Netanyahu wants to pre-empt Obama

Going through the commentaries in Israeli newspapers one gets the impression that the majority in Israel does not want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should address the Congress of the United States of America ahead of the elections in Israel on March 17.
Israeli premier has been invited by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives John Boehner to speak at a special session of the Congress on March 03 on Iran's nuclear programme.
This is apparently to pre-empt  President Barack Obama's efforts to reach a nuclear deal with
Iran.
President Barack Obama has said that it will be a breach of protocol to receive a foreign leader before an election in his country.
Meanwhile, in Israel, leader of opposition Zionist Union, Isaac Herzog accused Netanyahu of "diverting the debate on the Iranian nuclear programme for his political gain."
Polls show majority of Israeli people want Netanyahu should back out. Columnist  Chemi Shalev wrote in the Haaretz, the most influential Israeli newspaper, that "bipartisan support for Israel is in jeopardy and opposition to a nuclear deal with Iran, has, if anything, weakened. Most Americans cannot comprehend why any Israeli leader would thumb his nose at their President with such brazen abandon."
Another columnist, Ben-Dror Yemini wrote in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth: "Please, Netanyahu, it's precisely because the Iranian threat is so important that you should withdraw. We know that Obama is wrong and that you are right.
But if you to influence him, you cannot insult and alienate him. Congress does not make the decisions about Iran; Obama does."
Hardliners both in the United States and Iran are interested to see the deal  that P5 plus 1 negotiating bloc is trying to forge with the Iranian moderates fails. Hardliners in the US Congress and Israel are also seeking to derail a possible nuclear deal with Iran.
Interestingly, Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) while Israel, which is holding a huge stock of nuclear weapons, is not.
The western powers, including the United States, do not raise the issue of stockpiling nuclear weapons by Israel. This is a double standard.
Israel has no right to talk about Iran's procurement of nuclear power for domestic use.
The Israeli Prime Minister is planning to add another dimension to the Palestinian crisis. He proposed at a meeting of his cabinet on February 15 to set aside $ 46 million to accommodate the Jews who would likely migrate to Israel in view of anti-Semite trend in Europe.
He called upon the Jewish community in Europe to migrate to Israel when Jewish Kosher grocery store in Paris was attacked last month.
He repeated the same call when a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark was attacked last week. The Israeli Premier was, however, rebuffed by members of the Jewish community in Denmark and some leading Jewish advocates because of "his unabashed call for Jews to leave Europe". Around 700 Jews have migrated to Israel in 2014 from France alone.
Meanwhile, head of Israel's election commission has decided that Netanyahu's speech in the US Congress should be broadcast after five minutes in Israel which would provide ample time to the news editors to cut any statements deemed partisan.
The writer is a retired diplomat from Bangladesh.
 amjad.21@gmail.com