Barak Meets Mitchell, Result–’Bupkis’ (Nothing) « Tikun Olam-תיקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Barak Meets Mitchell, Result–’Bupkis’ (Nothing)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 3:14 PM and is filed under Mideast Peace, Politics & Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Barak Meets Mitchell, Result–’Bupkis’ (Nothing)”

bar_kochba132 says:

June 30, 2009 at 7:11 PM

Here we are going on six months of Obama’s Administration. Talks are continuing. Maybe they will go on for the next 3.5 years, with “both sides hoping to reach an agreement”. Will Obama put a freeze on the rest of the “peace process” pending a resolution of the settlement matter? What punitive sancitions is he considering using if Israel doesn’t knuckle under? I see the US government authorized loan guarantees for Israel yesterday, so they aren’t using that, as did Bush I in 1991 and 1992.

All I know is that if Netanyahu agrees even to a “temporary freeze”, there will be a firestorm of opposition on the Right in Israel. A “temporary” freeze wouldn’t bring Netanyahu any credit, whatever ongoing construction would be happening would automatically be considered being in “bad faith” even if it is excluded, and also there is the question of who decides whether the Arab side has been forthcoming enough to enable the freeze to continue.

Obama has painted himself into a corner by making his demand for a freeze unilateral, without tying it to some significant concession from the Arab side. This just shows he is a rank amateur at diplomacy.
Meanwhile we’ll see what happens in Iraq based on his withdrawal of US forces from the cities. Setting arbitrary deadlines in a war for withdrawals merely hands the initiative to the enemy. This is why McCain opposed setting deadlines. IMHO, Obama is sitting on a volcano on many fronts.

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Margaret says:

July 1, 2009 at 1:01 PM

bk – The image I see is not one of Obama “painted” into a corner; it is of a President facing demands from the people who comprise his constituency. The opposition to Israel’s behavior is a continuing storm in the US – of protest, not fire, except perhaps in a spiritual sense.

Your perspective regarding Iran is not one I share. Iran needs to take care of its own; President Obama needs to take care of his own. We need to take care of our own. You need to take care of your own.

You err, I would suggest, in considering Obama isolated atop a volcano. We all are sitting there with him.

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