What U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said behind closed doors on Thursday is still partially under wraps. Having said that, they conducted themselves in a responsible manner when they spoke to the press, making sure to start off with positive statements. Obama said he was against the nuclearization of Iran; Netanyahu said he supported the two-state solution. The gaps between their stances were reasonable. Obama said he was against the status quo in terms of the Palestinian issue; Netanyahu emphasized the Iranian threat, with Obama concurring (albeit without matching his urgency). Face-to-face meetings aren't held for the purpose of arguing. That you can do over the phone. You can always trade barbs across the Atlantic. The criticism Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel leveled at Netanyahu Thursday was ill-timed. So were Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett's comments. No other democracy would tolerate a situation in which cabinet ministers attack the premier while he talks to the press in a foreign country. What was particularly troubling about their criticism was that it made it look as if Netanyahu had said something new, somehow ignoring the fact that he has stuck to the same script for the past five years. Why did they think it was so important to portray his comment as hollow rhetoric? It seems that at Habayit Hayehudi, which Bennett chairs, everything revolves around electoral considerations, even if the Jewish state gets hurt in the process. In this case, luckily, the damage was not that great. On this issue, the polite thing to do would be to pay attention to Obama's sentiments. He reiterated his stance that the status-quo is unsustainable. Only Netanyahu knows whether behind closed doors Obama pushed for the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians under American auspices. Furthermore, any shift in the status quo could end up helping Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his aggressive stance. Abbas did not even wait until the end of the meeting before appealing to the U.N. Security Council to compel Israel to withdraw to 1967 borders within two years. No one thinks that this scenario is realistic. The only thing the Palestinians are trying to achieve with this appeal is possibly to embarrass the U.S. when it is forced to use its veto power, or at least to get the U.S. to negotiate with them over the language of the resolution. Maybe they will give the Palestinians some perks if they agree to hold their efforts. The new draft resolution may attest to behind-the-scenes talks between the Palestinians and the Americans over jump-starting the peace process. Perhaps Abbas introduced the resolution just so he could extract some concessions. Judging from the little that has emerged from the meeting, both leaders are convinced a new Middle East has emerged. It may be totally different than the transformation former President Shimon Peres envisioned in his book, but it is nonetheless a new reality. It is also a more dangerous region, one that presents a common enemy to Israel and the moderate Arab states that accept the U.S.'s leadership. But this is a high-risk, high-reward situation. Perhaps this is what Netanyahu was referring to when he talked about the need to "think outside the box." But Netanyahu must realize that thinking outside the box would not keep the Palestinians out of the peace process, as their future depends on it. The latest round of talks may have ended but that does not preclude further negotiations. Perhaps former cabinet minister Yossi Beilin was right when he said that this dead end could produce a feasible interim agreement. It seems as though Bennett and Ariel fear this may happen, and that is why they were so quick to cry wolf.
