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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (308879)	6/6/2009 9:49:02 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	2 Recommendations Respond to of 793883

Is Obama Trying To Overthrow Bibi? The Jpost reports that the written understandings that Israel had with the Bush administration about the settlement blocs have been repudiated by the Obama administration. Obama may be trying to overthrow Bibi but if so he's overplayed his hand. By being so obviously an enemy to Israel and to any real hopes of peace, it is more likely he will strengthen Bibi, who is new in office and has good support. Israel makes settlement concesssions when it feels that America has its back. Not now. Caroline Glick thinks that Obama is making an issue of natural growth in the settlements to dump the American-Israeli alliance in favor of a new alliance with the Arabs. The Netanyahu government reportedly fears that Obama and his advisers have made such an issue of settlements because they seek to overthrow Israel's government and replace it with the more pliable Kadima party. Government sources note that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel played a central role in destabilizing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's first government in 1999, when he served as an adviser to then president Bill Clinton. They also note that Emmanuel is currently working with leftist Israelis and American Jews associated with Kadima and the Democratic Party to discredit the government. While there is little reason to doubt that the Obama administration would prefer a leftist government in Jerusalem, it is unlikely that the White House is attacking Israel primarily to advance this aim. This is first of all the case because today there is little danger that Netanyahu's coalition partners will abandon him. Moreover, the Americans have no reason to believe that prospects for a peace deal would improve with a leftist government at the helm in Jerusalem. After all, despite its best efforts, the Kadima government was unable to make peace with the Palestinians, as was the Labor government before it. What the Palestinians have shown consistently since the failed 2000 Camp David summit is that there is no deal that Israel can offer them that they are willing to accept. So if the aim of the administration in attacking Israel is neither to foster peace nor to bring down the Netanyahu government, what can explain its behavior? The only reasonable explanation is that the administration is baiting Israel because it wishes to abandon the Jewish state as an ally in favor of warmer ties with the Arabs. It has chosen to attack Israel on the issue of Jewish construction because it believes that by concentrating on this issue, it will minimize the political price it will be forced to pay at home for jettisoning America's alliance with Israel. By claiming that he is only pressuring Israel to enable a peaceful "two-state solution," Obama assumes that he will be able to maintain his support base among American Jews who will overlook the underlying hostility his "pro-peace" stance papers over. jpost.com But just as Obama doesn't understand that there isn't a state of Palestine because the Palestinians don't want one, he also doesn't understand that the Arabs are far more worried about Iranian hegemony in the Gulf than they are about Israel. Obama's refusal to address their real worries is likely to lessen American influence with both Arabs and Israelis.