Special to WorldTribune.com

By Sol W. Sanders

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under siege on several fronts.

At this critical moment, the traditional close collaboration of the U.S.-Israeli alliance is troubled, not least by Obama Administration’s pettiness. That’s been characterized by vulgar leaks from the White House and the recent staged absence of senior American officials for Netanyahu’s UN speech.

Such designated protocol lapses are bound to have an impact on the kind of intimate relations the alliance has always had.

On the home front, there has been the outbreak of what appears to be “lone wolf” violence by Palestinians against Israeli individual civilian and military targets. [In one recent case there was interception of a badly prepared car bombing in Jerusalem that would have cost large casualties.]

The knife-wielding attacks are often perpetrated by young suicidal fanatics reared in United Nations-supported refugee schools where hatred and violence against Jews is indoctrinated.

Unlike the two earlier intifadas [Arabic for shakeup, uprising], there appears to be no central direction. But the Muslim terrorists Hamas, Islamic Jihad and once Soviet-supported Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, have publicly acclaimed the attacks.

Given their nature, the defense often results in the death of the Arab attackers, leading to new accusations in the Western media and among Palestinian sympathizers of Israeli “overreaction”.

At the same time, Israeli authorities find defense difficult given the spontaneity of the terrorists in civilian settings, including for example, using an automobile to run down groups waiting at bus stops. Some attacks inside the so-called “green line” [Israel before the 1967 conquest of East Jerusalem and the West Bank] suggest support may be coming from Israeli Arabs as well as those living in Occupied areas.

With 60 percent of Israelis telling pollsters they fear for their personal safety, the government is being pushed toward more stringent controls. And the outbreak has found an echo among Jewish fanatics, sometimes in attacks on innocent Arabs.

In a sense, the attacks, while encouraged by statements of Arab “moderates”, are evidence of the disintegration of the secular Palestinian leadership and the growing influence of Islamicists. That will inevitably lead to more linkage to the Islamic terrorists ravaging the whole region, particularly in neighboring Syria. There, its growing professionalism with heavier armament supplied by Iran, the Lebanese Hizbullah, an important ally of the al Assad regime, is a growing menace on Israel’s northern border. That is coupled with renewed missile shelling from Gaza and border incidents by Hamas-organized protesters crossing into Israel.

When Netanyahu flew to Moscow Sept. 20 for a one-day meeting with Putin, he apparently wanted to eliminate any possibility Israeli aircraft intercepting arms transfers Hizbullah would engage the growing Soviet presence. It seems clear he foresaw the growing Moscow effort to prop up the al Assad regime, tighten its de facto alliance there with Iran. [The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani had made two Russian visits himself shortly before].

The Israeli prime minister’s highly advertised concern highlights the equally publicized Obama Administration surprise at the sudden Russian Syrian buildup. That suggests Netanyahu’s bitter and public opposition to President Barack Obama’s “deal” on Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and Washington’s response may be eroding intelligence liaison.

That’s despite the Obama Administration insistence new military aid and cooperation with Israel would be order of the day after the successful completion of the pact with Iran.

With the Obama Administration admitting that its nuclear arms deal with lifting of sanctions, whatever else it has done, will provide new financing for Teheran’s worldwide terrorist activities, the situation can only get worse.

It’s time the Obama Administration, as the senior partner in the alliance, and particularly Susan Rice, national security adviser, ends her childish antics and tightens the alliance and its intelligence liaison in the face of a growing regional crisis, now involving the Russians as well as the bevy of Arab antagonists.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is a contributing editor for WorldTribune.com and Geostrategy-Direct.com

  Severely damaged U.S.-Israel alliance awaits a growing Mideast crisis, WorldTribune.com