Obama seeking regime change in Israel
I suspect that Jeffrey Goldberg is right about this. I've been on the phone with many of the usual suspects (White House and otherwise), and I think it's fair to say that Obama is not trying to destroy America's relations with Israel; he's trying to organize Tzipi Livni's campaign for prime minister, or at least for her inclusion in a broad-based centrist government. I'm not actually suggesting that the White House is directly meddling in internal Israeli politics, but it's clear to everyone -- at the White House, at the State Department, at Goldblog -- that no progress will be made on any front if Avigdor Lieberman's far-right party, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Eli Yishai's fundamentalist Shas Party, remain in Netanyahu's surpassingly fragile coalition.
So what is the goal? The goal is force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take into his government Livni's centrist Kadima Party (he has already tried to do this, but too much on his terms) and form a broad, 68-seat majority in Knesset that does not have to rely on gangsters, messianists and medievalists for votes. It's up to Livni, of course, to recognize that it is in Israel's best interests to join a government with Netanyahu and Barak, and I, for one, hope she puts the interests of Israel ahead of her own ambitions.
Why would Netanyahu want to do form a government with Livni at this point? It certainly wouldn't be any more stable. You'd probably have both a Likud breakoff (the Feiglin group) and a Kadima breakoff (Mofaz who would be peeved at not being Defense Minister again) within months.
And it's not Lieberman who's preventing 'progress' on the 'peace process.' It's the 'Palestinians.'
Goldberg is probably right about what the Obami are trying to do, but Obama has misread the map here as usual.
Israel Matzav: Obama seeking regime change in Israel
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