Obama Draws the Line
By ROGER COHEN
NYT
LONDON — On the eve of an election year, with Jewish donors and fund-raisers already restive over his approach to Israel, President Obama made a brave speech telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “the dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation” and urging him to accept Israeli borders at or close to the 1967 lines.
The president got 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008. Perhaps those words will cost him some of those votes — although sentiment toward Israel among American Jews is slowly shifting. But true friends are critical friends. And the American and Israeli national interest do not lie in the poisonous Israeli-Palestinian status quo.
Netanyahu, who will address the U.S. Congress next week, will certainly attempt in response to go over the president’s head to those restive donors and fund-raisers. He’s Israel’s leader, but knows that a core constituency lies in the United States. He will try to outlast Obama, noting that Republican hopefuls like Mitt Romney are already talking of the president throwing “Israel under the bus.” He will try to kick the can down the road. Process without end favors Israel.
Therein lurks the political fight of the next several months. The best Obama and Netanyahu will ever be able to do is position a fig-leaf of decorum over their differences. The worst poison is distrust. These two men have it aplenty for each other.
(More here.)
NYT
LONDON — On the eve of an election year, with Jewish donors and fund-raisers already restive over his approach to Israel, President Obama made a brave speech telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “the dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation” and urging him to accept Israeli borders at or close to the 1967 lines.
The president got 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008. Perhaps those words will cost him some of those votes — although sentiment toward Israel among American Jews is slowly shifting. But true friends are critical friends. And the American and Israeli national interest do not lie in the poisonous Israeli-Palestinian status quo.
Netanyahu, who will address the U.S. Congress next week, will certainly attempt in response to go over the president’s head to those restive donors and fund-raisers. He’s Israel’s leader, but knows that a core constituency lies in the United States. He will try to outlast Obama, noting that Republican hopefuls like Mitt Romney are already talking of the president throwing “Israel under the bus.” He will try to kick the can down the road. Process without end favors Israel.
Therein lurks the political fight of the next several months. The best Obama and Netanyahu will ever be able to do is position a fig-leaf of decorum over their differences. The worst poison is distrust. These two men have it aplenty for each other.
(More here.)
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2 Comments:
The hyper inflated reactions such as references to Auschwitz are appalling, and only underline how they will disrespect genuine victims in a pathetic attempt to associate themselves with tragedy as a way to immunise themselves from criticism.
Now, after Obama's speech, it is for the Palestian Arabs to approach the table at which Israel has been sitting and waiting for them for the past two years to talk peace. Let us hope, when they do so, that they will come clean handed and in good faith to negotiate, while knowing full well that they will be asked to accept Israel's right to be, to exist as the nation-sta¬te of the Jewish people, and that a peace treaty, if and when is signed, will mean the "end of the conflict and the end of all future demands. This poster is waiting...
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