Richard Haass: Netanyahu Thinks His Prospects Will Improve by Upending Relations with the U.S.

EXCERPT:

HAASS: “Look, over the last 76 years, the United States and Israel have had their moments of friction, shall we say. You may remember Reagan, his phone call with Menachem Begin over what was going on in Lebanon, where I worked for George Bush, the father. We had all sorts of frictions then about Soviet Jews and the subsidies, bringing them into the occupied territories. But every one of those Israeli prime ministers, his goal was to calm things down because he recognized the United States is the most important partner for Israel. And what this reminds me of is something very different. It goes all the way back to 1956 when the United States under Eisenhower had a really confrontational relationship with Israel over Israel’s participation with Britain and France in the invasion of Egypt after the nationalization by Nasser of the Suez Canal. You literally have to go back to 1956 for such a confrontational moment in U.S./Israeli relations. And what this tells me is Israel now has a prime minister — let’s put aside the fact that many of us think what he is doing is ill-advised — that we have a prime minister who seems to be politically thinking that his prospects will improve not by managing Israel’s most important relationship, but by upending it, by saying he's the only force that stands between Israel and the American pressure. That is something qualitatively different."