In Driving Drunk in Jerusalem Thomas Friedman warns PM Netanayahu:
In sum, there may be a real opportunity here — if Netanyahu chooses to seize it. The Israeli leader needs to make up his mind whether he wants to make history or once again be a footnote to it.
What opportunity?
This whole fracas also distracts us from the potential of this moment: Only a right-wing prime minister, like Netanyahu, can make a deal over the West Bank; Netanyahu’s actual policies on the ground there have helped Palestinians grow their economy and put in place their own rebuilt security force, which is working with the Israeli Army to prevent terrorism; Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad are as genuine and serious about working toward a solution as any Israel can hope to find; Hamas has halted its attacks on Israel from Gaza; with the Sunni Arabs obsessed over the Iran threat, their willingness to work with Israel has never been higher, and the best way to isolate Iran is to take the Palestinian conflict card out of Tehran’s hand.
His description of Abbas and Fayyad as “genuine and serious about working toward a solution as any Israel can hope to find” underscores a problem. I don’t think that guys who are burning Israeli products are that serious about a solution. But more importantly, they’re about as moderate as the PA comes and thus have no real power. Hamas has halted its attacks, but that’s been due to Cast Lead. But finally we get to Friedman’s analysis of the Sunni Arabs. Well if Iran is so important to them, why don’t they become more concilliatory towards Israel? (In fact, what’s going on in Israel may be of less importance to them than Friedman thinks.)
When you read Friedman’s recommendations for the Middle East, recall that he predicted that once Israel withdrew from Lebanon, Hezbollah would lay down its arms as it would no longer have any grievance against Israel. That worked out really well didn’t it?
As for Friedman’s contention:
Biden — a real friend of Israel’s — was quoted as telling his Israeli interlocutors: “What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and endangers regional peace.â€
Mere Rhetoric has the particulars about Biden’s pro-Israel credentials.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Someone needs to compile a list of email addresses for fine folks like Friedman, Biden, Sec Clinton, and others who find it more convenient to call out Israel than to dig below the surface and call out the other folks who refuse to call out the terrorists and their enablers.
As to Biden’s accusation that building on Israeli land undermining peace and endangering American troopers, I say, “Another bit of military expertise from another chicken hawk.”
I remember reading Tom’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” and thought how he described the cival war in Lebanon was excellent. Also the “Hama Rules” chapter gave a scary insight to how things work in the MidEast.
When he got to Jerusalem it seemed to fall apart. Like the Isrealies couldn’t meet the level he epxected of them. Especially if you wanted to be a Observent, Religious Jew. I could just picture the mental lock in when he tried to process it.
President Obama seems totally unaware that his administration is in chaos. His approval numbers are in a free fall. His administration seems intent on bungling issue after issue after issue.
Even the NY Times notes the last time this sort of foul up occurred was during the early 1990s when James Baker was Secretary of State.
Maybe someone should remind our President what happened the last time an administration purposefully tried to destroy America’s relationship with Israel.
Clinton got reelected, that’s what. His administration tried to prevent Bibi from becoming PM, then worked for years to get him booted out in favor of Labor.