US media view: The future of US-Israel relations
US commentators look at the future of the Israel-US relationship after a row over Israel's announcement during US Vice-President Joe Biden's visit of plans to build 1,600 new Jewish homes in Arab East Jerusalem.
this a watershed moment:
"[I]t's past time that Palestinian failings cease to serve as an excuse for Israel's remorseless, cynical scattering of the Palestinian people into enclaves that make a farce of statehood. That is 'an affront' to America.
In this sense, Biden's foray has been salutary. It brought U.S. 'vital interests' to the surface. It challenged Israel's ostrich-like burrowing into polices that, over time, will make one divided, undemocratic state more likely than 'two states for two peoples.'"
that although the US is right to be upset over the incident, the US-Israel relationship is "solid to the core":
"There have been almost a dozen separate high-level visits to each country in just the last two months, as the two countries are cooperating extremely closely in their efforts to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. The United States also stood with Israel in resisting the unbalanced Goldstone report on Gaza. The two countries also engaged in a massive military exercise together recently."
there may be dangerous consequences to an anti-Israel stance:
"The Obama administration is making an enormous and dangerous mistake. Jerusalem is and should always remain the undivided capital of the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Washington is wrong to use such hysterical and heavy-handed measures to berate Israel and to try to force her to divide her own capital. Doing so will lead to another major war, not to peace."
what he thinks shouldn't be done in the coming weeks:
"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 - or another with him at the helm - is an accurate reflection of what Israeli politics these days is all about."
Israel's current government is intent on "thumbing its nose at the American president":
"I'd hope that all American Jews, on both sides of the two-state issue, would agree that an insult directed at the Obama Administration is an insult directed at us all... and that AIPAC members, who I'm sure see themselves as Americans first, will behave accordingly."
this as an important change in relations between the US and Isreal:
"Finally, the reason Israel engages in this intransigent, arrogant conduct is because it believes (with good reason) that U.S. officials will never be willing to (and, in any event, cannot) take any real action against it. At this point, the Obama administration - as reflected by the excellent questions posed yesterday to David Axelrod by ABC News' Jake Tapper - still seems far from ready to do so. Still, there's no denying that the very public condemnation of Israel by the Obama administration is unprecedented at least over the last two decades..."
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