It was supposed to be a visit that would restore our trust. It was the visit that destroyed trust. Binyamin Netanyahu kicked over the bucket that contained no milk. Biden was supposed to fill it. Instead, Biden burned with anger. “They stabbed me in the back,” the vice president said last Tuesday in meetings that he held. “They hurt me, President Obama, the United States, the peace process, trust, and everyone who believed that something could be done here.” He was furious. On Tuesday, he spoke with President Obama. The conversation included condemnatory language unfit for print. He was on the verge of canceling dinner with the Netanyahus. Again and again, he changed the speech that he was to give on Tuesday at the university. He did not know what to do with himself, where to take his frustration, his feeling of betrayal, of lost opportunity. [...][Biden] was supposed to restart the process. To create, finally, a relationship of trust with Netanyahu. Instead, the moment he landed, he discovered a plan to construct sixteen hundred dwelling units in Ramat Shlomo. Where the heck is Ramat Shlomo? The absurd thing is that there is no significance to the registering of this zoning plan. There are no tenders or anything that could not have been done three months ago or in six months from now. Much ado about nothing whatsoever. [...]Anyone who has been listening over the past several weeks to Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu’s closest and most intimate representative in the political sphere, and his partner Mike Herzog (who is about to retire), heard both of them saying the same thing: the peace process is hopeless, it is all tactics, Netanyahu has no intention of going to real peace ... In short, the settlers can relax. But see—the settlers are not relaxed. Because they know Bibi. Today it is one way, tomorrow it could be otherwise. It depends on who is pressuring him and who scares him more. ....High-ranking American officials said this week that Israel was not behaving like an ally of the United States. There is no worse thing to say at such a critical time, when Iran is charging toward the last stretch on its way to the nuclear bomb. At this stage, At this stage, there should have been blind coordination between ourselves and them. Netanyahu should have been Obama’s best friend. A word is a word and a promise is a promise, and all the details of the operation to stop Iran’s progress toward the nuclear bomb, including the negotiations with the Palestinians and the Syrians (even in neutral) were supposed to be kept secret for the sake of calming things down on the ground and neutralizing ticking bombs. In reality? There is nothing. Only the broken glass of the souvenir that Bibi prepared for Biden and shattered with his own hands. [...]Next year [Palestinian PM Fayyad] will show the world a quiet PA, a law-abiding PA with institutions and reforms with one military, one law, one authority. And then, he will ask for recognition of the Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. As it seems now, he will get this. From everyone except from us. [....]
Friday, March 12, 2010
Maariv: "... The conversation included condemnatory language unfit for print ..."
Via Politico/ Ben Caspit in today's Maariv, excerpts below:
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2 comments:
There is a verse in the Holy Quran that says : wa yamudduhum fi tughyanihim ya'amahoun, which means that God will let the unbelievers and polytheists in their blindness until they reach their demise. The Israelis are behaving exactly in that way (and should be encouraged for that matter) for it will speed up their demise! It is one thing to oppose Obama, it is another thing to oppose a whole administration who includes a lot of staunch friends of Israel. They have been embarassed and the day of reckoning when it will become clear that US interests and Israel interests not only do not converge but in fact are totally opposed. Can Israel survive without the support of the US? Can it take that support for granted until the end of time?
One of the first things that the behavior of the Israeli regime will "speed up," as the first commentor said, is the "demise" of the myth that Israel fears an Iranian nuclear bomb. If it did, it would not endanger its national security for the sake of a decision to build a few houses whose significance, even according to the Israeli press, is nil.
The argument about Iran is about domestic political power and pressuring the US into coughing up arms to fuel Israeli expansion. Iran is so incredibly useful to the Israeli right wing; if Iranian national security officials would only wake up and realize how the Israeli right is manipulating Ahmadinejad to enhance its own power, they would fire the guy in a heartbeat.
The Israeli right has let the Iranian cat out of the bag.
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