[Peace-discuss] Obama moves to the right of Bush on Israel

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Two selections from the blog of Shmuel Rosner, Ha'aretz' chief American 
correspondent, on what the Bush administration is doing in its last year, and 
Obama's pandering.  --CGE]


1.24.08...

Obama the hawk...

[Quoting from an article in Tikkun:]

Rejecting calls by Israeli moderates for the United States to use its 
considerable leverage to push the Israeli government to end its illegal and 
destabilizing colonization of the West Bank and agree to withdraw from the 
occupied territories in return for security guarantees, Obama has insisted "we 
should never seek to dictate what is best for the Israelis and their security 
interests" and that no Israeli prime minister should ever feel "dragged" to the 
negotiating table.

[...]

1.17.2008

Why Bush did not say "a Jewish State"

My good friend Aluf Benn has abandoned the newspaper for a couple of months and 
is now a fellow at the Israeli Institute For National Security Studies. His 
first paper was just published and is headlined: "No 'Jewish State,' No 
Settlement Blocs: 'The King David Statement' and Bush's Developing Position."

A couple of paragraphs:

The declaration basically adheres to the lines demarcated by Bush in his "vision 
speech" of June 2002, but a closer look at the details reveals some development 
and changes in his positions in comparison with previous "vision" documents: the 
Aqaba Conference speech of June 2003, the letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon 
of April 2004, and the Annapolis Conference speech on November 2007.

A review of these changes suggests that they reflect an American effort to 
present a more balanced position by opening up some distance from previous 
positions that were viewed by some as biased in favor of Israel, particularly by 
eliminating the expression "Jewish state," the implied reference to settlement 
blocs and the reservations about settling Palestinian refugees in Israel (all of 
which appeared in the letter to Sharon), and also by defining the point of 
departure for negotiations as "the end of the occupation that began in 1967" 
rather than UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. Nevertheless, Bush left 
considerable room for maneuver that will allow give-and-take between the two 
sides in discussions on the three core issues - border, refugees and Jerusalem.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=865078