Word: israelism
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...reportedly not convinced, and some others at the meeting expressed reservations afterward. Some, however, were reportedly more inclined to give Obama's approach a chance to work, and the President's approach was enthusiastically backed by J-Street, a new Jewish-American lobby group that ties support for Israel to the pursuit of peace. The presence of J-Street's Jeremy Ben-Ami at the White House meeting was one more change to digest for such stalwarts of the Jewish-American establishment as Foxman and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations...
Whether or not Obama suffers any domestic political cost for putting pressure on Israel remains to be seen - he won three-quarters of the Jewish vote in last year's election, and he has good reason to believe he can retain most of that support even if he prods Israel on issues like settlements. After all, the settlements are not fundamental to Israel's security, to which Obama constantly reiterates his rock-solid commitment. (Watch a video about Israel's lonesome doves...
...Obama may be understating the extent of pressure that will be required to bring about a two-state solution to the conflict. The settlement freeze that he has demanded of Israel, for example, is simply a confidence-building mechanism aimed at securing new gestures from Israel's Arab neighbors and helping restart negotiations. But Israel's government has pushed back hard, rejecting the principle of a total settlement freeze and insisting on completing some 2,500 housing units currently under construction, excluding East Jerusalem from the freeze, and making it conditional. And Arab governments are reluctant to be seen...
...intentions of Israel's leaders came under further question last week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's father, the historian Ben-Zion Netanyahu, told an Israeli TV interviewer that he had been told by his son that he did not support the creation of a Palestinian state. Despite Benjamin Netanyahu's having accepted the goal in principle under pressure from Washington, his father said the Prime Minister had done so only on the basis of conditions that were impossible for the Palestinians to ever accept...
Then, in an interview published on July 10, Netanyahu's national security chief and key adviser, Uzi Arad, said the Palestinians, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, were not committed to living in peace with Israel. "Even the moderates among them do not really want a settlement," Arad said. "At most, they are striving toward a settlement in order to renew the confrontation from a better position." As a result of U.S. pressure, a Palestinian state of "stamps, parades, carnival [...] That could happen," Arad said. "A fragile structure, yes; an arrangement resting wholly on wobbly foundations...