The much-anticipated meeting between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu on May 18 went off smoothly, if a bit tensely, as predicted. Everyone was on best behavior and the event excited so little attention that the New York Times reported it on page 12.
As expected, however, the gloves came off immediately thereafter, with a series of tough American demands, especially U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's insistence on May 27 that the Netanyahu government end residential building for Israelis in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. This prompted a defiant response. The Israeli governing coalition chairman pointed out the mistake of prior "American dictates," a minister compared Obama to pharaoh, and the government press office director cheekily mock-admired "the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews should live in Jerusalem."
We are going to end up on opposites sides from the only real ally we have ever had in the middle east, and at it's heart the reason is a little problem Mr. Obama has in his soul.
If the specifics of who-lives-where have little strategic import, the Obama administration's rapid and harsh turn against Israel has potentially great significance. Not only did the administration end George W. Bush's focus on changes on the Palestinian side but it even disregarded oral understandings Bush had reached with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
An article by Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post captures this shift most vividly. Diehl notes, based on an interview with Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, that by publicly and repeatedly stressing the need for a without-exception freeze of Israeli building on the West Bank, Obama
Yasir Arafat smiles as Barack Obama meets Mahmoud Abbas in July 2008.
has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud. "The Americans are the leaders of the world. ... They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions'."
Of course, telling the Israelis is one thing and getting their compliance quite another. To this, Abbas also has an answer. Expecting that Netanyahu's agreeing to a complete freeze on building would bring down his coalition, Diehl explains that Abbas plans "to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office." One Palestinian Authority official predicted this would happen within "a couple of years" - exactly when Obama is said to expect a Palestinian state in place.
I wonder what Hassan Nasrallah and Ajad are saying to each other about the mysterious ways of Allah, hmmmmm?
Barack Obama's PURPOSE is to drive Israel into direct opposition to american policy and strategic goals.
What does Barack Obama have in mind for the USA that these actions which give Israel the choice of isolation from the USA or death by demographic and terror means are imagined to be to our long term advantage?
Daniel Pipes has said that the golden age for Jews in America is OVER. And we can see in Barack Obama it's means. All who oppose his plans for the mideast will be portrayed without real objection as anti peace, pro Likud, with dual loyalties, and NOT PATRIOTIC. Buchanan, Moran, and other freaks of the bigoted left and paleo right with find themselves together.
Even Dershowitz, one of the truly delusional 53% and 78% now sees Obama is a danger to that tiny state. How long until he recognizes the dangers to this large one?
Get ready for it.
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