OBAMA'S POUND OF FLESH

From today's IsraelNationalNews.com:

Pinchas Wallerstein, a long-time Israeli settlement leader charged that the new American government is trying to take "Barak Hussein Obama's pound of flesh for the Arab world towards which he now sets his sights." President Obama stated in his Cairo University speech earlier this month that "the U.S. does not view the settlements as legitimate." he has issued repeated calls for a halt to building for Jews.

Even the Washington Post, which usually sides against Israeli policies in Yesha, is concerned with the Obama administration having painted itself a corner in the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Jackson Diehl, the newspaper’s deputy editorial page editor, wrote Monday morning: "The administration made the mistake of insisting that an Israeli settlement ‘freeze’ - a term the past three administrations agreed to define loosely - must mean a total stop to all construction in the West Bank and even East Jerusalem.

"This absolutist position is a loser for three reasons. First, it has allowed Palestinian and Arab leaders to withhold the steps they were asked for; they claim to be waiting for the settlement "freeze" even as they quietly savor a rare public battle between Israel and the United States.

Second, the administration's objective -- whatever its merits -- is unobtainable. No Israeli government has ever agreed to an unconditional freeze, and no coalition could be assembled from the current parliament to impose one.

Finally, the extraction of a freeze from Netanyahu is, as a practical matter, unnecessary. While further settlement expansion needs to be curbed, both the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments have gone along with previous U.S.-Israeli deals by which construction was to be limited to inside the periphery of settlements near Israel -- since everyone knows those areas will be annexed to Israel in a final settlement."