Obama ramps up the pressure on Israel

President Obama, having told Israel that the nation must give up the house before beginning negotiations with the Palestinians, is doubling down and ratcheting up the pressure on Netanyahu. He’s trying to get American Jewish leaders to push for his plan now, too.

The White House is pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to publicly adopt President Obama’s view that Israel’s pre-1967 border should be the basis for future peace talks.

The Obama White House appealed to Jewish leaders on Friday that the request of Israel was part of an effort to head off Palestinian plans to declare an independent state at the United Nations in September.

The request of Mr. Netanyahu was made Monday to the prime minister’s top peace negotiator, Yitzhak Molcho at a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the National Security Council, according to an Israeli diplomat based in Jerusalem.

So, the big question here is: Will this finally put a dent in Obama’s Jewish support? Will Jewish voters realize that Obama does not have Israel’s best interests at heart in these negotiations, and that he wants Israel to negotiate from a weakened position? What leverage will Israel have if they give the Palestinians almost everything they want before they sit down at the table?

Steven Simon, the new White House National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa, told representatives of the Jewish Community Friday during a conference call that the White House was looking to get both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government to adopt Mr. Obama’s “principles as a basis for negotiation,” according to a recording of the call played for the Washington Times.

What do the Palestinians want? They want a return to the 1967 lines. They want east Jerusalem, which is on their side of the 1967 lines. And they want the “right of return,” a euphemism to flood Israel with the original Palestinian refugees from 1948 and as many of their descendants who want to return to Israel proper—not to “Palestine.” So if Israel gives them all of the land they’ve been demanding for 41 years, and then sits down and says, “Now let’s talk about Jewish access to Jerusalem, exchange of the settlement blocs, and the ‘right of return’ and compensation,” what is the incentive for the Palestinians to bargain? There is none.

And just look at the damage Obama has wrought. Until he took office, Israel and the Palestinians were working towards some kind of agreement. It was slow (glacial, really), but here’s where they were three years ago:

Palestinian leaders have long said the 1967 lines, or the de facto borders of Israel prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, should be the basis of negotiations.

But since Israel’s victory in the war, successive governments have built Jewish suburbs in and around Jerusalem. Both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators agreed privately in 2008 talks, that most of these suburbs would remain part of Israel after a peace agreement, according to a Palestinian negotiation record first disclosed by Al-Jazeera.

Now they’re back to square one, because the Palestinians think they can have it all, now.

Obama can parse the words as much as he wants. Any way you look at this, he is seeking a Palestinian victory over Israel. And may I remind you that Israel did not attack the Arab nations in 1967, nor in 1947. This is about Israel’s existence. Obama is trying to get American Jews to help the Palestinians win, whether he thinks he’s doing that or not. (I don’t believe he thinks he is. I believe he’s an utter moron on foreign affairs.)

Isn’t it about time American Jews threw their support to someone else in the upcoming election? Someone who both knows what he is doing and who supports the only true democracy in the Middle East?