How Barack Beat Bibi

by Peter Beinart
The Daily Beast

Israel’s diplomatic war with the United States will likely end the same way its real war ended last year in Gaza: ambiguously. There will be no white flags or mission accomplished signs, just a slight tilt in the balance of power, a modest moving of the trench lines. Those lines aren’t fully demarcated yet, but in important ways the outcome is already clear: Barack Obama has won.

He’s won because he’s hurt Benjamin Netanyahu more than Netanyahu has hurt him. For decades, the relationship between an American president and an Israeli prime minister has resembled two guys with revolvers pointed at each other’s heads. For an Israeli prime minister, alienating your biggest patron is an excellent way to lose power—as Yitzhak Shamir learned after his showdown with George H.W. Bush and James Baker in the early 1990s. But for an American president, fighting with Israel almost always guarantees a fight with Congress, which tolerates little criticism of the Jewish state.

(More here.)