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Is Israel Too Strong for America?

Started by Queequeg, November 08, 2009, 12:11:17 PM

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Queequeg

This is really starting to piss me off.

We give them money, support them in every conflict for no practical Geo-Strategic reason and they can't so much as freeze their colonization of the West Bank. 

Quote
Is Israel too strong for Barack Obama?
Nov 5th 2009 | CAIRO AND JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition


As America drops its demand for a total freeze on the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, angry Palestinians say there is no scope for resuming talks

Illustration by Peter Schrank



FIVE months after Barack Obama went to Cairo and persuaded most of the Arab world, in a ringing declaration of even-handedness, that he would face down Israel in his quest for a Palestinian state, American policy seems to have run into the sand. The American president's mediating hand is weaker, his charisma damagingly faded. From the Palestinian and Arab point of view, his administration—after grandly setting out to force the Jewish state to stop the building of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land as an early token of good faith, intended to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to negotiation—has meekly capitulated to Israel.

The upshot is that hopes for an early resumption of talks between the main protagonists seem to have been dashed. Indeed, no one seems to know how they can be restarted. The mood among moderates on both sides is as glum as ever.

Mr Obama's secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, made matters worse by actually praising Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for promising merely to "restrain" Israel's building rather than stop it altogether, as he was first asked to do. Previously Mrs Clinton had insisted that stop meant stop. There should be no "organic growth" of existing settlements and no exceptions for projects under way. Nor did she specifically exempt East Jerusalem, which Palestinians view as their future capital but which many Israelis see as theirs alone. And she had earlier castigated Israel for demolishing Palestinian houses in the city's eastern part. Now, in Israel on October 31st, she changed her tune, seeming to acquiesce in Mr Netanyahu's refusal to meet those earlier American demands and congratulating the prime minister on his "unprecedented" offer to build at a slower rate than before.

Mr Netanyahu's case is that being "prepared to adopt a policy of restraint on the existing settlements" is indeed a concession. No new settlements would be started, no extra Palestinian land appropriated for expansion. But some 3,000 housing units already commissioned must, he said, be completed. Building must go on in East Jerusalem, he has repeatedly said, as it cannot be part of a Palestinian state.

Mrs Clinton later awkwardly backpedalled, assuring the Palestinians that she still considered all settlements "illegitimate", while pleading with them to resume talks. That seems unlikely. A storm of abuse raged in the Palestinian and Arab press. Mr Obama, it was widely deduced, had caved in after his own ratings in Israel had slumped, according to some Israeli polls, to as low as 4%. Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Fatah party who presides over the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, expressed extreme disappointment—and continued to insist that talks could not resume until there was a full building freeze.

Among Palestinians at large, Mr Abbas has been derided for putting his faith in the new American administration. Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, the smaller of the two main parts of a future Palestinian state, mocked him for ever thinking that Mr Obama could change American policy towards the Middle East.

Last month he called a general and presidential election for January 24th. But with opinion polls showing his popularity diving, on November 5th he said he would not stand for re-election. Hamas, in any event, said it would refuse to take part in the polls. Mr Abbas, it seems, has been forced to acknowledge that his authority—and his ability to grapple with the Israelis in negotiations if they had resumed—has been eviscerated.

Besides, even if talks did start again, no agreement would stick without the acquiescence of Hamas, which won the last Palestinian election, in 2006, and is still strong enough to kibosh any deal done without it. Yet discussions between the two rival groups, under the aegis of the Egyptians, have been stuttering along for more than a year without getting anywhere.

Mr Netanyahu, on the other hand, was cock-a-hoop. The right-wing and religious ministers who make up the bulk of his coalition government can scarcely believe his luck. The prime minister is riding high in the Israeli people's esteem. Building work is proceeding apace in many of the settlements. He looks as if he has emerged unscathed from a brush with a hostile American president.

