Five Tips for John Kerry In Dealing With Israel
Nadav Eyal offers ideas for Senator John Kerry, nominee for US Secretary of State, on how best to manage US-Israel relations.
Welcome to the Middle East, Mr. John Kerry. True, you are an authority on foreign affairs and you bring with you to the job vast knowledge and rich experience. However, all that does not render you error proof. And if you need justification for this, take Hillary Clinton as a case in point — she is a living example of the axiom that expertise alone does not keep you from failure.
So, in anticipation of your collaboration with the next Israeli prime minister — which, by the way, is going to be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — here are some tips to help you cope with Israel and the Israeli public in the next few years.
1. Don’t climb trees you can't get down from, and don’t set the bar too high.
You may say that this is obvious advice. In fact, the American demand posed by President Barack Obama that all building activity in the Israeli settlements be frozen as a precondition for opening negotiations with the Palestinians turned out to be a complete failure. As is well known, Netanyahu’s consent to the freeze did not lead to the hoped-for contacts with Palestinian Authority President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), and this failure let the Israeli prime minister demonstrate to the Israeli public (as well as to the American political establishment) his basic argument — namely, that there was no partner to peace negotiations.
