Window on Israel: Maybe I should have been a tailor

This is one of those days when I wish I had taken up a profession other than academic craft of political science. Maybe tailoring or peddling, like my grandfathers.
 
Or maybe I should go back to school, where someone might be able to teach me to understand what I'm reading.
 
Israel's prime minister is saying that he agrees to a limited-time freeze on West Bank settlements, but only to take effect after he signs off on several hundred new building permits, then excludes them from the freeze along with some 2,500 units already under construction, along with schools and other public buildings that might be built in existing settlements. He is also saying that the freeze will not include neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
 
All that sounds good for Likud party activists who used terms like "traitor" when they heard that Netanyahu was agreeing to any freeze at all. However, it also recalls one of Tzipi Livni's slogans in the recent election campaign: "Bibi. I don't believe him."
 
Mahmoud Abbas has rejected Bibi's conception of a freeze, and refuses to begin negotiations with Israel.
 
That is not a great loss. Most Israelis have no faith in the outcome of such talks. We have heard from centrist commentators that the American president been unable to get any significant gestures toward Israel from the Palestinians or Arab governments that would compensate for the domestic political costs of a settlement freeze.
 
The American ambassador has said that he doubts Washington can accept the prime minister's position. A Jerusalem Post headline reads, "US slams Netanyahu construction plan."

That is a bit weightier than Abbas' reaction. It may be that only 4 percent of Israeli Jews feel that Barack Obama is supportive of their country. Many think that the American president is naive with respect to Israel and the Arabs, but it is even more naive to deal with any American president in the way Bibi's position is coming over the media.
 
The prime minister is denying reports that he referred to Obama's aides as "self-hating Jews."

The Secretary of State may be reminding the president what her husband said about Bibi: "Who the ---- does he think he is?"
 
Europe is not far behind the Americans. A headline on an Israeli internet site is that "Europe condemns Netanyahu's plan." 
 
What might be called measured optimism came from somewhere in Washington, attributed to a senior White House aide: "While [the administration] was unhappy about it - and it made that clear to the prime minister's aides - it still hoped and expected that the subsequent freeze would lead to renewed peace negotiations."

Could it be that Israel's prime minister thinks he can put something over on a White House that is having its own troubles?

It may be too early to diagnose the health bill as in extremis, but it is tottering. Opponents are getting traction for their charges that it would limit treatments to older folks, allow payment for abortions, reduce the benefits and increase the costs for the large majority of Americans with health insurance. Part of the argument is that there is not enough money to extend insurance to those who do not have it and preserve the benefits of those covered, in light of the deficit produced by expenditures already made to stop the economic meltdown.

Medicare takes a large share of government outlays on health, and is a tempting target for savings. Those who benefit from Medicare or expect to benefit soon are well organized to prevent reductions. And there are all those old children of older parents who do not want any increase in their own responsibilities.
 
There is also one of those headlines that upset political leaders who send troops to war. A bombing mission to destroy tanker trucks stolen by the Taliban caused an explosion that may have killed 100 people, most of them civilians.
 
Could this will be the straw that breaks the back of the American adventure in Afghanistan?
 
Nothing in my political science playbook indicates that it will be that simple.
 
My limited skills may be good enough to explain the sources of problems, but are far from adequate to know what is likely to happen.
 
Both Netanyahu and Obama are great speakers. Both talked themselves into high office, and further into situations that offer no obvious exits.
 
Netanyahu is caught between an unrelenting Palestinian entity that has been preaching unrealistic goals to a gullible population for more than six decades, an American administration trying to deal with someone else's problems with the compromises it creates, and a domestic political base that distrusts both the Palestinians and these Americans.
 
Obama has at least two sets of problems.
 
One is with the western world's most retarded health system, a population that fears the changes he is proposing, a resource base depleted by previous decisions, and political rivals pushing all the hot buttons they can find (death committees, abortion, socialized medicine, rationing).
 
The other is a foreign policy agenda featuring Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel-Palestine, each with their own contending forces likely to frustrate the treatments he is inclined, or able to offer.
 
What size shirt did you say you wear? I can use the skills acquired from one grandpa to sew it up, and those acquired from the other grandpa to peddle it in your neighborhood.