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Source: http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial_opinion/editorial/why_israel_isolated
Why Israel Is "Isolated"
(New York Jewish Week) Editorial - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was quite right to observe this week that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the Mideast. What's unnerving, though, is to suggest, as he did, that Jerusalem is at fault for this situation. Yes, Israel finds itself isolated in the region. That's because Turkey has cast its fate with Iran rather than the West and has been looking for fights to pick with Jerusalem to bolster its status. It's because Egypt, without Mubarak, has made it clear that it wants to pull back the relationship. Yet Jerusalem is somehow perceived as causing rather than enduring increasing hostility and snubs from its neighbors. Are the West Bank settlements really to blame here rather than decades of virulent Arab anti-Semitism and refusal to accept the reality of a Jewish presence in the region? The U.S. knows better.