So in sum what we saw this week is that the President of the United States made it clear that he disagrees with the regional policy of the Israeli government, but despite that disagreement intends to keep Israel as the number one recipient of US foreign aid and that he also intends to put America’s diplomatic clout at Israel’s disposal in the coming controversy over a Palestinian declaration of statehood. Meanwhile, despite Obama’s lack of desire to shift US policy, he’s subject to opportunistic political attacks from members of the opposition party, attacks which are echoed rather than rebutted by members of his own political coalition.
I can't find one single member of Congress or either party who is backing Obama on actually following through on Israel policy American presidents have been talking about for decades. Not one.
The upshot is that with a series of bold strokes following Barack Obama’s inauguration, Netanyahu has debunked the Barak/Sharon/Olmert/Livni centrist conventional wisdom that has previously dominated Israeli politics. It turns out that it’s not true that Israel needs to be willing to make tactical concessions to the Palestinians or even be polite to the White House in order to retain American support. Israel has a basically free hand to behave as it wishes, taking the pieces of the West Bank it wants.
And it will basically always be able to do so. To even suggest otherwise is the greatest mortal sin in Washington politics, even worse than trillion dollar bank bailouts, even worse than the national debt, even worse than wanting to destroy the New Deal for millions of Americans.
Tell me the most powerful man in international politics right now in 2011 isn't Benjamin Netanyahu. And he's well aware of it. If he said tomorrow that Israel would like to see a change in US leadership, tell me how Barack Obama would get re-elected.
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