US-Israel Relations Hit Low After Jewish State Rejects White House Demand

[Purveyor]

Increasingly fractious relations between the US and Israel hit a low unseen in nearly two decades today after the Jewish state rejected President Obama's demand for an end to settlement construction in the West Bank and Washington threatened to "press the point".

The dispute, which blew in to the open hours before Obama was to meet the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, reflects the depth of the shift in American policy away from accommodating Israel to pressuring it to end years of stalling serious negotiations over the creation of a Palestinian state while continuing to grab land in the occupied territories.

Obama put down a marker at a difficult meeting with the Israeli prime
minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, in Washington this month when he demanded a halt to the perpetual expansion of settlements - which now house close to 500,000 Jews in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem - because they are a major obstacle to the establishment of an independent Palestine.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, pressed the point yesterday with an unusually blunt call for a halt to settlement growth, including the continued construction of so-called "outposts", small informal settlements which are illegal even under Israeli law, as well as the building of new houses in existing Jewish enclaves which the government describes as "natural growth".

Clinton said Obama "wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions. We think it is in the best interests of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion cease." She said the Americans "intend to press that point".

MORE...

GUARDIAN UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/28/us-israel-settlements-obama-abbas

[Political Heretic]

1. That's great. This is the first good headline I've seen in a while.

Let's see what actually comes of the rhetoric.

[damntexdem]

2. Well, if the Israeli govenment feels that strongly, they should reject U.S. aid!

And the U.S. could help them along in that policy by not providing it.