Welcome to America: Obama Kicks Sand at Netanyahu

President Obama will not speak this week at AIPAC's National Conference.  Instead, he spit fire at Netanyahu, who will speak there Tuesday morning.  The President is pictured at a prior AIPAC gathering. 

The President's Threats to Israel - John Podhoretz
    
In an extraordinary — and I don’t use the word in a complimentary way—interview, President Obama warns Israel and its leader that a failure to "make peace" now with the Palestinians will have terrible consequences.
     
Palestinian rejectionism plays almost no role in the Obaman calculus. The Palestinians, in Obama's view, do not actually need to make changes; astonishingly, he says, they're ready for peace, overlooking every piece of polling data we have about the opinions of the Palestinians.
     
60% of the Palestinians reject a two-state solution. They are so eager for peace and coexistence with Israel that they remain the only significant Muslim population that still has a favorable view of suicide bombings, according to a Pew survey.
    
Obama said: "Nobody would dispute" that Abbas is committed to "diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue."
     
Yet in 2008, offered a peace deal by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert giving the Palestinians 92-95% of the territory, Abbas basically fled the table and didn't return.    
(Commentary)
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Obama to Israel: Time Is Running Out - Jeffrey Goldberg
 
When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visits the White House, President Obama will tell him that his country could face a bleak future - one of international isolation and demographic disaster - if he refuses to endorse a U.S.-drafted framework agreement for peace with the Palestinians. Obama told me in an interview Thursday that he views Abbas as the most politically moderate leader the Palestinians may ever have. It seemed obvious to me that the president believes that the next move is Netanyahu's.
    
Obama said: "If there's something you know you have to do, even if it's difficult or unpleasant, you might as well just go ahead and do it, because waiting isn't going to help. When I have a conversation with Bibi, that's the essence of my conversation: If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who? How does this get resolved?" 
(Bloomberg)


For Netanyahu, a Bombshell Battering by Obama - David Horovitz
 
The timing of President Obama's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg could not have been any more deliberate - an assault on the prime minister's policies delivered precisely as Netanyahu was flying in to meet with him. At the very least, that might be considered bad manners, poor diplomatic protocol, a resounding preemptive slap in the face: I've just told the world you're leading your country to ruin, Mr. Prime Minister. Now, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?    

The president's comments reinforce years of grievance that have accumulated in Netanyahu's circles and some distance beyond, to the effect that the president ignores the inconsistencies, duplicities and worse of the Palestinian Authority and its leader Mahmoud Abbas, while placing exaggerated blame for the failure of peace efforts at the door of the Israeli government. The president's public display of disaffection will hardly encourage the Palestinians to adopt more flexible positions on such core issues as their demand for a "right of return" for millions of Palestinians to Israel.
    
The president's resort to an interview on the eve of their talks to issue near-apocalyptic warnings to Netanyahu is unlikely to bolster the prime minister's confidence in their alliance. 
(Times of Israel)


Netanyahu: It Takes Three to Tango - Herb Keinon
 
Prime Minister Netanyahu said upon arriving in the U.S. on Monday that for peace in the Middle East to take hold, the Palestinians must demonstrate their desire to reach a solution.

"The tango in the Middle East needs at least three," Netanyahu said. "For years there have been two - Israel and the U.S. Now it needs to be seen if the Palestinians are also present."  
(Jerusalem Post)
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