Israel Still Has Great Power in Washington
Former Israeli Consul General in Los Angeles Jacob (Yaki) Dayan said Thursday that “Arab states are seeing the power Israel has in Washington.”
“There is no doubt that damage has been caused by the Obama-Netanyahu relationship, but all the countries looking on from the side are watching the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] wage a fight as an equal versus President Obama on his home court,” Dayan told Channel 1.
“Most of the public in the U.S. supports what Netanyahu is saying, the majority of Congress supports what Netanyahu is saying. It’s true that the fight will leave resentment between Obama and Netanyahu, but the relationship between the countries will be fixable.”
Dayan’s comments were made in response to an attack on Netanyahu by Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid, who said the prime minister’s clash with the American president had caused Arab states to understand that the era of Israel’s “open door” in Washington is over and that Israel’s power has waned.
Meanwhile, at a conference titled “The Day After the Nuclear Deal,” held Thursday at Netanya Academic College, MK Michael Oren (Kulanu) said: “The more time passes, the greater the chances that the Senate will not approve the deal. One sign of this is the number of speeches from the president, which is testimony of his anxiousness and concern. An unconcerned person doesn’t give interviews every night.”
Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to Washington, also said, “There is a giant conceptual chasm between us and the United States regarding Iran. The Americans think the Iranian leadership is rational. We can find ourselves rather quickly in a nuclear neighborhood. This is an existential threat, the likes of which we never faced in the past.
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