This week President Obama took the opportunity at a meeting with 16 Jewish American leaders to tell them that the especially close relationship that existed between the United States and Israel over the past 8 years was directly responsible for lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
According to Jeremy Ben-Ami of J-Street, a participant in the discussion, Obama argued, “For eight years under the prior administration, there was no daylight between the two sides and there was no progress on the peace front, and no hard decisions were confronted.”
No progress? It is my understanding that Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2004 and handed over control to the Palestinians. Of course we all know what a paradise they made of that territory since - anarchy, open war between Hamas and Fatah, assassinations, car bombings, suffocating unemployment, energy shortages, food shortages, no jobs, missile launchers in school yards, etc...
No hard decisions? No doubt Obama was referring to the presence of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, mostly around Jerusalem, and not the fact that Palestinians continue their terrorist campaign of missile attacks on Israeli cities, bombing of busses and other public spaces, and slaughter of innocent men, women and children on the streets of Israel.
It is Obama’s questioning of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a seemingly constant criticism coming out of the administration, which bothers me the most. For those of you that have never been to the West Bank, and I have, let me describe it to you:
IT IS A FREAKING DESERT!
All you will find there are stone, and sand, and sun … and lots and lots of wasps (the stinging kind). Imagine driving blind in the middle of Arizona down some dirt road, and then getting out of your car and looking around. That’s pretty much what you would see if you were in the West Bank. No farms, no factories, no strip malls, no water parks, no Disney World … no nothing. Just open spaces and sun scorched rock formations. There are communities here and there, but for the most part the land is empty.
Perhaps Israel building 300,000 homes, with about 200,000 of them around Jerusalem, in the West Bank wasn’t the best of ideas, but neither is it the end of the world, and we’re not talking about Manhattan-type property values either.
I have no doubt that Israel would be more than willing to pay compensation to the Palestinians in exchange for peace, but to completely rid the territory of Jews just isn’t going to happen. There are over 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel; why can’t there be any Jews living in the West Bank?
Now Obama has the audacity to suggest that the best way to make progress in the peace process is distance between US and Israel!
That doesn’t sound like a plan from someone who often refers to himself as a “friend” of Israel. It sounds more like the guy who sat in Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years listening to the worst kinds of hate speech.
