Boiling Point for US-Israeli Relations: The Warning to Israel from Within

UPDATE (9 August, 1920 GMT): The Israeli Government is bringing the hammer down on Nadav Tamir after his criticism of the Netanyahu Government and its endangerment of US-Israeli relations. He has been summoned home and disciplined for his "very regrettable" memorandum.

You want to know how much trouble is Tamir in? Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon not only went public on Army Radio with criticism of the diplomat. He took the trouble to Twitter, "Nadav Tamir's document was not the work of a professional and contained more opinion than data."

How serious is the effect on US-Israeli relations of Israel’s uncompromising hard line on Palestine?

According to the Israeli daily newspaperHaaretz, Israel's consul general in Boston, Nadav Tamir, wrote a warning letter to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Tamir accused the Netanyahu Government of endangering relations with Washington and risking the alienation of the Jewish lobby in the United States:

The manner in which we are conducting relations with the American administration is causing strategic damage to Israel. The distance between us and the US administration has clear consequences for Israeli deterrence.

There are American and Israeli political elements who oppose Obama on an ideological basis and who are ready to sacrifice the special relationship between the two countries for the sake of their own political agendas.

There has always been a discrepancy in the approaches of both states [on the issue of settlements], but there was always a level of coordination between the governments. Nowadays, there is a sense in the United States that Obama is forced to deal with the obduracy of the governments in Iran, North Korea, and Israel.

The administration is making an effort to lower the profile of the disagreements, and yet it is [Israel] that...is highlighting the differences.

The letter of Israel's Consul General is an explicit rejection of Israeli political language, which has been intensifying around the importance of Israeli ethnicity and Judaism, especially on the issue of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Moreover, it underlines the effect on US perceptions. Israel’s image is shifting from a democratic and modern ally to “the source of obduracy” in the region as Israeli politicians dig in their heels on the issue of a freeze on settlements.

Indeed, the wider context bears out the pertinence of Tamir’s warning, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s ultra-nationalism and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s selective reading of political history.

In an interview with The Times of London in June, Lieberman  applied the “clash of civilizations” theory to the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was part of a broader "clash of values between civilizations" and was not the key for bringing peace to the region. He asserted, "With 9/11 and terrorist acts in London, Madrid, Bali, in Russia, I can't see any linkage with the Israeli-Palestinian problem."

In his major foreign policy speech in June, Netanyahu rejected an open approach to negotiations for a one-sided presentation of history:

Those who think that the continued enmity toward Israel is a product of our presence in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is confusing cause and consequence… The attacks against us began in the 1920s, escalated into a comprehensive attack in 1948 with the declaration of Israel’s independence, continued with the fedayeen attacks in the 1950s, and climaxed in 1967, on the eve of the six-day war, in an attempt to tighten a noose around the neck of the State of Israel… All this occurred during the fifty years before a single Israeli soldier ever set foot in Judea and Samaria.

Palestine, for the Prime Minister, is always “the other” Israel's “universal, modern and right” values…

It is these statements that are the target of Tamir’s letter. Can Lieberman and Netanyahu sustain these statements when there are increasing doubts in Washington --- both because of the direct consequences for Palestine and the wider efects in the region --- over whether the political situation issustainable?