Washington, March 22: A pro-Israel conference opening Sunday exposed fears that a row over illegal Jewish settlements built on Palestinian territories had left scars in US-Israeli ties but raised the risk of Israeli strikes against Iran.
Hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — while he visits Washington this week for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) three-day annual policy conference — is now to meet President Barack Obama Tuesday.
The announcement ended speculation Obama might snub Netanyahu over his government’s plans for new settler expansion in Israeli-occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem — a move that prompted the Palestinians to freeze new peace talks.
A State Department official said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had asked her envoy George Mitchell, who was in occupied Jerusalem on Sunday, to pass along the invitation from Obama to Netanyahu.
Clinton will meet Netanyahu at the State Department following her speech to AIPAC on Monday morning, the official told reporters on the condition of anonymity. Netanyahu will speak to the pro-Israel lobby in the evening.
Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, told AIPAC that the crisis between the two allies is “serious” and “real” even if both sides now are trying to defuse it.
“When it is resolved — and I think it is in the process of being resolved — it will leave scars between the two sides, I think at the very highest levels,” said Satloff.
Analysts like Satloff warn the settlements row might complicate a US-led drive for tougher UN sanctions against Iran over its uranium enrichment work
Israel has threatened military strikes against Iran.
“I think that the impact of this crisis is to hasten Iranian efforts to achieve a nuclear weapons capability,” Satloff warned.
“And ultimately, because there are scars now in the US-Israeli strategic relationship,” the impact may be “even to hasten the clock on Israeli preventive action against that Iranian nuclear capability,” he said.
Evan Bayh, a Democratic senator who has pushed for tough US sanctions against Iran, warned that Tehran is making a “miscalculation” if it views the “rhetorical spat… as a lack of resolve” by Washington to halt Iran’s nuclear drive.
Bayh said “aggressive sanctions” were needed.
Sounding more pessimistic than optimistic, however, he said “now we have to turn towards perhaps contemplating the final option — the use of force — to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.”
His remarks triggered applause from the thousands of participants.
Sunday, Netanyahu vowed there would be no halt to illegal settlement building in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
His comments on settlements were quickly denounced by Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas as unhelpful to attempts to restart talks. Abbas also condemned the recent killing of four Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli forces.
Small groups of protesters, both non-Jews and Jews, stood outside the convention center protesting Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem in 1967. The Palestinian Holy City is considered by the international community to be illegally occupied by Israel.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
—Agencies