At the same time Obama is making demands on the Palestinian side, like
Among the ways that Obama is looking to punish Israel and endear himself to the Muslim word is not vetoing anti-Israel UN Security resolutions and to publicly denounce Israel. More below:
U.S. Weighs Tactics on Israeli Settlement
By HELENE COOPER
WASHINGTON — As President Obama prepares to head to the Middle East this week, administration officials are debating how to toughen their stance against any expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The measures under discussion — all largely symbolic — include stepping back from America’s near-uniform support for Israel in the United Nations if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel does not agree to a settlement freeze, administration officials said.
Other measures include refraining from the instant Security Council veto of United Nations resolutions that Israel opposes and making use of Mr. Obama’s bully pulpit to criticize the settlements, officials said. Placing conditions on loan guarantees to Israel, as the first President Bush did nearly 20 years ago, is not under discussion, officials said.
Still, talk of even symbolic actions that would publicly show the United States’ ire with Israel, its longtime ally, would be a sharp departure from the previous administration, which limited its distaste with Israel’s settlement expansions to carefully worded diplomatic statements that called them “unhelpful.”
Mr. Obama is to give a much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world from Egypt on Thursday. “There are things that could get the attention of the Israeli public,” a senior administration official said, touching on the widespread belief within the administration that any Israeli prime minister risks political peril if the Israeli electorate views him as endangering the country’s relationship with the United States.
But, the official added, “Israel is a critical United States ally, and no one in this administration expects that not to continue.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
White House officials said Mr. Obama would not make the Cairo speech entirely about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but would instead seek to engage Muslims on the panoply of issues facing Islam and the West, including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.
But the core issue, administration officials said, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “I want to use the occasion to deliver a broader message about how the United States can change for the better its relationship with the Muslim world,” Mr. Obama told reporters last week. “But certainly, the issue of Middle East peace is something that is going to need to be addressed. It is a critical factor in the minds of many Arabs in countries throughout the region and beyond the region.”
The trip, stemming from a visit scheduled to commemorate trans-Atlantic ties — Mr. Obama plans to walk the beaches of Normandy with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and visit the site of the concentration camp that his great-uncle helped liberate at Buchenwald in Germany — will also now offer Mr. Obama an opportunity to define how he plans to navigate America’s relationship with the Muslim world.
He will begin the Middle East leg of the trip in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he will take King Abdullah a wish list from not just himself, but from Israeli and Palestinian officials as well. Officials said Mr. Obama was hoping that King Abdullah would agree to make an overture to Israel that could, in turn, get Israel to move more quickly on a peace process.
Israeli officials would love to see Saudi Arabia open an interests section in Tel Aviv (Saudi Arabia would never put one in Jerusalem because Palestinians see the city as the site of their future capital), or issue a few symbolic tourist visas for Israelis, or agree to hold open meetings with Israeli counterparts. These would be a tall order for the Arab kingdom, which has, thus far, eschewed taking much of a role that could be seen as acknowledging Israel.
Meanwhile, Palestinian officials want Mr. Obama to prod King Abdullah to provide more aid for the Palestinian Authority, which the Saudis have largely set aside in recent months as the Palestinian political system has become increasingly fractured.
White House officials said they wanted greater Arab acceptance of Mr. Obama’s peace plans. But past American presidents — particularly George W. Bush — had sought the same without much luck.
“Now that Obama has raised the pressure on the Israelis when it comes to settlement freeze, it’s time to start raising pressure on the Arab states for something in return,” said Ghaith al-Omari, a former negotiator for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president. “Saudi is the key to unlocking the rest of the Arab world.”
Saudi Arabia may also be part of the key to addressing the morass in Pakistan. Obama administration officials are hoping to get Saudi Arabia to use its influence with the Pakistani opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, to figure out a way to bring some stability to Pakistan’s tumultuous politics as President Asif Ali Zardari becomes increasingly unpopular.
In addition, Mr. Obama will probably touch on his outreach to Iran, and his withdrawal plans for Iraq. He will talk about his decision to shut down the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and refer in his speech to the contributions of Muslims to American society and the world as a whole, aides said.
But Mr. Obama’s remarks in Egypt, though aimed at the Muslim world, will also be carefully parsed in Israel, foreign policy experts said. The president will be walking a fine line between reassuring Israel that America will remain a guarantor of Israeli security and between sounding a warning that he is getting impatient with the slow movement toward Palestinian statehood.
When asked on Thursday what he would do if Mr. Netanyahu continued to balk at a settlement freeze, Mr. Obama said he was not yet ready to offer an “or else.” “In my conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I was very clear about the need to stop the settlements; to make sure that we are stopping the building of outposts; to work with the Palestinian Authority in order to alleviate some of the pressures that the Palestinian people are under in terms of travel and commerce,” Mr. Obama said. “That conversation only took place last week.”
UPDATE: State Department Denies NY Times report:
2 comments:
Obama is pushing the SOS that the Palestinian propaganda parrots have been feeding the world for the past 40 years.
The "issues about settlements and outputs" are pure garbage because the Arabs believe that all the land belongs to them, and they refuse to recognize Israel's existence there.
If goverments are going to continue this nonsense about "illegal Jewish settlements," then they also have to talk about the hundreds of thousands of illegal Arab settlements on Jewish land -- ahem. Don't hold your breath.
The same goes for "outposts," as if there are these little Jewish forts in the heart of Arabia.
Besides that fact that the lands belonged the Jews for over 3,000 years, the nation called "Israel," and thee has never been any nation or state known as "Palestine." Likewise, "Palestinians" are not different from other Arabs, that there is not now., nor has there ever been, any "Israeli occupation" of "Palestinian lands."
There is, and has been, Arab occupation of Jewish lands.
Additionally, there is absolutely no UN prohibition on building new settlements or expanding existing settlements in the West Bank or Gaza (which was given away....again, for the fourth time) as long as it does not change the status of the territories.
Building new settlements on Jewish land is NOT "illegal."
Expanding existing settlements on Jewish land is also NOT "illegal.
Conversely, Arabs building new or expanding settlements on Jewish land are illegal and should be dismantled as they are clearly violating the terms of the UN agreements (Arabs couldn't care less about violating them as they've done it all the time).
The only way there will be peace in the Middle East is for the Arab World to take responsibility for creating the crisis, for expelling Jews with just the clothes on their backs, and to resettle their so-called "Palestinian brothers" on the land that they stole from the Jews.
Hamas should be disbanded and removed from Gaza, and let Egypt govern Gaza, just like it did four times before.
Obama has revealed his true, anti-Semitic colors. He and his entire administration is full of Israel-haters. The moral bankruptcy and gutlessness of the Democratic Party knows no bounds.
Time to step up to the plate, Americans, whether you be Jews or Christians and vote out all Democrats who will side with this Little Child on this issue and others. This especially applies to Henry Waxboy, Booby Wexler, Fat Jack Nadler, Brenda aka Barney Frank, Chuckie Schmuckie Schumer and the rest. You will NO longer get our undivided support and we will do our utmost to ensure you are voted out of office.
If Little Child wants to punish Israel, we can do the same to you -and a year is coming up very fast.
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