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What Obama Did to Israel

(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - Israel undertook the Gaza withdrawal on the basis of President George W. Bush's written commitment that America supported Israel absorbing major settlement blocs in any peace agreement, opposed any return to the 1967 lines and stood firm against the so-called Palestinian right of return to Israel. For two and a half years, the Obama administration has refused to recognize and reaffirm these assurances. Then last week, President Obama definitively trashed them. Three times the Palestinians have been offered 1967 plus swaps - at Camp David 2000, Taba 2001, and the 2008 Olmert-Abbas negotiations. Every time, the Palestinians said no and walked away. Indeed, in September the Palestinians are going to the UN to get the world to ratify a Palestinian state on the '67 lines. No swaps. The '67 line runs right through Jerusalem. Thus the starting point of negotiations would be that the Western Wall and even Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter are Palestinian - alien territory for which Israel must now bargain. The very idea that Judaism's holiest shrine is alien or that Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter is rightfully or historically Arab is an absurdity. And the idea that, in order to retain them, Israel has to give up parts of itself is a travesty.
2011-05-27 00:00:00
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