The state of relations between the Trump administration and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is becoming increasingly reminiscent of the story told about an initiative by the Israeli Embassy in Washington and Israel supporters in Congress to add Israel to the United States as its 51st state. “God forbid,” Netanyahu cables his ambassador in Washington. “Are you nuts? Drop this stupid idea. You want to leave us with only two senators?”
Mossad Director Yossi Cohen, the man charged with Israel’s clandestine diplomacy, spoke this week about a positive change, “at the highest level, which we find very pleasant” in the US approach to Israel since President Donald Trump took office. Speaking at an Oct. 22 Finance Ministry seminar, Cohen said, “There is some sort of feeling, which I share, that the differentiation [by the Trump administration] between the good guys and the bad guys is more dichotomous, simpler and clearer.”
Cohen was referring to the change in the administration’s position on Iran, supposedly a consensual diplomatic-strategic issue. However, the inflationary use that Prime Minister Netanyahu is making of the “Iran threat,” raising “the bomb” at every rally ahead of the upcoming Oct. 30 municipal elections and at each campaign event in Likud Party branches, has turned the issue into a political matter. Seniors in Israel’s defense and academic echelons believe that Trump’s differentiation between the good guys and the bad guys in the Iran nuclear story is way too dichotomous and simplistic. As mentioned in an Al-Monitor article, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and former diplomacy-defense coordinator Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad believe the agreement between world powers and Iran on its nuclear program is better than no agreement, despite all its faults.
“The differentiation between the good and the bad” — to quote the Mossad director — does not apply only to the Iranian arena. It is also implemented in the Israeli-Palestinian channel. Thus, the Trump administration decided to relocate its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and to ignore new Israeli construction in its West Bank settlements, and at the same time to shut down the Palestinian mission in Washington and to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The first two decisions favored the Netanyahu government, while the other two punished Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
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