Netanyahu, America and the cow in the house..

Toni Karon in the National, here, via MOA.

"....The basic principle is simple: when you have a problem you can’t solve, create a bigger one. Plainly, Benjamin Netanyahu has a problem he can’t solve: Israel is highly dependent on US support, but America now has an administration determined to move quickly to end the conflict that has raged since Israel’s creation in 1948 by creating a viable, independent Palestinian state. And Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that he cannot accept such an outcome because he deems sovereign independence for the Palestinians to be an intolerable threat to Israel’s security.

So, how can Bibi change the subject? Well, for starters, he can appoint a foreign minister so bellicose, racist and downright scary that it allows Netanyahu himself to play the good cop. The former Moldovan nightclub bouncer and current West Bank settler Avigdor Lieberman caused a diplomatic flurry last week when he renounced any undertakings given by the last Israeli government under the Bush administration’s Annapolis process, saying that Israel was bound only by the 2002 road map – which as far as Israel is concerned requires the dismantling of Hamas before it requires anything much of the Israelis.

The second distraction will be the “Syria track”. While Mr Netanyahu has long rejected demands to hand back the Golan Heights, he will spend plenty of time sending out feelers and engaging in some form of “process” with the Syrians. We can’t have peace with the Palestinians, he’ll tell Washington, but there’s always the “Syrian track”: not that it’ll ever reach its destination.

Curiously, the secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s top Iran adviser, the pro-Israel hawk Dennis Ross, suggests in his new book that one way to scare reluctant Europeans into harsher sanctions against Iran is to have the Israelis make clear that they will launch a potentially catastrophic war if nobody else stops Iran. It seems that Mr Netanyahu has decided to use this tactic with the new US administration too...."