Relations between Obama, Netanyahu hit rock bottom
HONOLULU — It took eight years of backbiting and pretending they got along for relations between President Barack Obama’s administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to finally hit rock bottom.
Though they’ve clashed bitterly before, mostly notably over Iran, the two governments seemed further apart than ever after a speech Wednesday by Secretary of State John Kerry and last week’s United Nations resolution.
The key question for the Obama administration, newly willing to air grievances with Israel on live television, is why now?
“We cannot, in good conscience, do nothing and say nothing when we see the hope of peace slipping away,” Kerry said in a speech that ran more than an hour.
Yet in just over three weeks, Obama will no longer be president, Kerry will no longer be secretary of state, and the U.S. will have a new leader under no obligation to embrace any of what Kerry said. President-elect Donald Trump has assured Israel that things will be different after Jan. 20, when he’s to be inaugurated, and lamented how the Jewish state was “being treated very, very unfairly.”
Kerry took pains to voice America’s staunch commitment to Israel’s security and support for its future, and to detail U.S. complaints about Palestinian leadership and its failure to sufficiently deter violence against Israelis. He laid out a six-point framework for a potential peace deal that it will be up to the next U.S. government to try to enact, if it chooses to do so.
The White House has portrayed Obama’s decision to break with tradition by abstaining from — rather than vetoing — a U.N. Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements illegal as a reaction forced by other countries that brought it up for a vote. Obama didn’t seek this out, his aides have argued.
Yet the White House has also acknowledged that Obama had long considered the possibility of taking some symbolic step before leaving office to leave his imprint on the debate.