February 19, 2011
By Leo Rennert
From the start of his administration, President Obama demonstrated his animus against a Likud-led government by pouncing on Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and on new housing for Jews in East Jerusalem. He abdicated the U.S. role as an honest broker, tilting the scales against the Jewish state. It was bound to backfire.
And backfire it did -- big-time -- as Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas rejected personal Obama pleas not to push for a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction and demanding a building freeze for Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Obama vainly begged Abbas to support instead a watered-down "statement" rejecting the legitimacy of settlements. Abbas, however, wouldn't play.
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