Did Obama’s charm offensive in Israel work?
President Obama had three goals for his first presidential trip to Israel.
President Obama had three goals for his first presidential trip to Israel.
Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich put the blame for the impasse in Middle East peace talks squarely on the Palestinians.\n
\”The Palestinian people does not exist,” exclaimed the politician. The audacity of the statement shocked me, because it came from the mouth of Zahir Muhsein, a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee, in a 1977 interview with a Dutch newspaper.
Olmert\’s attention to the fine print and his less-than-mythic status in Israel have become subjects of parody at home.
But it\’s just those qualities that have made him a favorite among Jewish officials and politicians in Washington.
Now that the race for the Democratic nomination for president is moving south and west, Jewish scrutiny of the candidates is likely to intensify.
The overwhelming evidence from statements by the PLO leadership was that it viewed the Oslo process as a tactical necessity to realize its ultimate strategic goal of recovering the entire territory of British Mandatory Palestine — including the area of Israel.
Hardened by past failures, Israelis and Palestinians alike recognize that there is still a long way to go, and a lot that could still go wrong after President Bush\’s Wednesday meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas.