Policy shift against Israel was a JV move by Obama

Friends, or at least allies with common interests, usually stick together. That’s been the case with the U.S. and Israel for decades.

But lame duck President Barack Obama and soon-to-be former Secretary of State John Kerry have done their best to change that in the waning days of Obama’s eight years as president, siding with the terrorist group Hamas and others dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state and its people.

The stunning events of the past week have ignited a dangerous game that is further unsettling a turmoil-roiled Middle East that is in tatters in large part by this administration’s disastrous foreign policy. As if the killing or displacement of millions of Syrians, including the fall of Aleppo and the leadership void that elevated Russia and Iran into positions of Mideast power, weren’t enough. Or the administration’s role in the destabilization of Libya and Egypt. Or Obama’s wrongful assessment of ISIS as a “JV” threat that contributed to its dramatic rise, especially in Iraq and its expansive terror attacks on the West.

Now the administration has trained its failed foreign policy eye onto another target — blaming Israel for the breakdown of peace negotiations and attacking its settlement process.

Somehow forgotten are a nearly achieved two-state agreement forged in 2000 during the Clinton administration and a similar one offered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. Both were rejected, the first by late PLO leader Yasser Arafat and the second by current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. And it should be remembered that Israel’s return of the Gaza Strip to the PLO in 1994 has only resulted in it being used as a staging area for terrorist and rocket attacks on Israel and its people.

Last week Obama allowed a United Nations Security Council resolution to go forward — the Israelis say we engineered the deal — condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem as illegal and in violation of international law. This was the first time the U.S. failed to veto such a move. The resolution lays open the possibility of reducing Israel’s negotiating hand with the Palestinians — land could no longer be traded for peace — and leaves Israelis open to prosecution in international tribunals.

On Wednesday, Kerry defended the U.S. abstention and launched into a tirade against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom President Obama has had a strained relationship during his administration and who Obama’s operatives tried to oust in Israeli elections. Kerry also laid out an outline for a possible peace solution he will not be able to oversee and warned the favored two-state solution was in jeopardy.

Some Israelis also have concerns about whether a two-state solution remains feasible. But what is incontrovertible is that as a result of the Nazi Holocaust, in 1948 Jews were granted the right to create a safe state in lands their religious ancestors, like the Arabs’ ancestors, had occupied for millenia.

It is deplorable that the Palestinian leaders’ long-stated goal is eliminating Israel as a state and driving all Jews out of the land.

In 1970 the Washington Post quoted Arafat as saying, “We shall never stop until we can go back home and Israel is destroyed … there can be no compromises … We don’t want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel’s destruction and nothing else.”

Nothing has changed — with the possible exception of the view held by our commander in chief.

While drawing predictable praise from France and Germany, the administration’s inaction on the UN resolution sparked some rare foreign policy criticism from our nation’s closest ally.

British Prime Minister Theresa May in a statement Thursday said, “We do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally.… We are also clear that the settlements are far from the only problem …. In particular, the people of Israel deserve to live free from the threat of terrorism, with which they have had to cope for too long.”

Even key members of Obama’s own party are expressing dissatisfaction with the change. “While he may not have intended it, I fear Secretary Kerry, in his speech and action at the [United Nations], has emboldened extremists on both sides,” incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer,” D-N.Y., said last week.

It is reasonable to question Obama’s and Kerry’s motives for the decision to throw a last-second wrench into U.S. foreign policy. But it is unfortunate that the incoming president, like him or not, will have to deal with this.