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Source: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/obama-israel_negotiating_agree.html
Obama-Israel Negotiating Agreement: Don't Ask, Don't Tell on Settlements
(Washington Post) Jackson Diehl - It's beginning to look as though a week-long confrontation between the Obama administration and Israel over Jewish housing construction in Jerusalem may be winding toward a negotiated settlement. By seizing on the issue of Jewish settlement in Jerusalem, President Obama has, for the second time in a year, started one of the few fights that the U.S. cannot win with Israel. According to press reports, Clinton demanded that Netanyahu reverse the decision by a local council to advance the construction of 1,600 new units in a Jewish neighborhood outside Israel's 1967 borders. Netanyahu would never take that step. First, he might be barred from doing so under Israeli law; more importantly, building new Jewish housing in Jerusalem is one of the few issues that virtually all Israelis agree on. The Israeli hope is that rather than continue to press this self-defeating demand, Obama will accept Israeli assurances that the new neighborhood will not be constructed anytime soon; it is, in fact, two or three years from groundbreaking. Coupled to that would be an Israeli pledge to avoid publicizing further construction decisions in Jerusalem. Palestinian and Arab leaders, too, have been quietly frustrated with the debate on settlements - they believe the focus should be on the creation of a Palestinian state, not on the construction of a few more homes in an area they have already tacitly conceded to Israel. Obama reopened this toxic issue in what looked like a fit of pique. He would be wise now to quickly settle and move on.