After four solid days of negotiations, the US-Israel talks on a deal for slowing settlement construction in the occupied West Bank still does not appear to be close to resolved, with all indications that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is continuing to reject all specific proposals.
Netanyahu actually initiated the talks as a way of trying to resolve a disagreement over the rate of settlement expansion with the Trump Administration, and he is said to have agreed “in principle” with the idea of slowing construction. Getting him pinned down on exactly what that means is another matter.
Netanyahu already made the announcement that the deal, which hasn’t been reached, won’t include any restrictions on construction in occupied East Jerusalem. The most recent US proposal would’ve conceded that point and given a specific metric on construction in the main settlement blocs in the West Bank, but Netanyahu rejected it because it called for halting expansion in the isolated settlements.
The deal is a complicated one for Netanyahu, as he risks upsetting the far-right members of his coalition with any deal that imposes real limits, but he also recognizes that simply ignoring Trump Administration warnings about building too much risks alienating another US president, which after the last few years of the Obama Administration he desperately wants to avoid.
If Bibi were the leader of a Muslim country we’d already be bombing.
Netanyahu is not “desperate”- he knows he can do what he likes and the “US Congress” will fall into line.
The US needs Israel to legitimize US war in the ME. If not for that the US congress would quickly put Netanyahu in his place. It’s time to stop pretending US support of Israel is for any other reason.
How does Israel legitimize US war in the ME?
The US pretends to be in the ME to protect Israel and it’s interests. It’s the only plausible explanation other than it’s because of the oil and that is soundly disputed by the US. Israel’s ongoing expansionist policy onto Arab lands is necessary to Israel’s growing population but it’s also very much in the US interest.
It ensures the US that there will always be an enemy to fight. Bin Laden made it clear but that has been loudly discredited by the promotion of other reasons.
It is a sad and bitter irony indeed that perhaps the most dangerous, vicious, evil and vile criminal leader in the Middle East wasn’t from Iraq, or Libya, but in fact from Israel. Clearly so much of the violence and hatred and terrorism is a direct result of the crimes and atrocities committed by Israel. It would have been far better to have removed the nuclear weapons from Israel in 2001 and forced Israel back to the Pre1967 borders as mandated by international law instead of destroying 2/3’s of the entire Middle East killing millions, turning 10’s of millions into refugees, reducing entire cities to rubble, spending more than 7 Trillion dollars. The world in general and America in particular would have become a far better place than it is today.