Ahead of US trip, Netanyahu sweats the agenda

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to jet off to Washington for his big date with US President Donald Trump, the press takes a look Monday morning at what the Israeli leader’s priorities will be, and finds the very agenda to be a source of considerable tension.

While Netanyahu may want to focus almost solely on Iran, as evidenced by the wishful-thinking front page headline of Israel Hayom (“The goal: Pressure on Iran and Hezbollah), his trip is being colored by his struggles with devils on each shoulder egging him on about the Palestinian issue.

Haaretz’s front page headline, story and art are about as elegant as a shopping list, but the paper manages to roll all the various elements surrounding Netanyahu’s visit into one package, attempting to give readers the most easy-peasy way to understand the strange situation that finds right-wing Netanyahu trying to tamp down on expectations from right-wing ministers before he meets with right-wing Trump who is perched on his left shoulder.

“Netanyahu: I support the two-state solution, but the Palestinians are refusing it; Trump: They will make concessions,” the paper’s main headline reads, above pictures of various Israeli politicians and their thoughts on the matter.

The paper’s story contains a number of leaked tidbits from Netanyahu’s pre-trip meeting with top ministers, in which they urged him to retreat from all this two-state talk and he pushed back, telling them of how Trump pressed him on the issue during their first phone call in January.

“Trump believes in a deal and in running peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians,” Netanyahu is quoted telling the ministers, according to an official. “We should be careful and not do things that will cause everything to break down. We mustn’t get into a confrontation with him.”

With all the pressure from the right, Haaretz (which features a large page 1 ad with the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s “representative” urging Netanyahu not to be pressured by the left) decides to join in with some pleading from the left, its lead editorial rebuffing Jewish Home head Naftali Bennett’s claims that mention of a two-state solution will make the earth shake.

“Bennett wants to drag Trump into the Israeli madness. He wants to shove the Palestinians into a corner, sow despair among them and remove all hope for a diplomatic process. If Netanyahu listens to this nonsense he will seriously damage Israel’s ties with the nations of the world, particularly the European Union, undermine efforts to advance peace with Arab countries and push Israel down the fascist abyss with no one to wave a moral warning sign in front of it,” the paper writes. “The State of Israel cannot allow itself to be managed in accordance with the dictates of an extreme nationalist party, which wants to annex the occupied territories and turn Israel into an apartheid state.”

Yedioth’s headline: “Between the White House and Jewish Home,” puts the brewing clash in even simpler terms (as does an editorial cartoon on the op-ed page making Bennett out to be a gremlin on the plane’s wing as Netanyahu flies to the US). The paper reports that despite pressure from the right flank, Netanyahu does not intend to even broach the subjects of ramping up settlement building, annexing the settlement blocs and moving the embassy as he tries to steer clear of ending up on the wrong end of a Trump tweet.

On the paper’s op-ed page, Nahum Barnea compares Trump to a drunk driver, with no thought-out policy, and the very fact that Washington is as likely as not to support annexation or other right-wing wish-list items is what is pushing Netanyahu to sound notes of caution — in order to save his political skin domestically.

“Netanyahu is engaged in a complicated battle with Bennett and right-wing Likud ministers. This group sees Trump’s election as a one-time opportunity to annex the West Bank. Netanyahu fears annexation, and no less than that, fears Bennett gaining politically. He is ensconced in the status quo and needs an American president who will back him,” Barnea writes. “Any achievements from the trip will be thanks to him and not the pressures of the settlement lobby. It’s not by chance that Netanyahu said yesterday at the cabinet meeting that opposed to others, what interests him during the trip is strengthening defense. Strengthening defense is a code name for Iran. Iran in, Bennett out.”

Indeed Iran is in like National Security Adviser Michael Flynn… as in it may not be the White House’s number 1 favorite thing to talk about right now. But nonetheless, Israel Hayom reports that the Palestinians are only number 3 on Israel’s agenda, after “putting pressure on Iran, and ensuring Iran has no presence in Syria in any arrangement reached on Syria between the US and Russia.”

Despite the sides possibly not seeing eye to eye, columnist Boaz Bismuth is still excited for the meeting and writes that it’s only natural for the Trump administration to show signs of Stockholm syndrome after being held under the spell of Barack Obama’s brainwashing Israel-hatred for so long.

“For the last eight years the world has not stopped broadcasting to itself the chorus: the Israeli occupation is the source of the conflict and the source of the Middle East’s problems. Even many Israelis joined in. The Trump administration is not cut off from the world. It’s not easy to change a recording in a night,” he writes, making sure to remind readers on several occasions of his own meeting with Trump and slobbering over the president as well. “At least with me, he proved to be a man of his word, and so we can be optimistic that he’ll be so with moving the embassy to Jerusalem as well, in a proper pace, according to developments. One can guess that the visit this week will be especially successful. We couldn’t say that if he were visiting Hillary Clinton.”