Obama trying to renege on Bush commitments to Israel
The Obama administration has been pushing the government of Binyamin Netanyahu to abide by the 2003 'road map' to which the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed - subject to 14 reservations that were never addressed by the Bush administration. The Obama administration has also pressed Israel to abide by the 'Annapolis process' even though that process failed dismally and even though it was never adopted by Israel's cabinet at the time (Olmert-Livni-Barack government), let alone by its Knesset. But President Obama is unwilling to abide by President Bush's written commitment to Israel in 2004 that Israel would be allowed to keep the large 'settlement blocs' in any 'final status' agreement with the 'Palestinians.' He's not willing to abide by President Bush's agreement with Israel that it could continue to build in those 'settlement blocs' so long as it does not subsidize housing there. And he has now sicked his court Jews on Israel to try make it so (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). There is also growing impatience on Capitol Hill with such settlement expansion. At a hearing in February, Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.), the pro-Israel chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee panel on the Middle East, equated "terrorism and the march of settlements" as part of a pattern of "shallow calculation and venal self-interest" through which "the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is finally rendered impossible."Wexler behaving as Obama's poodle shouldn't surprise anyone but Ackerman is mildly surprising.
At the same hearing, another strong advocate of Israel, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), declared: "The Palestinians have enormous responsibilities, but the notion that Israel can continue to expand settlements, whether it be through natural growth or otherwise, without diminishing the capacity of a two-state solution is both unrealistic, and, I would respectfully suggest, hypocritical."
During meetings with congressional leaders this week, Netanyahu was stunned by the "harsh and unequivocal statements" with which lawmakers complained about the settlements, according to an account in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. The newspaper said that although the prime minister tried to highlight the threat of Iran in his talks, lawmakers instead returned repeatedly to the issue of settlements, leading his entourage to conclude that the message had been coordinated with the Obama administration.
Wexler, in an interview, said he warned Netanyahu a week before his visit that the mood had changed in Washington. "In order for the president to extract from the king of Saudi Arabia a substantive down payment on the normalization of relations with Israel, settlements had to be addressed in a serious manner," he said he told the prime minister. "Netanyahu was confronted with that sentiment in Washington when he came."
By the way, if any of you thought I overstated President Bush's commitments to Israel, here's what the Washington Post says about them.
Regev said the Israeli government is relying on "understandings" between former president George W. Bush and former prime minister Ariel Sharon that some of the larger settlements in the occupied West Bank would ultimately become part of Israel, codified in a letter that Bush gave to Sharon in 2004. In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Sharon aide Dov Weissglas said that in 2005, when Sharon was poised to remove settlers from Gaza, the Bush administration arrived at a secret agreement -- not disclosed to the Palestinians -- that Israel could add homes in settlements it expected to keep, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies.And remember the headline I put up on Thursday about Hillary Clinton calling for 'settlers' to practice celibacy? I wasn't exaggerating.
Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser who negotiated the arrangement with Weissglas, confirmed the deal in an interview last week. "At the time of the Gaza withdrawal, there were lengthy discussions about how settlement activity might be constrained, and in fact it was constrained in the later part of the Sharon years and the Olmert years in accordance with the ideas that were discussed," he said. "There was something of an understanding realized on these questions, but it was never a written agreement."
In blunt comments on the Qatar-based news channel al-Jazeera on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said: "We want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth -- any kind of settlement activity. That is what the president has called for."No, it's not an Israeli obligation under the 'road map.' The only 'settlement freeze' to which Israel agreed under the road map was not to set up new 'settlements.'
"Natural growth" refers to population expansion as a result of births, adoptions and the like -- a position successive Israeli governments have rejected, though it is an Israeli obligation in the 2003 peace plan known as the "road map."
But Reverend Wrong is probably quite happy with his protege.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:50 AM
5 Comments:
If Obama wants to renege on the Bush commitments to Israel, the Israeli government should inform him Israel will formally withdraw from its commitments under the "road map" and do what it wants to do. Should the US no longer view its commitments to Israel as binding, there is no reason Israel should consider its commitments binding. Respect for agreements ought to be a two way street. That's a message Israel should send to Washington that either both sides keep their end of the bargain or there is no longer any agreement.
Period.
Every anti-Jewish edict in history has produced the opposite of its intended effect. One has to hope Hillary's joking because there no way on earth Jews will stop coming into existing Israeli revanants. And there aren't enough police on earth to make sure babies aren't born, adoptions don't occur, new couples don't buy housing near their parents, et cetera. Its going to be impossible for the US to enforce a "natural growth" ban in the revanants.
Israel and Israelis should assume the US government is currently occupied by one of the most viciously anti-Israel, anti-Jew administrations in the history of the US.
The people aren't this way. Just our government.
So Israel should sit on its hands relative to edicts from Washington. Nothing Washington suggests, none of its envoys, are working for the greater good of the Israeli people. On the contrary, all evidence, public, private, to our friends and allies, and to our enemies, indicates that the radical regime occupying the white house and operating the levers of power, has a decidedly anti-US and US allies agenda.
Its not just Israel. We are pissing on our friends in the UK, our friends in France, in Europe in general. We are pissing on friends everywhere, in order to play syncophant to the worst regimes on the planet.
Other world leaders have taken the measure of our administration and determined that they are lightweights, in way over their heads, way out of their class. So they are being ignored, and American power and influence, carefully constructed over 7 decades, is rapidly winding down under the 'leadership' of the most anti-American president in the history of the US.
So Israel, your best course is to bide your time, until a new administration takes over in 2013. In 2010/2011 we have mid term elections, and even now, the evidence is starting to build about the size and intensity of the backlash against the president, his party, and its ridiculous behavior over the last 130 days.
So hang tight, and wait this administration out. They will be gone in a number of years. Sanity should return to our governance.
Meanwhile, make close relations with your friends in India. They understand your pain, have suffered as you do.
are you really surprised?
Jewish libs are libs first and will screw Jewish Jews anytime they can.
Obama's strategy in screwing Israel:
Beschloss notwithstanding, Hussein is no genius, but he is surrounded by smart people.
1. His house Jews and Jewish friendly advisors will give him cover. Wexler,intermarried Emmanuel, and SGT. Shultz-Wasserman will praise him as a friend of Israel all the way. "His policies will benefit Israel in the long run" and other slogans will be heard ad nauseoum
2. The (assimilated-intermarried)Jewish dominated liberal media will give him cover and praise his actions. They will devastate any Jew-American or Israeli- that opposes him. Watch for pictures that make Bibi look like an ogre. Remember that wart infested "Newsweek" cover of Menachem Begin?
3. He will reach out to the Israeli "peace camp'". Morley Safer will do an interview with kapponheimer on 60 minutes, and make the pais cutters look good and traditionalists look bad.
4. He will visit death camps and Holocaust memorials. How can someone who gives such warm speeches at Ohrdurf not be a good friend?
Obviously, the same Federation types that ignored the Holocaust( and condemned the Bergsonites) but have made a cottage industry of the Holocaust will have to praise him. Maybe they should have put the money to day schools since their deafening silence made them culpable also.
5. The Carvile-Greenberg option. Clinton did this when he could not get Bibi to bend over enough. Barak would love to play the quisling role again.
6. The race Card. Even though Obama is white raised and bi-racial, he always resorts to this when all else fails. Get ready for himand his media Jews to call the settlers "racist ,sexist, homophobes."
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