For months, supporters of Israel, as well as its foes in this country, have been trying to understand which way the wind is blowing in the Obama administration. But after the president’s meetings with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, it’s becoming quite clear that the breeze is swaying away from the Israelis. The president’s statements about Israeli settlements during the photo-op with Abbas on Thursday certainly sent the Palestinian away happy. As the New York Times report on the meeting indicated, Obama was prepared to directly intervene in a dispute that has usually been left to lower level functionaries:
Mr. Obama reiterated his call for a halt to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and said he expected a response soon from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. Mr. Obama’s words echoed — albeit less bluntly — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brusque call on Wednesday for a complete freeze of construction in settlements on the West Bank. In expansive language that left no wiggle room, Mrs. Clinton said that Mr. Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.”
Her comments took Israeli officials by surprise.
Mr. Obama said something similar last week during private talks with Mr. Netanyahu at the White House, and Mr. Netanyahu responded that he could crack down on outposts, but not on the natural growth of settlements, according to American and Israeli officials.
The administration then took the quarrel public, laying down the marker that allowing natural growth would not satisfy the United States and that administration officials would not limit themselves to the diplo-speak of the past that simply called settlement expansion “unhelpful.” The decision left the two allies hurtling toward their first public fight.
In the aftermath of the meeting, the Palestinians are spinning their triumph furiously for the world press. According to Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily.com, Obama promised Abbas that a future Palestinian state would have Jerusalem as its capital.
Klein quotes Nimer Hamad, Abbas’ senior political adviser as saying: “Abu Mazen (Abbas) heard from Obama and his administration in a very categorical way that a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is in the American national and security interest,” Hamad said.
Even more upsetting for Israelis is another quote in Klein’s story in which he cites another Palestinian Authority official, this one anonymous, who said, “We were told from this new administration they will not allow a Netanyahu government to hurt their efforts of rehabilitating U.S. relations with the Arab and Islamic world, which is a high priority of Obama.”
Even if one takes this last anonymous quote with a grain of salt, there is no question that the entire thrust of Obama’s Middle East diplomacy appears to lead toward downgrading the U.S. alliance with Israel. While virtually ignoring the nuclear quest in Iran which ensures that before long Israel will be faced with an existential threat to its existence, ironically Obama has now framed the talks with the Palestinians in a way that guarantees that no progress will be made. We can expect this trend will be confirmed in Obama’s speech to the Arab world from Cairo this week.
Obama’s main accomplishment in these two meetings has been to encourage the Palestinians to believe that he will deliver the Israelis to them on a silver platter. In the same story by Klein the Palestinians make clear that they feel no pressure to make any reciprocal gestures to the Israelis such as recognizing the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state. As was the case when Bill Clinton similarly encouraged Abbas’s predecessor Yasser Arafat to think he could hold out for more and more concessions and raise the ante with violence, the result of this U.S. blunder will not be peace.
Dear Rick, exactly who’s living next door to Israel now, Eskimos?
“Cal Thomas asked what evidence she had that if Palestinians had a state, they would not simply “complete the mission of killing the Jews and throwing them out.”
exactly, what cal thomas was saying is the same thing I am saying : it’s time to call the zionist experiment a failure. they will NEVER have peace.
isn’t that the point of this column?
unless you want to continue to drain money and treasure for no reason. oh wait, you do want to do that.
Are you another one of the yutzes who want to say that it’s OK not to let the Palestinians live on their land because they won’t be happy that they had to share?
The triplets want to apologize for our tactless anti-Israeli comments. We’ve kept pester under wraps until now. He hasn’t been well. Well, time for our meds. Got to go. The triplets
Lest one wax nostalgic about the actual Bush policy in that region. Israel’s great friend Bush seemingly gave Condi free rein.
Naw, the triplets aren’t really anti-Israeli. They just think that that the idiocy shown by Israel’s reflexive and paranoid defenders is an embarrassment and hindrance.
Speak for yourself, fuster. We stand by our comments. 9 miles wide is 8 1/2 miles too wide for the Jewish state. Give it back to its rightful owners, the camels.
Now come along fuster. We have to get ready for the One on Leno. He’ll be brilliant, of course.
Well, thanks. I feel better already. I surely don’t want to be attached to the folks who are anti-Israeli either.
And kiss your camel twice. You may not love him but you gotta live with him.
Sheee-ut, festering has seldom been a less pretty and less smelly process.
Which do you have more trouble with, smelling or spelling?
You really weren’t raised very well at all, were you? Must have been very heartbreaking for your parents.
From the poll you cite:
“A majority of 66% support and 30% oppose the Saudi Initiative. The initiative calls for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, the resolution of the refugee problem in an agreed and just manner based on UN resolution 194, and the establishment of a Palestinian state. In return, the initiative calls for a recognition of Israel and its right to live in secure borders by all Arab states and the establishment of normal relations with it. After a permanent settlement is reached and a Palestinian state is established along side Israel, 72% would support reconciliation between the two peoples and 26% would oppose such reconciliation. These percentages are similar to those obtained during the last six months.”
