When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his annual pilgrimage to Washington last year it was an unmitigated disaster. President Obama felt Netanyahu was lecturing him during the press appearance at the end of their meeting and that patronizing tone took center stage in Netanyahu’s subsequent address to a joint session of Congress. His March 2012 visit went much better. The leaders seemed to be on the same page and their tones were calm and confident. But the lecturing, it seems, could only stay bottled up for so long.
For the better part of half a century, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has fought for a singular goal: To rally United States government support for the policy goals of the Israeli government. On Sunday, President Obama appeared before AIPAC’s annual conference to argue that the interests of Israel and its government, led by [...]
Maybe he’s not bluffing this time. The eminently reliable Ethan Bronner seems to think Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, may well make good on his threat to quit. If he’s gone, the Palestinians are going to scuffle to find a new leader. Odds are, in such a fraught circumstance, they choose a tough guy, a hard-liner–to [...]
Over at the Commentary blog, Max Boot has made the Neocon-Likud position on peace talks fairly plain: the effort on the part of the Obama Administration to convince the Israelis to freeze all settlements has been “nonsense.” And while I agree that the Obama negotiators have been naive and incompetent in dealing with Likud intransigence, [...]
Benjamin Netanyahu’s phony flexibility on a two-state solution was always transparent–and it’s now becoming apparent that Israel is the prime impediment to progress in the Middle East. Over the weekend, the State Department asked Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren to convey U.S. displeasure over continued Israeli settlement expansion in Jerusalem, which Netanyahu rejected out of hand. [...]
