Marathon Pundit: Passover signals dark turn in US-Israeli relations

Monday, March 29, 2010

Passover signals dark turn in US-Israeli relations

Passover begins at sunset tonight under perhaps the darkest moment of the US-Israeli relationship.

Here is what John Bolton writes in the Washington Examiner:

Consider, for example, Obama's September 2009 U.N. General Assembly speech, profoundly anti-Israeli, and to a body where Israel is perennially even more isolated than the United States. There, among other things, Obama called for a "Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967."

"That, of course, is the Palestinian position. No wonder they are "outraged" at every subsequent Israeli construction project outside the 1967 borders. No wonder Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told an Arab League summit on Saturday he would not negotiate with Israel until all settlement activity ceases. They see Obama delivering Israel into their hands, and they will simply insist on their optimal position while they measure how well he succeeds.

More fundamentally, Obama assumes, as do many Europeans, that solving or at least making substantial progress on Arab-Israeli issues is key to many other Middle East problems. In particular, he believes there will be no progress against Iran's nuclear weapons program until there is proof that Israel's commanding position has been reduced.

For Obama, therefore, every bump in the Arab-Israeli "peace process," caused repeatedly in his estimation by Israeli intransigence, has consequences far beyond its actual dimensions.

In fact, the idea that Israel's recalcitrance, personified by pugnacious Bibi Netanyahu, is the central obstacle to peace is exactly backward, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.