(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) Robert Satloff - In less than 48 hours, U.S.-Israel relations went from "unbreakable," according to Vice President Joe Biden, to "perilous," as ascribed to an "unnamed senior U.S. official." The Obama administration needs to tread carefully and act wisely, avoiding demands that resurrect the overreach of the first six months when Washington demanded a halt to Israeli settlements and inadvertently created its own impasse in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. It would be shortsighted for the administration to use this episode as an opportunity to reward the Palestinians - who, after all, have been unenthusiastic about American requests for negotiations for months - or to accept Palestinian arguments that "proximity talks," rather than direct negotiations, are an appropriate forum for substantive give-and-take. And it would be an analytical blunder for the administration to believe that this incident is an opportunity that could precipitate Netanyahu's political demise: after all, this government is an accurate reflection of what Israeli politics these days is all about. The writer is executive director of The Washington Institute.
2010-03-16 09:20:19Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive