AND WHO'S LESS LIKELY TO CARE ABOUT SUBSTANCE THAN THIS ADMINISTRATION?

What Israel Learned From Arafat: Tomorrow's Netanyahu-Obama summit has Iran, Gaza and settlments on the agenda, but the Isreali leader will bring a new tactic learned from an old nemesis. Matt Rees explains "the Arafat." (Matt Beynon Rees, 5/17/09, Daily Beast)

When he was Israeli Prime Minister the first time round, Benjamin Netanyahu was endlessly frustrated by the way the late Yasser Arafat used to obfuscate in peace talks. Specifically, Arafat’s favored technique was to pretend something entirely unexpected was actually on the agenda, as a way of deflecting discussion of a topic on which he felt he’d have to concede. It was a big contrast with Netanyahu’s confrontational way of doing business. In his decade out of office, however, Netanyahu says he learned a lot and that he’s a different kind of Prime Minister this time. One clear difference: he learned how to pull an Arafat. [...]

Arafat constantly shifted the negotiating ground under the feet of one Clinton -- ultimately with the disastrous consequences of a second intifada. Netanyahu’s trying to do the same to the other Clinton, switching the debate to issues the U.S. and Palestinians thought had been conceded long ago. Now if he agrees to a two-state solution, it'll make him look flexible. If he opens Gaza's checkpoints to allow in all food aid, he'll look compassionate. Meanwhile on the ground nothing will have changed and the new administration will have lost a chance to shift the peace process out of Bushie neutral.

“Bibi will let Obama have a charade of progress,” says Dan Schueftan, director of Haifa University’s National Security Studies Center, referring to Netanyahu’s boyhood nickname, which he’s universally known by here. “There’ll be no substance.”