Last Thursday President Obama claimed that the US thinks that any new peace agreement with Palestine should be based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders. This came on the eve of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House. Here is Netanyahu’s response at the Oval Office.
some links I found interesting lately
I have been reading the Presidents entire speech and much of it I agree with or am at least neutral. He offended the Palestinians as well. It too bad everyone is focusing on the border issue because it diverts us from the real problem which is that the Muslim nations want Israel destroyed. That sort of makes the border issue a mute point. If the Muslim nations get there way there will be no borders. IMO there can be no peace until the Muslim nations agree that Israel has a right to exist in the Palestine area. I think your going to see the President abandon this position temporarily at least until the elections are over. After that, who knows? I still think that the President is very naive in foreign affairs and potentially dangerous to world peace.
With the exception of the Bin Laden take down, every single move Obama and Hillary has made in the middle east has been very dangerous, starting with helping to give Mubarak the boot in Egypt. Yes, he was a dictator in a region filled with dictators. The problem is the replacement will likely be much worse. Ditto with Libya, where some of the “rebels” we are supporting are al-qaeda veterans!
There will be no peace with Israel and the Palestinians until they drop their right of return demand, which seems unthinkable.
I have no idea why the US thinks we are responsible for mediating a peace in Palestine, which will probably never happen. Camp David was the only success, and it’s been a huge success, and we took down the Egyptian leader who was enforcing those accords.
Things will likely get worse in the region before they get better.
I used to work with a Persian woman who was a Shi’ite and I would ask her on occasion about her homeland (Iran) and one day she stopped me mid sentence and said that “my people are barbarians and can’t handle freedom. They would kill each other”. I don’t believe I asked her much about her homeland again with the exception of giving her expired medications to sending to her family in Tehran. They would take any medication in any quantity, regardless of any expiration date. In the 80’s and 90’s when I worked with her, medication was impossible to get over there. The taking of medications is regarded by clerics as in opposition to the Will of Allah. Things may have changed some since then but its hard to deal with people who have such disregard for life.
That is just another example, Rick.
The two nations who exported both weapons and terrorists (and gave sanctuary to the same) to fight the coalition in Iraq, are Iran and Syria. Twice there have been freedom uprisings in Iran, primarily driven by students, both have been put down by the theocratic government in Iran with nary a whimper from Obama.
There is a bloodbath currently going on in Syria, again no response from Obama.
Yet, if the government was somewhat friendly to the west, Obama seems to be all in favor of it’s over-throw. Even Gaddafi, who is certainly no nice guy, voluntarily surrendered his nuke program in the days following 9/11. Libya has been mostly impotent in recent years, and for that we’re having NATO (mainly the US) lob bombs aimed at taking him out, while the rebels that we may or may not be supporting have A-Q in their ranks,
The only game plan I can see is that Obama is helping to take down every friendly despotic (okay, Libya was not entirely friendly, just neutered) regime in the middle east, while letting terrorist regimes go on about the business of killing their own democracy loving rebels go unchecked.
Where exactly is the sense in that?