Splitting the Difference?

Twice during his visit in the United States last week, Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu made comments on Jerusalem that sounded more compromising than his usual trope about the city forever remaining Israel’s indivisible capital. Did Netanyahu misspeak? Or was he hinting at greater Israeli flexibility in negotiations with the Palestinians?

The words might well have been calculated. Netanyahu is a careful orator. Speaking on the heels of a meeting with President Obama, he may have felt pressure to strike a conciliatory tone in order to lure Palestinians back to direct talks. One could imagine an exchange between the two leaders in which Netanyahu pledged to make painful compromises for peace, and Obama, tired of the opaque formulations, urged him to spell out publicly what he means.

Either way, we shouldn’t read too much into the remarks. Unlike his two predecessors, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu has not undergone a shift in thinking during his term in office. Not yet, anyway. Short of that, and without significant pressure either from political forces at home or from the White House, Netanyahu will not offer Palestinians anything close to the terms required to seal a peace deal.

First, Netanyahu’s comments: speaking to Jewish leaders on July 7, Netanyahu said in response to a question on negotiations over Jerusalem: “You all know that there are Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem that under any peace plan will remain where they are as part of Israel.” If Jewish neighborhoods will remain part of Israel, some reporters surmised, Netanyahu could be suggesting that Arab neighborhoods might come under Palestinian sovereignty. Three days later, the Israeli leader was asked on Fox News if he was willing to put East Jerusalem on the table as a possible capital of a Palestinian state. Just two months ago, Netanyahu declared that Jerusalem would never return to being divided, gloomy, and halved. In the interview, he said: “We have differences of views with the Palestinians. We want a united city; they have their own views. This is one of the issues that will have to be negotiated.”

I spoke to Malcolm Hoenlein, an American Jewish leader who oversaw the July 7 event (his title, executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, is a mouthful). He told me he collected questions in writing from the audience and then summarized them for Netanyahu. “I think he was just answering this as part of a complex question,” he said. “I don’t think he was intending to communicate a new policy.” Still, Hoenlein called Netanyahu’s aides the following morning and suggested they put out a clarification. None was issued.

Regarding the Fox interview, Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said in an e-mail: “We have been saying all along that the Palestinians can bring all the issues of concern to them to the negotiating table. We in turn will bring the issues of concern to us.” Asked if Netanyahu may have been floating a trial balloon, or if the remarks constituted a change in policy, he said, “No.”

The truth, inasmuch as it matters, probably lies somewhere in the middle: no, Netanyahu was not communicating a new policy, but he probably wasn’t just riffing, either. In the coded language of diplomacy, he was likely aiming to soften Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and appease Obama. Since two previous Israeli prime ministers had already agreed not just to negotiate the fate of East Jerusalem but to cede most of it to the Palestinians, it’s hard to imagine either Abbas or Obama was impressed.