To Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, peace between the US and Iran is an existential threat. By now, it should be clear to all: It's not an Iranian nuclear bomb he fears, but a US-Iran deal.

In a tweet earlier this morning, the Prime Minister said as much: "We are strongly opposed to the agreement being formulated between the world powers and Iran that could endanger Israel's very existence."

So we have gone from Netanyahu declaring an Iranian bomb an existential threat to Israel, to a deal between the world powers and Iran an existential threat.

And it's not the specifics of the deal that is the problem, but the very notion of a deal involving the US and Iran. In fact, his Minister of Defense declared that any deal would be a threat.

Netanyahu's hypocrisy is astounding. As I describe in A Single Roll of the Dice -- Obama's Diplomacy with Iran, Netanyahu has always opposed diplomacy with Iran. 

Not because he feared it would fail, but precisely because he feared it would work. When President Obama took office in 2009 and began his outreach to Tehran, Netanyahu launched a campaign to undermine Obama centered on four key areas.

First, he pressed Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran before talks began, presumably to ensure that the escalatory measure would ensure that diplomacy never took off at all. 

Second, he pressed Obama to adopt the Bush administration's completely unrealistic goal to eliminate all Iranian uranium enrichment. 

Again, such a measure would ensure that diplomacy never took place -- the breakthrough in diplomacy took place once the US dropped that demand.

Third, Netanyahu wanted Obama to continue Bush's rhetoric of insisting that the military option remained on the table. Obama had famously stated that the conflict with Iran could not beresolved by issuing threats.

ISRAELIS go to the polls next Tuesday to choose a new leader. Ahead is Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing hard-liner who has little time for the two-state solution, was vehemently against Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and, who, for years, has been banging the drums of war against Iran. This silver-tongued, ruthless individual is highly dangerous.
Successive Israeli governments have proved over and over again that they’re not interested in relinquishing land for peace. Instead, “peace process” has become nothing more than a carrot held up as balm for Palestinian discontent and to appease the international community.
Israelis have lived in a state of conflict for so long it has become the norm.
Israeli children are indoctrinated in schools to believe that Eretz Israel is the be all and end all of everything.
I once asked a seemingly well-balanced Israeli teenager whether she would like to visit Paris, London or Rome one day. “Oh no!” she said. “Our country is the best in the world. Why would I want to go anywhere else?”
For young Israelis, the army is like a giant social club and its hardware their playthings. Most find the experience pleasurable. It is little wonder they grow up to become immune to the suffering of the other when the other has been systematically dehumanized in their eyes.
As the new Obama presidency has shown us, the tectonic plates of our world are shifting and with them new attitudes. Israelis need to change their own else wait for the day when the piper will finally have to be paid.
Source: Arab News (Read More.....)