Enabled by Obama, Netanyahu Attempts to Hold Back the Tide of History

The same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's received his "wildly receptive" welcome from the U.S. Congress Financial Times Associate Editor Philip Stephens wrote that "Elsewhere, Britain has been frustrated by Washington's refusal to back publication by the international community of the essential parameters of an Israeli-Palestine peace agreement." Translation: It is the U.S. that is preventing the major world powers from expressing the international consensus on the way forward in "peace process." Stephens continued, "The president's willingness to offend Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's obdurate prime minister, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for progress in the region." "But it's a catastrophe for Israel's foreign policy," said the paper. "Sure, Netanyahu was applauded in Congress, and he thanked [Barack Obama] repeatedly for his support of Israel. But the audience for his speech and visit weren't just US politicians, who would stand by him anyhow. Instead of an Israeli vision of a peaceful Middle East, once again only the memory of Netanyahu's many refusals will remain in the mind of the global audience." "So Netanyahu is losing," says [Carlo Strenger]. "But the real victims of his rightwing government's disastrous policies are the people of Israel. The specter of Israel's ever-growing isolation and increasing international pressure on it looms large. As Israeli prize-winning historian and political scientist Zeev Sternhell writes in Haaretz, 'Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state'."