If Barack Obama and John Kerry’s bizarre intervention on Hamas’ behalf against Israel over the weekend seems confusing, it’s because you’re talking their boilerplate rhetoric about being “friends to Israel” who respect her “right to defend herself” seriously. Obama regards Turkey as a more valuable ally than Israel. Turkey is run by an increasingly deranged Islamist who is very eager to keep Hamas in the game. Obama is also miffed at Egypt, which overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government Obama once celebrated as a triumph of his “Arab Spring” foreign policy. Egypt under the Brotherhood would have been helping Hamas right now; instead, they’re blowing up Hamas tunnels that protrude into their territory.
From left: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama and PA President Mahmoud Abbas during a trilateral meeting in New York, Sept. 22, 2009 (photo credit: Avi Ohayon/GPO/Flash90)
American officials directly involved in the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace process over the last nine months gave a leading Israeli columnist a withering assessment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the negotiations, indicated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has completely given up on the prospect of a negotiated solution, and warned Israel that the Palestinians will achieve statehood come what may — either via international organizations or through violence.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to Nahum Barnea, a prominent columnist from Israel’s best-selling daily Yedioth Aharonoth, the officials highlighted Netanyahu’s ongoing settlement construction as the issue “largely to blame” for the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry’s July 2013-April 2014 effort to broker a permanent peace accord.