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Behind the images, what real prospects?

Thursday, July 8, 2010

HOW DO YOU TRY “to cement the warmth” of a relationship, I wonder? 

That was the weird verbal contortion attributed to White House staffers who were briefing correspondents on the aims behind this week’s encounter between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

The actual “main goal” according to all briefers on both sides was to advance the opening of face-to-face talks between Israel and the Palestinians, currently being brokered at second hand (as so-called “proximity talks”) by Obama’s envoy, former Senator George Mitchell. For this, we've been repeatedly told, the previously much-reported frostiness between the two leaders has had to be relegated to the past, or even claimed never to have existed – however inelegantly (warmed up?  ... cemented in?) this new firmly set and friendly scenario ended up being described.

But some even weirder verbatim reporting threatened this media-handling plan – not as badly as General Stanley McChrystal’s remarks in Rolling Stone magazine that further entwisted the whole AfPak imbroglio, but it was certainly disturbing enough to give everyone involved in Mid-East diplomacy some serious pause.

Just before the DC meeting the Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, was reported by Hebrew media (notably that highly reputable newspaper Haaretz) as having warned in informal conversation of a "tectonic rift" between the two countries.

 

Oren then claimed he was misquoted. He had in fact said "shift". He had not said “rift”.

 

And I say “Hmmm”.

   

 

AT LEAST, THOUGH, VISUAL EVIDENCE abounded throughout the White House encounter to convince viewers of greatly improved US-Israel relations. At any rate there were actually pictures this time – and a meal taken communally with the assembled foreign policy leadership teams at table  … unlike last time, in March, when there were no photos, no joint press conference, and a President who departed to dine in his private quarters while Israeli team were ostentatiously left alone to reflect on how unimpressed their host was with their pitch to him.

 

This time, even more ostentatiously (over-compensatingly, you might say) network cameras were encouraged to follow all the pomp and ceremony, and even tracked Obama in close-up as he hospitably walked Bibi to his car (above left).

But we should heed a trenchant, questioning headline from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the venerable (90 years old) global news service that’s “dedicated to serving the Jewish People”. The agency asked: “Nice pictures, but what did Obama and Bibi discuss?"

It had been agreed by both sides that no awkward specifics were to be tackled in any detail – and in post-summit media analysis, it’s been suggested that the “atmospherics” may now well be enough in themselves to help usher in a resumption of those all-too-devoutly-desired “direct talks”. The highlighted risks ahead seem to revolve, it’s being argued, around September’s scheduled expiry of the suspension (for what it’s been actually worth) in Israeli settlement construction.

I foresee a more imminent shot across the bows, if you'll forgive the metaphor, of any move to direct negotiations – one that has not been diminished at all by the careful pre-summit loosening (slightly) of Israel’s blockade against Gaza.

Memories will soon be rushing back of Israel’s fatal commando attack on the embargo-breaking flotilla in late May. Washington’s commentators seem to have limited powers of recollection; they haven’t been paying any attention to preparations being busily made right now (even as Netanyahu has continued on to New York before returning home) for another heavily-laden flotilla to sail toward Gaza in late July or August. It will include at least six craft from European nations as well as four Middle Eastern ships.

A statement from the organizers this week – not taken up and reported, I’m afraid, in any American news outlet – contained the threatening boast: “This Freedom Flotilla will be carrying surprises for the Israeli side".

And for the rest of world, I dare say.



A FOOTNOTE FOR DESTINY.  Yesterday we trudged across a momentous threshold in our culture.

Happy seventieth  ...  oh yes, happy seventieth birthday, to the ever joyously youthful Richard Starkey (above right).

  

 

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