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A friend in need

Jacob Weisberg
SINCE the first stirrings of the Arab-Israeli peace process after the Yom Kippur war in 1973, America's relations with Israel have been characterised by a paradox: those presidents regarded as the least friendly to the Jewish state have done it the most good. Its strong allies have proved much less helpful.
This history begins with Jimmy Carter, who threatened a cutoff of American aid to pressure Menachem Begin into returning all of Sinai to Egypt, which made possible the 1979 Camp David agreement. The other significant US contribution to Mideast peace came under the first George Bush.
When the Israelis refused to participate in the 1991 Madrid conference, Secretary of State James Baker withheld loan guarantees and said that Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir should call him when he got interested in peace. Madrid led to a peace treaty with Jordan, the recognition of Israel by many other countries and the first face-to-face negotiations with Palestinians.
By contrast, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, all trusted friends, often encouraged Israel's worst tendencies. Reagan looked benignly upon biblically based claims of ownership over the West Bank, Israel's occupation of Lebanon and its refusal to talk to the PLO.
Under Clinton, "we never had a tough or honest conversation with the Israelis on settlement activity," former peace negotiator Aaron David Miller writes in his memoir, The Much Too Promised Land.
George W. Bush continued to ignore the settlements, neglected the peace process and condoned Israel's military misjudgments in the West Bank, Lebanon and Gaza. The actions of these presidents steadily built up Arab resentment while fostering Israeli illusions that there was an alternative to trading land for peace.
Happily, Obama seems poised to defy this old dichotomy. That he means well for Israel there's little doubt. "I haven't just talked the talk. I've walked the walk when it comes to Israel's security," Obama told a Jewish group during the campaign.
Hillary Clinton, George Mitchell and Joe Biden can make the same claim. White
House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has an Israeli father and once served as a civilian volunteer for the Israeli Army. That this crew is serious about pressuring Israel is equally apparent. In his Cairo speech, Obama demanded that Israel freeze its settlements in the West Bank and enter peace negotiations with the Palestinians based on the principle of two states.
This is a gutsy step forward. Being a good friend to Israel today means leaning harder on the Jews and the Arabs to get serious about a deal. And even if they don't produce a peace agreement, Obama's personal commitment and evenhanded reframing of the conflict could have large benefits.
The perception that US is pushing its ally Israel as well as the Palestinians should help America's standing in the Middle East enormously. But to carry off this coup, Obama will have to do the nearly impossible several times over.
First, he needs to force either a change in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself or a change in the Knesset. In Israeli politics, Bibi has always stood for the proposition that the Palestinians will settle only for the destruction of the Zionist state.
After a decade out of power, his hostility to an independent Palestine clearly hasn't dimmed, and has been compounded by a dangerous fixation on striking militarily against Iran's nuclear capability. But Netanyahu is also a cunning politician who knows he can't survive mismanaging his country's most important relation-
ship. Obama's gamble is that the Israeli public, if not Bibi himself, will take the threat of diminished American support seriously.
At the same time, the president needs to assuage nervous American Jews. If this were any other ally, the next diplomatic steps would be fairly simple. You want us to keep supplying nearly 20% of your defence budget? Selling you our most advanced weapons? Sticking up for you at the UN? Enough with the settlements. But a too-overt use of leverage courts a dangerous backlash from Christians and Jew’s who suspect the president of clandestine Muslim tendencies.
Conservatives are keen to encourage those doubts. So far, Team Obama has gone at the problem in a canny way by lining up Israel's allies in Congress in support of his tough-love policy’. When Netanyahu visited Capitol Hill last month, he was surprised to discover that many of Israel's strongest backers were on Obama's side.
Of course, brokering a comprehensive settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the fantasy of every president since Nixon and the achievement of none of them. Even as he presses for peace, our supremely confident president should bear in mind that the odds overwhelmingly favour failure.
We-sberg is chairman and editor in chief of the Slate Group
©Newsweek Intematcnal. All rights reserved Reprinted by arrangement.
***Of course, brokering a comprehensive settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the fantasy of every president since Nixon and the achievement of none of them. Even as he presses for peace, our supremely confident president should bear in mind th'atthe odds overwhelmingly favour failure.***