Obama's visit to Israel: more impressive than I expected

Yeah, I have to say so far, so good on the Israel visit. I was astonished at how relaxed Netanyahu acted with Obama in public. His usual pugnacious affect was just gone, which itself also sends a message. The public responses to Obama have been very gratifying. The hard work is in getting results all these diplomatic overtures, but as far as overtures go, these have been whiz-bang fantastic.

Re: Obama's visit to Israel

It's well known there's no love lost between Obama and Netanyahu. I think that, no matter what he might say in public, the Obama administration cares less about the Israelis than they do about the prospect of bringing about a general peace in the Middle East once the Syrian situation gets resolved in the non attributable way they think it should go. I actually agree with this uber view in the same way that the relationship between the US and the Eurozone is considered by the Obama administration to be far more important than that between the US and the UK. History is bunk, don't you know?
Their Middle East policy is, however, confined by the substantial pro Israeli lobby in their own back yard and Netanyahu has remorsely used this to his own advantage.
Now, I'm not normally a gossipmonger on this board and usually provide verifiable links, but I've seen some non attributable comments on the net which suggest that the real purpose of his visit to Israel was to let Netanyahu know face to face that if Israel were to attack Iran they would not receive American support. Could be absolute bullshit, could be something in it. Who knows?

I think that, no matter what he might say in public, the Obama administration cares less about the Israelis than they do about the prospect of bringing about a general peace in the Middle East once the Syrian situation gets resolved in the non attributable way they think it should go.

Click to expand...

You are ignoring the fact that a general peace in the Middle East would be beneficial to Israel. The Israeli political system has been widely criticized for giving a disproportionate amount of power to extremist elements, and being so unstable that it is virtually incapable of making any sort of long term policy. What Kissinger said, 40 years ago is still true: "Israel doesn't have a foreign policy, only a domestic policy." The internal pressures of maintaining a coalition are so strong, that only the most profound international crises can penetrate Israel's decision making.

Despite Netanyahu's blustering that only Israel is capable of understanding Israel's problems, the political situation in Israel makes it incapable of pursuing long term foreign policy goals. So the USA has to do it for them, and then watch it all go to pot every time the Prime Minister is forced to expand settlements in order to keep his coalition together.