Word: washington
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...along, Netanyahu has insisted that a different Middle East crisis, Iran's nuclear program, should be the focus of his relations with Washington. And though the Obama Administration resisted that argument, Netanyahu may now be getting help from an unexpected quarter: the Iranian regime, whose violent crackdown on peaceful protests against election-rigging have created a more pressing foreign-policy crisis for the Obama Administration. (See pictures of President Obama in Saudi Arabia...
Finding a comfort zone with a U.S. Administration determined to move quickly toward implementing a two-state solution has been difficult for a hawkish Israeli leader who is, at best, a reluctant traveler on that road. When Netanyahu visited Washington in May, he discovered he'd been outflanked by Obama, who had managed to get many of Israel's key congressional supporters on board with the White House push against settlements. U.S. officials were widely quoted as telling the Israelis that moving forward on a settlement freeze and peace with the Palestinians was a critical step toward mustering the Arab...
...Tehran's violent crackdown on its own citizens protesting claims of election fraud. The domestic political pressure on the Administration to take a tougher stand against Iran's regime may actually help Netanyahu resist pressure for a settlement freeze. After all, the President may find it difficult, in Washington, to muster pressure on Israel over settlements at a moment when he's being berated for speaking too softly on Tehran's crackdown. Members of Congress are now proposing new sanctions legislation and even demanding hearings on U.S. policy toward Tehran. And that's exactly the conversation that Netanyahu wants dominating...
...Washington is insisting on the settlement freeze in line with the requirements of the 2003 road map for peace, and because the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are the geographic basis of the Palestinian state envisaged in the two-state solution. As long as Israel continues settlement construction, Palestinians doubt its seriousness about agreeing to a viable Palestinian state. But Israel claims it has a right to keep building within the boundaries of its existing settlements to deal with what it calls "natural growth," and it expects to keep the occupied land on which most are built...
...would be tempting for Washington to dismiss Sunday morning's military overthrow of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya as just a minor banana-republic convulsion. But the Obama Administration doesn't have that luxury. Zelaya is a member of the club of left-wing Latin American leaders - and its honcho, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, has already deemed this a hemispheric crisis that will challenge the new north-south bonhomie President Barack Obama established two months ago at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Less than an hour after Honduran military aircraft had whisked Zelaya into apparent forced exile...