It’s not easy to be the prime minister of the Jews, as Benjamin Netanyahu discovered yet again this week.
It began a week ago, in a meeting between Netanyahu and the residents of Amona and Ofra, the former being under the gun of demolition by order of the Supreme Court come December. In the meeting, as can be surmised from a Channel 2 News Wednesday report and from social media posts by the participants, Netanyahu warned that the Obama Administration could become very dangerous in its last two months in office, which is why they, the settlers, and the Israeli government must be careful not to provoke them.
As the news channel put it, the PM said, “It’s not only Amona, in the coming period between the elections in the US and the end of the Obama term our entire settlement enterprise is at risk.”
This was not the kind of explosive charge the Netanyahu government wanted to throw at the gates of the White House. In fact, Netanyahu was probably asking the residents for industrial quiet that would help keep the Administration’s attention on other things, such as the transition or the actual wars elsewhere on its doorstep.
On Wednesday night, Netanyahu’s office quickly denied the report, and stated, “Prime Minister Netanyahu never said the things that were attributed to him, but rather noted that past residents at the end of their term would promote initiatives that were not consistent with Israel’s interests. The Prime Minister reiterated that he hopes that [such misquotes] not be repeated, as he expects the US not to change its traditional policy of several decades to prevent anti-Israeli resolutions at the UN Security Council.”
And now we’ll all hold our breath until November 9, when a brave new world might just emerge for Israel…