Iran talks: Obama’s legacy, Netanyahu’s failure
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's focus this week on a coalition crisis and not on the nuclear talks in Vienna indicates the loss of his influence as much as the lack of US interest in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, now that Iran talks with the United States.
On Nov. 23, one day before the nuclear talks between Iran and the superpowers were scheduled to end, US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Vienna preparing for another marathon session of meetings to extricate the negotiations from a dead end. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was chairing the most volatile and turbulent Cabinet meeting since the current government was formed.
Netanyahu insisted on putting up for vote the potentially explosive nationality bill, born within the extreme right wing of his coalition. He insisted on that despite resentment on the part of his coalition partners, Ministers Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid, who voted against it. Throughout the Cabinet meeting there was a steady stream of reports that Netanyahu, Livni and Lapid were exchanging harsh words.
The nuclear talks in Vienna were overshadowed by the storm surrounding the nationality bill, so that not one of the ministers even dealt with the latest developments in Vienna and the implications an agreement would have on Israel, should one be reached. It did not matter that the topic was of supreme importance to Israel’s security interests, especially given the priorities that Netanyahu had been preaching for over the years.
Netanyahu did inform his ministers at the beginning of the Cabinet meeting that he had been “anxiously monitoring” the latest developments in Vienna and clarified yet again that any agreement with Iran would be bad news — for Israel, the Middle East and all of humanity. Right after that, however, he dove back into the coalition crisis that he himself had provoked. If Justice Minister Livni and Finance Minister Lapid refuse to support the proposed law in a Knesset vote on Nov. 26, and Netanyahu decides to fire them, the crisis could lead to the dismantling of his government and early elections.
