A Rapid and Harsh Turn Against Israel
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.”
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.
