POLITICO
Time slipping for Obama Israel trip
By: Carrie Budoff Brown
October 31, 2011 11:32 PM EDT
Former President George W. Bush waited until his eighth year in office to
touch down in Israel. His father, George H.W. Bush, didn’t go at all.
Neither did Ronald Reagan.
But for President Barack Obama, the call of Israel has always been more
urgent.
Jewish leaders have been pressing Obama since he took office to carve out
time for Israel, arguing that a trip is needed to repair missteps in the
relationship with the key U.S. ally. But the window — and the expectations —
for a visit are quickly diminishing, leaving a potential missed
opportunity for a president who has been dogged by questions about his
commitment to
Israel.
“It is an error,” said former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who made peace with
Obama in September after being sharply critical of his record on Israel
and agreed to support his reelection. “If he didn’t go this year and he didn’
t go next year, it would result in an even greater reduction in Jewish
support.”
Complaints about Obama stem from the perception that he has been too tough
on Israel in his pursuit of Middle East peace — concerns that peaked last
spring when the president gave a speech calling on Israel to embrace the
country’s pre-1967 borders, with “land swaps” as a basis for peace talks.
Although that approach was what American negotiators had contemplated for an
eventual agreement, the stark language on borders at the outset of
negotiations prompted Republicans to accuse Obama of abandoning Israel and
drew
criticism from some Democrats, as well.
The White House gave “serious consideration” to a summer trip to Israel,
said former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), a lead liaison for the Obama
campaign with the Jewish community.
But domestic distractions piled up, and there are no longer any plans in
the works, at least at this point. Obama travels to France, about a
five-hour flight from Israel, for the opening of a conference Thursday of the
world’
s largest economies. And next week, he leaves on a nine-day trip to
Hawaii, Indonesia and Australia. The winter holiday season is typically
off-limits for foreign travel.
If Obama doesn’t go next year, he would break with the precedent set by
his two most recent Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter,
both of whom made the trip during their first term.
The White House wants to reserve a trip for a time when the president can
advance the peace process, according to people familiar with administration
thinking, but there is no immediate prospect of a breakthrough. And once
the calendar ticks over to 2012, a presidential trip to Israel could be
viewed as an overtly political exercise, further dampening the likelihood of a
trip.
Still, the political lure may be hard to resist heading into a tough
reelection fight in which Republicans intend to stoke doubts about Obama’s
record on Israel, which he last visited in 2008 as a presidential candidate.
“For other presidents it might have been a less glaring omission than for
a president who chose to make these issues a centerpiece of his foreign
policy and has had such a difficult time showing that his ‘unique approach’
has succeeded at all, if not set back the prospects for peace,” said Joshua
Block, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and a former
spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “In many ways, he
is
in a greater need of going to Israel.”
At a June fundraiser with Jewish supporters, Obama faced pressure on this
very question.
A donor asked the president whether he realized that he needed to go to
Israel “now” or at least in his first term, according to a source familiar
with the event. Obama responded that he would visit the country, but the
time had to be right and he didn’t want to go purely for a political benefit,
the source said.
J Street, a liberal Jewish group, launched a petition last spring urging
Obama “to go to Jerusalem” and detail his plan for achieving a two-state
solution for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
“It’s time for a presidential visit to Israel,” the petition stated.
Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) pressed the president several months ago,
following up on a request that he and other Democratic lawmakers made last
year.
“I got a big smile,” Rothman said of Obama’s response. “I don’t think
the president gets enough credit for all that he has done for Israel.”
Wexler, an early Obama backer and president of the S. Daniel Abraham
Center for Middle East Peace, said he fielded the question frequently — until
about two months ago.
“The focus was, ‘Where does the president stand on Israel?’ and to the
extent that there were questions, the trip to Israel was a part of that
narrative,” Wexler said in an interview. “But that narrative has been answered
in the strongest of terms.”
First, Obama took a personal role in ensuring that Israeli diplomats
caught in an early September siege of the country’s embassy in Cairo were
brought to safety. Then, later that month, Obama delivered a speech at the
United
Nations strongly condemning the Palestinian Authority’s quest for
statehood through a U.N. resolution. After that, Newsweek revealed that Obama
had
secretly agreed in 2009 to sell 55 bunker-busting bombs to Israel, making
good on a request first pursued during the George W. Bush administration.
“Those three items are so powerful in terms of the impressions made in the
American-Jewish community that a trip to Israel would be gravy,” Wexler
said.
An administration official said not visiting Israel in the first term “isn’
t unusual,” but “that doesn’t change the fact that the bilateral
relationship is very strong.” The official cited the president’s numerous
one-on-one meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama’s
support in ensuring Israel’s security, including $205 million in aid for a
short-range missile defense system known as Iron Dome.
His popularity in Israel does appear on the rise. A May survey of Israeli
Jews found only 12 percent thought U.S. policy was pro-Israel and 40
percent viewed it as pro-Palestinian. A survey taken after the U.N. speech
showed
that 54 percent thought Obama’s policy was favorable to Israel and 19
percent said it was pro-Palestinian. The Jerusalem Post commissioned both
polls, but they were conducted by different firms with different
methodologies,
making direct comparisons difficult.
In America, Obama’s support among Jews has declined over the past three
years, mirroring his drop in support among all voters, according to the
Gallup Poll. He won 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, and although he is
expected to win a majority again next year, some worry he won’t perform quite
as well.
A group of Obama’s closest Jewish supporters — including Wexler, senior
campaign strategist David Axelrod and Democratic National Committee
Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz — launched an offensive earlier this year
to
counter Republicans such as presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who said Obama “
threw Israel under the bus.”
“Much of the narrative that was out there was trumped up by Republicans,”
Wasserman Schultz said. “I reject the notion that there was widespread
concern other than it was from Republicans who cared more about partisanship
than Israel. … Presidents go to Israel at some point in their presidency.
The president will be no exception.”
David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said
Obama’s trips earlier in his presidency to Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia “
only make Israelis want the visit more.” But now Obama should wait until he
can advance the peace process, Harris said.
Block disagrees, saying there are many reasons to visit Israel, even if it’
s simply to show support for a key ally in a volatile region. Obama has
moved the relationship in a positive direction in recent weeks, and a visit
would only reinforce the trend, Block said.
“If he doesn’t do it,” Block said, “he is missing an opportunity to
underscore that our relationship with Israel goes well beyond simple questions
of the peace process, and it leaves him open to criticism that he didn’t
go.”
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