Mr Obama is being criticised, even by Israelis and Americans on the left, for making demands of Mr Netanyahu that he should have known would never be met. Some say the president should himself fly to Israel to address the Israeli people directly with a game-changing plan of his own. But no one, least of all in Washington, seems to know what that might be.
Quote from: PDH on April 25, 2009, 05:58:55 PM
"Dysthymia?  Did they get some student from the University of Chicago with a hard-on for ancient Bactrian cities to name this?  I feel cheated."

CountDeMoney

Old story.  Poppy Bush tried to get them to stop too, even threatening loan guarantees, and to no avail.

The Israelis will do what they want to do, end of story.

Neil

Yes.  Israel is too strong for America, and far too strong for Obama.
I do not hate you, nor do I love you, but you are made out of atoms which I can use for something else.

DisturbedPervert

They're not gonna be too strong for Iran

Razgovory

Quote from: DisturbedPervert on November 08, 2009, 12:23:50 PM
They're not gonna be too strong for Iran

Yeah, people said the same thing about the arabs in '48.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Jaron

Quote from: Razgovory on November 08, 2009, 12:36:57 PM
Quote from: DisturbedPervert on November 08, 2009, 12:23:50 PM
They're not gonna be too strong for Iran

Yeah, people said the same thing about the arabs in '48.

The benefit to Israel is if Iran was to go to war with Israel, the rest of the Muslim world would have a predicament: What is better? Killing Jews or Shiites?
Winner of THE grumbler point.

CountDeMoney

Quote from: Razgovory on November 08, 2009, 12:36:57 PM
Quote from: DisturbedPervert on November 08, 2009, 12:23:50 PM
They're not gonna be too strong for Iran

Yeah, people said the same thing about the arabs in '48.

And '56. And '67. And '73.

Warspite

Quote from: Razgovory on November 08, 2009, 12:36:57 PM
Quote from: DisturbedPervert on November 08, 2009, 12:23:50 PM
They're not gonna be too strong for Iran

Yeah, people said the same thing about the arabs in '48.

Yes, but the Arabs' words in 1948 were not backed with: NUCLEAR WEAPONS
" SIR – I must commend you on some of your recent obituaries. I was delighted to read of the deaths of Foday Sankoh (August 9th), and Uday and Qusay Hussein (July 26th). Do you take requests? "

OVO JE SRBIJA
BUDALO, OVO JE POSTA

CountDeMoney

Quote from: Jaron on November 08, 2009, 12:38:52 PM
The benefit to Israel is if Iran was to go to war with Israel, the rest of the Muslim world would have a predicament: What is better? Killing Jews or Shiites?

Survey says: Killing Jews!

Admiral Yi

It was a diplomatic defeat for Obama.  But I doubt the American public was sufficiently invested in a settlement freeze for it to qualify as a defeat for America.

garbon

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 08, 2009, 02:49:11 PM
It was a diplomatic defeat for Obama.  But I doubt the American public was sufficiently invested in a settlement freeze for it to qualify as a defeat for America.

:yes:

We'd need to be able to identify Israel on a map first.
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Alexandru H.

Hitler Youth would not want Israel to expand  :mad:

Queequeg

Quote from: Admiral Yi on November 08, 2009, 02:49:11 PM
It was a diplomatic defeat for Obama.  But I doubt the American public was sufficiently invested in a settlement freeze for it to qualify as a defeat for America.
To be honest, I think that it most clearly is in our national interest to freeze settlement growth, and eventually roll it back.    :unsure:
Quote from: PDH on April 25, 2009, 05:58:55 PM
"Dysthymia?  Did they get some student from the University of Chicago with a hard-on for ancient Bactrian cities to name this?  I feel cheated."

Josquius

Give the Palestinians guns instead of the Israelis.
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Admiral Yi

Quote from: Queequeg on November 08, 2009, 02:53:41 PM
To be honest, I think that it most clearly is in our national interest to freeze settlement growth, and eventually roll it back.    :unsure:
OK.  You and Obama.