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It's Up to Netanyahu

(Washington Post) Jim Hoagland - Israelis are newly confident of U.S. support, which rattles the Arabs. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got a cold shower from Obama when he visited Washington in May. He was told that he should accept the principle of a Palestinian state, which he grudgingly did last summer. But Netanyahu emerged from a Nov. 9 White House meeting with Obama able to claim credibly that the two men had talked as allies about Middle East peace and Iran's nuclear program - with Obama setting a new end-of-December deadline for his engagement efforts with Tehran to produce results. Whatever the Goldstone [Gaza] report's merits - and they are lessened by its deliberate demonization of Israel's motives and milquetoast exculpations of Hamas' actions - it seems to have been written with no feel for the political consequences it would bring for the peace process. The report also ignored the concern that it would create at the Pentagon and in other Western military headquarters with forces fighting guerrillas who use civilian populations and infrastructure as shields in modern asymmetrical warfare. On Capitol Hill, misgivings about Netanyahu were buried in a reflexive gathering around Israel under UN-inspired attack. The Goldstone fracas also helped push the politically sensitive Obama White House back toward a more supportive, traditional U.S. attitude toward Israel.
2009-11-23 07:32:07
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