Israeli Press Skeptical of Obama-Netanyahu Negotiations

As President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepare to hold their first White House meeting, the diplomatic stakes are high -- and Israelis are showing mixed feelings over the outcome of the leaders' negotiations.

In a Smith Research poll released Sunday and reported on in The Jerusalem Post, 31 percent of Israelis said they consider Obama to be pro-Israel, while 14 percent consider him pro-Palestinian and 40 percent feel he is neutral. The other 15 percent didn't give an opinion.

The poll of 500 Israelis was conducted last week. It had a 4.5 percent margin of error.

At the center of the negotiations will be the implementation of a Palestinian state -- a compromise Netanyahu's senior aides say he may resist -- and a viable approach toward diplomacy with Iran and Syria. But a string of Israeli news editorials suggest the two men face an uphill battle in achieving a resolution, and that both leaders remain skeptical of one another.

"Netanyahu needs to concentrate on doing what he knows is right," wrote Ophir Falk in Yediot Aharonot, Israel's most widely-circulated newspaper. "Israel and its American ally clearly have a list of urgent issues to address. These include the global economic crisis and the imminent nuclear threat. The establishment of a Palestinian state is not of top priority. In fact, the Palestinian state may be a non-issue."

Yediot Aharonot's Eitan Haber wrote: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu feels like a fish in an aquarium in Washington. After spending some years in the U.S. earlier in his life, he is more American than some of the Americans who will surround him at the Blair House. He is the only Israeli prime minister who fully understands what hides behind every polite and hypocritical statement. He cannot be fooled."

But others are wishful for progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

"There will be no cozy getting-to-know-you chat in the Oval Office but rather a clear discussion as to whether Israel is going to be a partner to American efforts to improve its relations with the Muslim world or whether we are returning to the fraught days of Israeli-U.S. relations when Yitzhak Shamir was prime minister and George H. Bush was occupying the White House," wrote Jeff Barak of The Jerusalem Post.

"Obama is warning Israel not to go it alone and wants time to see whether his proposed dialogue with Tehran will bear fruit. As part of his plan to defang Iran, the American president needs not just quiet, but progress on the Israeli-Arab front," Barak continued.

Others, like Akiva Eldar of Ha'aretz, spell a potentially ominous outcome of Monday's negotiations: "Today's conversation between the two men could produce a much worse outcome: an agreement to set up 'task forces' to 'prepare the ground to renew negotiations' based on a two-state solution.

"This would allow the next Israeli prime minister to say that this miserable formula has guided four Israeli prime ministers and three American presidents. If Obama strives to develop mechanisms like the road map, the Annapolis Declaration and task forces, he might go down in history as the American president who put the final nail in the coffin of the Oslo process," Eldar wrote.