The United States government has many levers on Netanyahu. Of course the U.S. gives Netanyahu billions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars a year, but while it would be politically difficult (to put it mildly) to cut off U.S. military aid -- the Obama administration could not bring itself to cut off military aid to the Egyptian military coup, even when clearly required to do so by U.S. law -- the administration has many other, more subtle levers on Netanyahu that it could deploy without giving AIPAC, the ADL and their allies a convenient target for counterattack. The administration could raise the volume of its public criticism of Netanyahu. The administration could let it be known that it might refrain from vetoing a U.N. resolution that condemned Netanyahu. The administration could "leak" that it is deepening efforts to engage Hamas politically, then issue a non-denial denial when these efforts are criticized. The administration knows full well that it has all these levers and more. All it lacks is sufficient public political pressure <http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/ceasefire-Israel-Palestine> to use them to force an end to the killing.
>From the past, we know how this ends. It ends with a new ceasefire. The key
question is how many human beings will be killed and injured in the
meantime. President Obama should use all his levers to stop the killing now
<http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/ceasefire-Israel-Palestine>.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/netanyahu-war_b_5574984.html
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Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org naiman at justforeignpolicy.org (202) 448-2898 x1