Vreemd: terwijl de media nog steeds spreken van hoe Israel de VS vernederde ligt het precies andersom: Israel moet de ene na de andere vernedering ondergaan als boetedoening voor die ene onhandige aankondiging van 1600 woningen in een Joodse wijk gesitueerd op voormalig niemandsland tussen Oost en West Jeruzalem. Niemand had ooit van Ramat Shlomo gehoord, er zijn geen Palestijnen verdreven en geen huizen vernield, noch demonstraties geweest. Het is een rustige orthodoxe wijk vlak bij de oude stad.
In their meeting Mr Obama set out a number of expectations that Israel was to satisfy if it wanted to end the crisis, Israeli sources said. These included an extension of the freeze on Jewish settlement growth beyond the 10-month deadline next September, an end to Israeli building projects in east Jerusalem, and even a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions that they held before the Second Intifada in September 2000, after which they re-occupied most of the West Bank.
Ik had altijd wel het vertrouwen dat Obama en zijn adviseurs zouden zien dat beide partijen de nodige concessies moeten doen, dat beiden daarvoor moeten onderhandelen en dat de VS beiden duidelijk zou maken dat ze de zo noodzakelijke vrede alleen tegen een hoge prijs kunnen krijgen. Ik heb de verhalen over Barak 'Hoessein' Obama die Israel in de uitverkoop zou willen doen voor rechtse propaganda versleten. Maar nu weet ik het niet meer zo zeker. Komt er ooit een einde aan de eisen van de VS aan Israel, en worden er ooit ook eisen aan de Palestijnen gesteld? En mag Israel de naam 'soevereine staat' nog eer aan doen, of is ze dat alleen nog maar in naam, terwijl zij in werkelijkheid de dictaten van de VS moet opvolgen? De VS heeft Livni al verzocht in een 'eventuele' nieuwe coalitie zitting te nemen. Terwijl antiziosemieten altijd de mond vol hebben over de invloed van de Israellobby op het beleid van de VS, lijkt het erop dat de VS in toenemende mate het beleid van Israel bepaalt. Het is daarbij verontrustend dat zo weinig mensen zich hier zorgen over maken, en de kranten blijven schrijven over Israels weigering om zich soepeler op te stellen.
RP
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Obama "humiliated" Netanyahu
The President was said to have walked out of the meeting, saying to Mr Netanyahu: 'Let me know if there is anything new'
Giles Whittell, Washington, and James Hider, Jerusalem
For a head of state to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of.
Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip seen in Jerusalem tonight as a disastrous humiliation.
After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on Jewish settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisors and "let me know if there is anything new", a US congressman who spoke to the Prime Minister said today.
"It was awful," the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting "a hazing in stages", poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House phone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received "the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea".
Left to talk among themselves, Mr Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He later spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks aimed at restarting peace negotiations, but left last night with no official statement from either side. He returns to Israel dangerously isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.
Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not be responsible for the timing of announcements of new settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Mr Obama was said to be livid when such an announcement derailed Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel this month, and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled.
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, cast doubt on minor details in Israeli accounts of the meeting but did not deny claims that it amounted to a dressing down for the Prime Minister, whose refusal to freeze settlements is seen in Washington as the main barrier to resuming peace talks.
The Likud leader now has to try to square the demands of the Obama Administration with his nationalist, ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, who want him to stand up to Washington, even though Israel desperately needs US backing in confronting the looming threat of a nuclear Iran.
"The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came," the Israeli daily Ha'aretz said.
In their meeting Mr Obama set out a number of expectations that Israel was to satisfy if it wanted to end the crisis, Israeli sources said. These included an extension of the freeze on Jewish settlement growth beyond the 10-month deadline next September, an end to Israeli building projects in east Jerusalem, and even a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions that they held before the Second Intifada in September 2000, after which they re-occupied most of the West Bank.
Newspaper reports recounted how Mr Netanyahu looked "excessively concerned and upset" as he pulled out a flow chart to show Mr Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known of the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built just as Mr Biden arrived in Jerusalem.
Mr Obama then suggested that Mr Netanyahu and his staff stay on at the White House to consider his proposals, so that if he changed his mind he could inform the President right away. "I'm still around," the Yediot Ahronot daily quoted Mr Obama saying. "Let me know if there is anything new."
With the atmosphere so soured by the end of the evening, the Israelis decided that they could not trust the phone line they had been lent. Mr Netanyahu retired with his defence minister, Ehud Barak, to the Israeli Embassy to ensure the Americans were not listening in.
The meeting came barely a day after Mr Obama's landmark health reform victory. Israel had calculated that he would be too tied up with domestic issues ahead of the mid-term elections to focus seriously on the Middle East.
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