by Richard Baehr
Public opinion polls suggest that Americans have turned against the
much ballyhooed nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran, just weeks
after the agreement was said to have been signed and the six-month
trial period was to begin in which negotiations for a more comprehensive
agreement would take place.
It turns out, of
course, that the agreement has still not been finalized, and no
restrictions on Iran's nuclear activities have yet been put in place.
This weekend, Iranians briefly walked out of the Geneva discussions,
supposedly upset that some new firms and individuals were named by the
Obama administration as violators of existing sanctions which are still in place today, and that are to be maintained over the six-month period of the agreement, whenever it actually begins.
Democrats in the U.S.
Senate, taking their cue from the White House and Secretary of State
John Kerry, have caved to the executive branch pressure, and folded on
passing new sanctions that would have come into effect at the end of the
six-month period of the preliminary agreement. While the House of
Representatives may pass a tough new sanctions bill offered by Illinois
Congressman Peter Roskam and a few other members from both parties,
Harry Reid, the president's loyal servant in the Senate, will ensure
that no vote occurs on the legislation there, where a vote against new
sanctions by Democratic senators could alienate some Jewish voters and
donors, a key Democratic constituency in a year that is shaping up to be
a very difficult one for Democrats.
The mid-term elections
involve the job security of a dozen or so senators, and these jobs are
the ones the president and his party are most interested in preserving.
Pretty much every presidential announcement, initiative, and Senate vote
or delay is now focused on protecting vulnerable Democratic senators up
for re-election in 2014 or running in open-seat races where Democrats
are retiring from seats they now hold. The big problem for Democrats in
retaining their Senate majority, and holding onto these seats is the
continued political disaster associated with the roll-out of Obamacare,
which began Oct. 1.
The next big date for
the inappropriately named Affordable Care Act is Jan. 1, 2014, when
those who believe they have signed up in the new healthcare exchanges
(so far only about 360,000 people, barely a sixth of the number expected
by this date) are supposed to begin to get coverage. However, the
healthcare.gov website that was nonfunctional in October and much of
November is still transmitting bad information on enrollees to the
insurance companies, in as many as 25 percent of the enrollment
applications. There are also people who have signed up for coverage but
not yet paid for it, and insurance companies do not generally provide
free care.
Add to this the 6
million Americans who have been informed by their insurance companies
that their current individual health insurance policies will terminate
on Dec. 31. These people are scrambling to find new coverage unless
their insurer has elected to reinstate their canceled policy for a year
(a change now permitted by the White House and authorized in some, but
not all, states, despite earlier rules that required the policy
cancellations).
The current chaos, and
the anxiety many people are feeling about their health insurance
coverage and what happens on Jan. 1, have the makings of another public
relations disaster for the president, and his party, which passed the
Affordable Care Act on a straight party line vote in 2010.
A new poll suggests
that tens of millions of Americans whose coverage is not (yet) at risk
are nervous about the changes caused by Obamacare and
anticipate it will impact them in the future: "The poll found a
striking level of unease about the law among people who have health
insurance and aren't looking for government help. Those are the 85% of
Americans who, the White House says, don't have to be worried about the
president's historic push to expand coverage for the uninsured. In the
survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage
say their policies will be changing next year -- mostly for the worse.
Nearly four in five (77%) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act,
even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law's
passage."
It should therefore be
no surprise that the president may be looking for another distraction in
January, a blockbuster distraction, that will suggest to some remaining
true believers that there is still a functioning presidency working on
significant things and not screwing them up. The Iran deal was one such
potential blockbuster, but most Americans now seem to expect that Iran
will not observe the agreement, and the deal will not set back their
nuclear program nor change their intentions to develop a nuclear weapon.
The January blockbuster
that the president is hoping for would be an interim deal between
Israel and the Palestinian Authority that Secretary of State John Kerry
can announce at some point, a big enough story that it could drive
Obamacare out of the news for a few days. It is why Kerry continues to
return to Israel and works doggedly on a deal.
Former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton traveled a million miles in her four years on the
job, being treated like the royalty she believes is only fitting for her
at every stop along the way. But she accomplished nothing of substance,
and her years as secretary of state had the political misfortune to
have the Benghazi attacks occur near the end of her watch. Clinton took
the safe approach in her travels, not reaching for policy achievements,
but collecting lots of photographs and videos of every handshake with
every foreign leader, so that in her next run for the White House, in
2016, she can act as if she were already a recognized leader on the
world stage.
Kerry, on the other
hand, seems anxious to burnish his reputation as an active secretary of
state, with accomplishments. He may believe, like many presidential
candidates before him who failed to win the prize the first time they
tried (Al Gore, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan,
George H. W. Bush, and Richard Nixon among them) that he may have a
second chance to step up to the biggest stage.
The odds always seem
long against an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. It is hard to see how the
current environment is more conducive to an agreement than the Camp
David talks in 2000, which occurred before the Palestinians were divided
into two distinct political entities in the Gaza Strip, run by Hamas,
and the West Bank, run by the PA. The Palestinians have never shown any
real interest in a final agreement that would end all claims against
Israel.
This was apparent at
Camp David. The Palestinian movement for over half a century has focused
less on gaining statehood as one of two states, than it has been to
first prevent and then to destroy and/or replace the State of Israel.
The education of Palestinian children, the messages in PA radio, TV and
newspapers, the continued international efforts at delegitimizing
Israel, and the sponsorship of boycott, divestment and sanctions
activities with nongovernmental organization financing, all suggest that
Palestinian leaders are not now, and never have been, ready to prepare
their population for a peace agreement with Israel. The intermittent
terror activity against Israelis, whether by PA-affiliated groups,
Hamas, and now even more radical Salafist operatives, all seem designed
to broadcast to Israelis that they can never be complacent about their
security, nor feel safe.
Of course, odds were
long against a preliminary deal with Iran being reached, given the
history of relations and negotiations between Americans and Europeans on
one side and Iran on the other, since 1979. As a party to the recent
nuclear deal, the Americans, of course, had some ability to move an
agreement along by making concessions. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict
is different in that the two parties can be pressured by the Americans
(with more pressure applied to one side) but both have to agree to a
deal for an agreement to be concluded.
The American desire for a deal,
and the pressure on Israel, will rise if the Obamacare problems become
uglier in January. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be following
the healthcare news from the U.S. with great interest.
Richard Baehr
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6681
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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