This directly contradicts the other part of the poll that you cited. Read it and weep, 66% (close to the 70% that Condi mentioned) agree to a comprehensive peace accord and both recognition of, and “reconciliation” with, Israel (whatever the difference between those two things is).
But you did a good job quoting selectively to suit your own hateful, bellicose agenda.
Matt, no reason to call him hateful. Richman’s post is silly, sad, and scared of the simple facts.
Lester, pester and fuster
(Jointly known as The Cluster),
Full of meaningless bluster -
None of them can pass muster.
Sweep the site with a duster!
13 not bad, actually.
I bet the girls in your class are all afraid that you’ll pull their hair.
( but it was pretty good.)
I don;t really want to be grouped with Lester if you do another
“the two-state solution does not command the approval of a majority of Palestinians.”
Not just a two-state solution, but a particular. impossibly genrous
“comprehensive proposal”, based on “Geneva Initiative” –
so heavily tilted towards Palestinian demands,
as to be (as you note) forever unacceptable to Israel.
It is interesting to note which elements of this proposal the majority
rejects. It is not the boundaries. There’s a bare majority for this part of
the proposal. It is, most of all, the idea of demilitarizing the
future Palestinian state. Only 27% of “Palestinians” agree to that.
In other words: a bare majority of “Palestinians”
would agree to postpone the destruction of Israel in exchange
for the most generous concessions imaginable. But only a little more
than a quarter of them are willing to forgo the means to complete
that destruction in the future…
Note also the stark realism of “Palestinian” expectations:
Public expectation for the chances of success of diplomacy is grim. Three quarters of the Palestinians expect the negotiations unleashed by the Annapolis process to fail and only 15% expect them to succeed. Similarly, 70% believe the chances for the creation of a Palestinian state in the next five years are slim to non-existent
They are quite right. The so-called “Peace Process” has no chances,
and never had. It is a mere distraction.
contra, why does not constituting a Palestinian state as demilitarized mean that the Palestinians would be attempting to use their weapons to destroy Israel?
Is there no way that you would believe in two states and peace?
Given the weapons that the Israelis have, it’s pretty unlikely that the Palestinians would be getting anything that might be able to overwhelm them.
Just reading Rice’s use of the word “sequentiality” called to mind the meally-mouthed and intellectual vacuity of Rice. The set of logically constructed concrete steps to enable a Palestinian entity to make a lasting peace with Israel she dismissed as “sequentiality”, as some kind of legalistic impediment.
To think this was the woman who seemed genuinely impressed by Sharansky’s analysis of the centrality of free and democractic institutions.
#16: “Given the weapons that the Israelis have, it’s pretty unlikely that the Palestinians would be getting anything that might be able to overwhelm them”
In terms of asymmetrical warfare, it would be easy.
Did Taliban/Al Qaeda have the resources to deal a
staggering blow to a superpower? Yes, they did: the
terrorist-training camps. They were also working on bioweapons
and radiation weapons.
To destroy Israel as a Jewish state, it is enough
to change the immigration-emigration balance
by making normal life impossible. Even the second intifada
approached that goal.
Blend an independent state, free to arm at will, with
the undeterrability and the consppiratorial
techniques of a terrorist movement, and it is a cinch.
Afghanistan under Taliban was only moving in that direction, but
“Palestine” would be complete from the start.
The “Palestinian people” is already blended, inseparably,
from its very conception, with a terrorist movement; the two
are one; even pre-schoolers prepare to be terrorists.
Providing this dual entity with a sovereign state free to arm
would doom, not only Israel, but Jordan as well; and endanger
other Arab states. It is not to be considered, and nobody
seriously considers it; even the crazy peaceniks of the
Geneva Initiative added the disarmament proviso…
Dear The Triplets Lackluster:
With all the time you have on your hands to play with the keyboard, why don’t you volunteer for the Internaltional Solidarity Movement operations? There at least you could really have some impact, unless you’re scared of Israeli soldiers and border policemen who, after being pelted with rocks, become uncontrollable, unfortunately.
Actually, if you ride the roads of Judea and Samaria, it’s almost as dangerous, shootings at vehicles, wounding civilians and killing policemen. Probably the best measure of Pal. peace intentions.
Just like the best measure of Jewish intensions was gauged by strolling through the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. Those Jews were sniping peaceful German “policemen” from their balconies! Oh wait, there’s no comparison you say? You’re right, it’s not like the Israelis have systematically stripped Palestinians of their rightful property, confined them to an unlivable space where they brutalize them without respect for the rule of law, and expropriate their homes for the expansion of Jewish lebenstraum. Oh wait, they do. “But no, this is different!!!!”
israel is crumbling, all these isseus are meaningless
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel-looting19-2009mar19,0,6978050.story
Hey Medad, You wanna be a usurper, be happy with the rewards attendant.
I neither am an Israeli, nor wish to be. I was born and continue to live in the US.
My beliefs don’t call for murder of either Jews or Arabs or for attempts at segregation of one from the other.
!
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