Ehud Ya’ari addresses a sold out public forum; “Israel and Obama: Dealing with Iran, Turkey and their proxies”
UIA and AIJAC co-hosted a public forum on Monday 12th July at Beth Weizmann. A sold out audience of over 360 people heard from Ehud Ya’ari; Chief Middle East commentator and Israel’s best known and highly regarded analyst on Middle East issues. Dr. Colin Rubenstein AM, Executive Director AIJAC chaired the evening and UIA Treasurer Julian Black did the vote of thanks to Ehud Yaari.
Yaari: Obama’s policy back flip
The foreign policy team of US President Barack Obama is undertaking a reassessment of its policy all over the Middle East, including Israel argued Israel’s leading Channel 2 commentator Ehud Yaari in an overflowing AIJC/uia function he addressed in Melbourne on July 12.
No one has made or will make a public declaration about such a change,he said, but a reassessment is nonetheless underway, and we can already detect the first products of this rethinking of policy.
The policy of keeping a distance from Israel, of picking fights with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, led nowhere. There was a nominal freeze of construction in the settlements. The settlement freeze was not important in the first place and the president has decided, as you could tell during his latest meeting with Netanyahu, not to make it the central issue anymore. Instead we are going to see a policy which emphasises cooperation with Israel, understanding of Israel, working together, hand in hand, to bring the Palestinians to direct negotiations with Israel, instead of what is now in place – proximity talks
They have reached the conclusion that keeping a distance from Israel, picking unnecessary fights with Israel, was not going to advance the peace process. They are not getting anything in return from the Arab world. This is why Rahm Emanuel, Chief of Staff to President Obama, when he came to Israel recently on a private visit, a bar mitzvah for his son, said in so many words, “We screwed up.”
Yaari also argued there has also been a profoundly important change of heart in Washington D.C. concerning Iran- that he option of accepting a nuclear Iran, unwillingly of course, and then trying to contain it, which has been advocated by many important players on the American foreign policy scene is now apparently off the table.There is an understanding by the administration that in no way can Iran be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon, he concluded.