The hate-hate relationship between Obama and Netanyahu

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in their heart of hearts, both of them believe that Netanyahu is the real leader of the Republican Party.

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Why does Bibi’s Americanism outrage American officials? Because it fuels his arrogance. During his time as Israel’s United Nations ambassador in the 1980s, Netanyahu forged deep ties to the American Jewish establishment and to the Republican Party, ties that have only deepened since. These elite bonds, plus Netanyahu’s ability to speak to ordinary Americans in their own idiom (he sprinkles his speeches to U.S. audiences with American cultural references) have convinced him that he can best American presidents on their own turf. As Bibi told settlers in Ofra in a secretly recorded conversation in 2001, “America is something that can be easily maneuvered…I wasn’t afraid to maneuver. I wasn’t afraid to confront Clinton.” When it comes to Bibi’s relations with American presidents, familiarity breeds contempt.

But if Bibi has been alienating American officials since the 1980s, his current tussle with the Obama administration contains a new twist. Bibi hasn’t changed: He’s as arrogant as ever. But the Americans have. In the past, US officials didn’t need to lash out as much verbally because they could make Bibi pay for his defiance. The Obama team can’t.

Think back to late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, James Baker didn’t only bar Netanyahu from Foggy Bottom after the then-deputy foreign minister tried to scuttle America’s secret talks with the PLO. He and President George H.W. Bush refused to give Netanyahu’s boss, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the loan guarantees he wanted to resettle Soviet immigrants absent a halt in settlement growth. Bush and Baker also pushed Shamir to participate in peace talks in Madrid that included Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The result: Shamir’s right-wing government fell; Israel held elections, and Shamir lost to Yitzhak Rabin.

In the late 1990s, the Clinton administration struck back at Bibi even harder. In his memoir, "Innocents Abroad," Martin Indyk writes that in 1999, Bill Clinton “sent” his own political consultants, “Robert Shrum, Stanley Greenberg and James Carville to help get [Ehud] Barak elected.”

Obama has never been able to retaliate against Bibi that way. His unpopularity in Israel has limited his ability to play politics there. More importantly, the collapse of the Israeli center-left has left the White House without a credible Barak-like challenger to get behind. As a result, Netanyahu has felt free to boost Obama’s domestic opponents without Obama being able to do the same.

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