http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/stephaniegutmann/100017276/obama-in-the-mideast-innocents-abroad-worse-arrogant-innocents-abroad/

Obama in the Mideast: Innocents Abroad. Worse, Arrogant Innocents Abroad



By Stephanie Gutmann World Last updated: November 19th, 2009

9 Comments Comment on this article

So Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs has said “We are dismayed at the Jerusalem planning committee’s decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem.”

The Obama administration could have been a lot less dismayed and actually showed some success on the world stage vis a vis Israel/Palestine if they had started by trying for something realistic. Instead this crowd of amateurs blundered into the area, acting as if they knew nothing about the past fifteen years and about the brutal civil war splitting the Palestinian territories.

The Obama folks roared in imperiously, made an excruciating difficult demand of the Israelis, no corresponding demand of Fatah party president Mahmoud Abbas, all at a time when Israel has even less room to manoeuvre than usual. It is like asking a man on a tiny life raft to throw his paltry food stores overboard to feed circling sharks.

Bewitched by what seems to be a “If We Build it They Will Come” philosophy they continue to pretend that Mahmoud Abbas, the man they demand Netanyahu negotiate with, is actually able to make binding agreements, even though he exists day to day on the sufferance of the the radical Islamists next door — allowed to stick around because he is skillful at appearing moderate and extracting foreign aid from the West.

The key problem is this: Obama and company continue to demand a “complete settlement freeze.”

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Originally posted by zeeblebot
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/stephaniegutmann/100017276/obama-in-the-mideast-innocents-abroad-worse-arrogant-innocents-abroad/

Obama in the Mideast: Innocents Abroad. Worse, Arrogant Innocents Abroad



By Stephanie Gutmann World Last updated: November 19th, 2009

9 Comments Comment on this article

So Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs has said ...[text shortened]... ey problem is this: Obama and company continue to demand a “complete settlement freeze.”

...

who knew?

i mean, you guys keep saying a conservative in the UK would be left-of-center in the USA.

It's an amazing turn-around by the Telegraph. Until only a month or two ago, it was indistinguishable from Pravda.

isn't the next election expected to toss out Labour?

OL:

...

The key problem is this: Obama and company continue to demand a “complete settlement freeze.” But now that Israel has withdrawn over 9,000 residents from Gaza and largely frozen new settlement in the deeper reaches of the West Bank, the area to be “frozen” was not on the table for the last two terms of George Bush. Bush the Second understood that East Jerusalem and the large, long-established “seam line” towns would be part of a “final status agreement.” In a 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon, the president wrote: “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949…” The Palestinians understood this too. There was no “full settlement freeze” in effect throughout the last eight years, yet the Israel and the Palestinian Authority government sat down together many times.

Even the most Left-wing Israelis do not consider the town of Gilo (the town Robert Gibbs is dismayed about) “a settlement.” This community of 40,000, on Jerusalem’s southern border is hardly a clump of wild-eyed Orthodox Jews living in caravans. It is hardly an colonial thrust into the West Bank. It has existed since 1967, when the land, which was being used as a staging ground for the Jordanian army, was seized by the Israeli army as it defended the nascent state from attack. Its proximity to Jerusalem means that it is part of the seam line building that occurred after 1967 when Israel was attacked by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq and it became increasingly clear that the borders deeded by the UN would have to be bolstered if they were to be remotely defensible militarily.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph

Eventually, the Barclay brothers purchased Hollinger, and with it the Telegraph, for around £665m in late June 2004.
Amidst the unraveling of the takeover Sir David Barclay suggested that The Daily Telegraph might in the future no longer be the "house newspaper" of the Conservatives. In an interview with The Guardian he said, "Where the government are right we shall support them."
The editorial board endorsed the Conservative party in the 2005 general election.

According to a MORI survey conducted in 2005, 64% of Telegraph readers intended to support the Conservative Party in the coming elections.