Obama Snubs Netanyahu

[Rebecca2009]

[img]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00700/NETANYAHU2_CROP-2_N_700213a.JPG[/img](AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

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 [list][*][url="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7076431.ece#comment-have-your-say"]385 Comments[/url][/list] [url="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7076431.ece#none"]Recommend? (292) [/url] For a head of government 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 viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

“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 telephone 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 spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.

<h3 class="section-heading">Related Links</h3>[list][*][url="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7077264.ece"]Israeli press rounds on Netanyahu[/url][/list][list][*][url="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7074832.ece"]Netanyahu flies home amid media blackout[/url][/list][list][*][url="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7074115.ece"]New Israeli construction plan undermines talks[/url][/list] Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not 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 the visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, 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 has to try to square the rigorous demands of the Obama Administration with his nationalist, ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, who want him to stand up to Washington even though Israel needs US backing in confronting the threat of a nuclear Iran.

“The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came,” the Israeli daily newspaper [i]Haaretz[/i] said.

In their meeting Mr Obama set out 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 ten-month deadline next September, an end to building projects in east Jerusalem and a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions held before the second intifada in September 2000.

Newspaper reports recounted how Mr Netanyahu looked “excessively concerned and upset” when he pulled out a flow chart to show Mr Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known that the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built would be made when Mr Biden arrived in Jerusalem.

Mr Obama then suggested that Mr Netanyahu and his staff stay 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 daily newspaper [i]Yediot Aharonot[/i] quoted Mr Obama as 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 telephone line they had been lent for their consultations. Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, his Defence Minister, went to the Israeli Embassy to ensure that the Americans were not listening in.

The meeting came barely a day after Mr Obama’s health reform victory. Israel had calculated that he would be too tied up with domestic issues to focus seriously on the Middle East.

[homeschoolmom]

I'll just self edit my comments right now... Obama is such a... jerk.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Dictator.

I don't get his treatment of his issue at all. I mean, God gave them this land and they were basically pressured out of it through centuries of abuse, maltreatment, and conquest, then they were disbursed throughout Europe, abused to the extent of genocidal Holocaust, and finally people have the good sense to give them back their own land. Then Obama is audacious enough to tell him he can't build "settlements" in his own capitol?

Stupid. Just stupid.

[quote]Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not 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 the visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, this month and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled.[/quote]

This whole thing makes it sound like a bad teacher-student relationship. "Your flow chart fails to impress me, Jacob. I'm still kinda ticked about what you did last week. You have failed to explain yourself to me using visual media. F for effort and F for originality."

I mean, what makes him think he has any right to an explanation, anyway? Get off the guy's back. He's the leader of a sovereign nation. How are you going to respond if he does something you don't like...not pay for healthcare in his country with our government's massive net income? Give me a break. Israel shouldn't care what America thinks any more. They might as well sever ties. I wouldn't blame them.

[dominicansoul]

how else would a closet muslim treat a jew? I'm not surprised...

[cmotherofpirl]

Do you really expect a muslim to help the jews in any way? Seriously, why are you surprised? Look how he treated the Queen of England.

[MIKolbe]

Leaving the room in a huff is NOT the way to effect change, Mr. President.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

He didn't even give Netanyahu a priceless collection of DVDs from classic American cinema.

[Winchester]

Luckily, Israel has patience and will probably be willing to sit out this idiot in chief.

[CatherineM]

Arrogance is never pretty in a public [b]Servant[/b][i][/i].

[Ed Normile]

[quote name='CatherineM' date='26 March 2010 - 10:27 AM' timestamp='1269617263' post='2080571']
Arrogance is never pretty in a public [b]Servant[/b].
[/quote]


Amen, yet do you really think he feels he is a public servant, he is too much a narcissist to beleive he has to serve any interests other than his own, look at Health Care, the country was against it and he and Pelosi and Reed got it pushed through while adding to the debt of the country and basically driving a wedge between the people of the U.S.

ed

[Lil Red]

[quote name='homeschoolmom' date='26 March 2010 - 05:56 AM' timestamp='1269608187' post='2080511']
I'll just self edit my comments right now... Obama is such a... jerk.
[/quote]


[quote name='MIkolbe' date='26 March 2010 - 06:09 AM' timestamp='1269608972' post='2080520']
Leaving the room in a huff is NOT the way to effect change, Mr. President.
[/quote]


[quote name='Raphael' date='26 March 2010 - 06:12 AM' timestamp='1269609131' post='2080522']
He didn't even give Netanyahu a priceless collection of DVDs from classic American cinema.
[/quote]


[quote name='Ed Normile' date='26 March 2010 - 09:58 AM' timestamp='1269622735' post='2080618']
Amen, yet do you really think he feels he is a public servant, he is too much a narcissist to beleive he has to serve any interests other than his own, look at Health Care, the country was against it and he and Pelosi and Reed got it pushed through while adding to the debt of the country and basically driving a wedge between the people of the U.S.

ed
[/quote]
+JMJ+
i have no more +1s to give you all

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='Lil Red' date='26 March 2010 - 01:10 PM' timestamp='1269623436' post='2080630']
+JMJ+
i have no more +1s to give you all
[/quote]
I got everyone but myself for you.

[Lil Red]

[quote name='Raphael' date='26 March 2010 - 10:12 AM' timestamp='1269623562' post='2080632']
I got everyone but myself for you.
[/quote]
+JMJ+
thanks.

[HisChildForever]

He HATES Israel, so this is no surprise.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='26 March 2010 - 09:08 AM' timestamp='1269608918' post='2080519']
Do you really expect a muslim to help the jews in any way? Seriously, why are you surprised? Look how he treated the Queen of England.
[/quote]
I didn't know the Queen of England was a Jew!




Only three more years... only three more years... only three more years...