“He doesn’t know it yet … but to a large degree, he no longer functions as the most powerful man in the world, but as a run-of-the-mill staffer for the [Hillary] Clinton campaign.” This quote is from Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, who used a Sept. 22 interview with Army Radio to explain why US President Barack Obama is no longer relevant to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It reflects the very limited interest that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama in New York on Sept. 21 evoked among the Israeli media and in the political arena.
Hanegbi, interviewed the morning after the meeting, almost sounded bored when asked to comment on the possibility that Obama might try to impose the outline of a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on Israel in the remaining three months of his term. Adopting a bemused tone, Hanegbi asserted that if Republican candidate Donald Trump is elected, there is no doubt that he would either ridicule or ignore Obama’s plan. He also assessed that if Clinton is elected, “It is not at all certain that she will have any interest in adopting Obama’s vision.”