Navigate to News section

Obama and Bibi Tag-Team for Friendship

Two happy faces, at least for the press

by
Allison Hoffman
July 06, 2010
The two heads-of-state today.(Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
The two heads-of-state today.(Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

How often do you hear Mark Twain quoted at a high-level diplomatic summit? Not often enough, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to do his part to fix that: In his brief appearance today at the Oval Office with President Obama, Netanyahu announced that, pace Twain, rumors of the demise of the U.S.-Israel relationship are greatly exaggerated. In fact, they’re “flat wrong.” (Video here; transcript here.)

It was the first joint appearance by the two men in months, and a departure from their recent pattern of press blackouts and leaked reports of snubs. But with Israeli-Turkish relations maybe on the (slow) mend and both the Israelis and the Palestinians making refreshingly positive noises about the prospects for moving from proximity talks to direct peace negotiations, whatever topics Netanyahu and Obama needed to discuss, in “robust” fashion, in private—settlements, Iran, nuclear non-proliferation, the World Cup—were evidently overshadowed by the importance, for both, of giving off the impression of being copacetic.

So, in front of an audience limited to the American and Israeli press pool, they sat side by side, Bibi in a black-and-white striped tie and Obama in a red one, tag-teaming to give sunny responses. Is Netanyahu a partner for peace? “I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu wants peace. I think he’s willing to take risks for peace,” Obama assured. How quickly will things move now that we’re heading into the last few months of the settlement-construction freeze? “When I say the next few weeks, that’s what I mean. The president means that, too,” Netanyahu insisted.

Netanyahu will meet later this afternoon with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who got on the phone earlier today with Netanyahu’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, and with envoy George Mitchell, before joining Netanyahu and Obama for lunch. Tomorrow, Bibi will be in New York to address Jewish leaders at the Plaza Hotel; we’ll have more for you as the week goes on.

Related: Personal History [Tablet Magazine]

Allison Hoffman is a senior editor at Tablet Magazine. Her Twitter feed is @allisont_dc.