Promises, Promises: Glick on upcoming Netanyahu/Obama meeting

Netanyahu must play for time

[T]he Obama administration is putting pressure on Netanyahu to make Abbas – and US President Barack Obama – happy.

Over the past several weeks the administration has been pressuring Netanyahu to extend the 10-month prohibition on Jewish construction in [the West Bank] beyond its scheduled September end date. As a sweetener to help Netanyahu swallow this strategically disastrous pill, Obama and his aides claim that an extension of the draconian, bigoted policy would serve as a confidence building measure to convince Abbas to begin direct negotiations with Israel.

In Obama’s bid to convince Netanyahu to extend the Jewish building ban, we see the foreign policy equivalent of a used car salesman’s attempt to sell the same customer the same lousy car twice – using different lies each time.

Last year, Obama and his advisers justified their demand that Netanyahu act to strangle the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria by claiming that doing so would make the Arab world begin normalizing its relations with Israel.

Obama’s Jewish surrogate, former congressman Robert Wexler, told Netanyahu last July that in exchange for barring Jews from building kindergartens in Israel’s heartland, Israel would see 20 Arab embassies open in Tel Aviv.

Of course not only did that not happen, moments after Netanyahu announced the prohibition on Jewish building, Obama’s peace mediator George Mitchell claimed that his massive and unprecedented concession was insufficient. [And w]eeks after Netanyahu’s concession in Judea and Samaria, the administration began its onslaught against Jewish building in Jerusalem.
[Jerusalem Post]
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