JERUSALEM: A weakening of US President Barack Obama’s Democrats in this week’s US Congressional elections would make Israel more resistant to demands for a new freeze on Jewish settlement, analysts say.
With peace talks on hold over a dispute about settlements, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is relying on Washington to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into halting construction in the occupied West Bank before he will return to the table.
But the outcome of Tuesday’s midterm vote, which is expected to see the Democrats emerge weakened, could well harden Israel’s negotiating position.
"Netanyahu would assess that a more Republican, or less Democratic Congress, might mean more unquestioning friends of Israel who are not likely to put heavy pressure, and are more likely to give knee-jerk support on all kinds of other issues," strategic analyst Yossi Alpher told AFP.
A weakening of the Democrats could encourage Netanyahu to dig in his heels, he said.
"Republican achievement … might therefore somehow improve Netanyahu’s negotiating flexibility, so he would be stalling until then," he said. "The closer you get to elections, the more that makes sense."
In an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post this week, US political gurus Stanley B. Greenberg and James Carville wrote that one of their recent surveys showed Republicans to be no more popular than Democrats at the moment.
Nevertheless, the pair, who coached Bill Clinton, Britain’s Tony Blair and Israel’s Ehud Barak in successful election campaigns, said: "It is hard to imagine that November 2 will be a good day for Democrats."
Jonathan Spyer, research fellow in international relations at the Interdisciplinary Centre near Tel Aviv, said Netanyahu and Abbas would each be waiting for the US election result, before showing his next hand.
"I think everybody expects that the Democrats will take significant losses and will be interested to see what the administration then chooses to do," Spyer said.
"The next move will be by the administration itself, following the midterm, and on the basis of what that move is, the (two) sides will begin to shift their positions accordingly."
Palestine Liberation Organization official Hanan Ashrawi said Obama had already been so soft on Israel that it was hard to see elections making a substantial difference.
"It’s going to be very difficult to see how the US administration can back off even more than it has so far," she said.
"It’s going to be very difficult to see any administration that is going to be so conciliatory and willing to accept all Israeli positions the way they have done so far."
Israel and the Palestinians began direct peace negotiations at the start of September but within weeks the talks ran aground after the expiry of a 10-month moratorium on settlement building.
Netanyahu faces stiff opposition to a fresh freeze within his right-wing coalition government and has so far refused to reimpose the ban.
Abbas is shunning talks as long as Israel continues to build on Palestinian land he wants for a future state, prompting intense US efforts to resolve the deadlock.
Arab League ministers, meeting in Libya on October 8, backed Abbas’s position but gave Washington one month to extract Israeli concessions and said it would review the situation then, just after midterm results are in.
Former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon, who was a regular visitor to Washington, made no secret of how important he considered Congress to be, holding frequent conference calls with key members.
While the White House set policy, he used to tell aides, Congress controlled the funds for turning policy into deeds.
"What Sharon said is absolutely right," Alpher said. "And Netanyahu knows the United States even better than Sharon did."
Raanan Gissin, a former Sharon advisor, said the fragility of the US economy gives Congress, with its control of the purse strings, more clout than in the past.
"This time Congress plays, I would say, a much more significant role, if only because of the fact that the dollar is weak," he said. "Therefore Congress can play a much more effective role.
"But when it comes to the actual executive decisions and moves that the president can take vis-à-vis Israel, he’s still the guy who rides the horse; he’s still the guy in the saddle."
Spyer said that while the election outcome might influence tactics, the fundamental gulf between Israel and the Palestinians remained.
"The broad dimensions of the game haven’t changed," he said. "Neither side believes in this process, the only people that ever believed in it were the US administration themselves."
