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Obama's Breakthrough in Jerusalem
(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - Barack Obama said in Jerusalem on March 21: "I honestly believe that if any Israeli parent sat down with those [Palestinian] kids, they'd say, 'I want these kids to succeed.'" Very true. But how does the other side feel about Israeli kids? Consider that the most revered parent in Palestinian society is Mariam Farhat of Gaza. Her distinction? Three of her sons died in various stages of trying to kill Israelis - one in a suicide attack, shooting up and hurling grenades in a room full of Jewish students. For that she was venerated as "mother of the struggle" and elected to parliament. In the Palestinian territories, streets, public squares, summer camps, high schools, and even a kindergarten are named after suicide bombers and other mass murderers. So much for the notion that if only Israelis would care about Arab kids, peace would be possible. What Obama blithely called "missed historic opportunities" are not random events. They present an unbroken, unrelenting pattern over seven decades of Palestinian leaders rejecting any final peace with Israel. In Ramallah last week, Obama demolished the claim that settlements are the obstacle to peace. Palestinian sovereignty and Israeli security are "the core issue," he told Abbas. "If we solve those two problems, the settlement problem will be solved." Exposing settlements as a mere excuse for the Palestinian refusal to negotiate - that was the news, widely overlooked, coming out of Obama's trip. It was a breakthrough. When an American president so sympathetic to the Palestinian cause tells Abbas to stop obstructing peace with that phony settlement excuse, something important has happened.