providing Israel has only increased throughout Obama's time in office.
